Skip wrote:

>Echo Woods was laid waste by an ice and wind storm several years after it
>was built.  The other gladed areas gradually lost their trees not to
>deliberate cutting but to wind and weather; the construction of
>sustainable gladed terrain was poorly understood when these areas were created.

Echo Woods may have been knocked down by a windstorm, but the rest of the trees
in the original South Ridge glades were cut down rather than being blown down.
Skip, perhaps this was before your time at Killington? For the first year of
South Ridge (1976?), all of the trails were glades, or just narrow paths
between the trees. I will look through my trail maps for proof of this. Over
the next summer the glades were removed, and then several years later Echo
Woods came down.

I have to question Skip's recollection that Echo Woods came down in a windstorm.
If it came down in a windstorm, why didn't they just leave the dead trees there
instead of removing every one (spruce trees are not valuable timber)? Also, why
did it just affect the trees in Echo Woods and none of the trees to the north or
south of the lift? If some trees were blown down, certainly not all of them
were, yet all of them were removed. I am suspicious.

>As to the reason for the triangular chairlift:  I've heard several
>theories advanced as to WHY this was done, but near as I can conclude
>the lift was done that way for the same reason that dogs lick their nethers.

How about simply because it was the mid-70's?

Jim

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