Saturday morning at Burke Mountain.  Overcast and 39 degrees F.  At about 10:30, I was riding up the Willoughby Quad with  Tim Kirchoff, my neighbor here on Pudding Hill, and a regular contestant at Pond Skimming for the past four or five years.  This is the time of year that local skiers wait for; the sun is strong, the groomers at Burke have done a masterful job all season long, so what you find on the slopes is that delightful terrain called spring corn.  Tim was getting in one more run before he donned his costume (that’s him above as Daffy Duck) and got ready to skim the pond.

This year, Burke celebrated it’s 20th Annual Pond Skimming Competition.  There are always great prizes (the King and Queen of the Pond each get a season pass for next  year)  and this year’s theme was Cartoon Characters.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Smurfs were well represented, along with a bunch of Fred Flinstones.  I’m not sure which cartoon character the guy with the coconuts was and I’m not sure if OctoMom is a cartoon character, but, hey, the goal is to have fun, and if at all possible, to make it across the pond at least once.

At exactly 1:00, the sun burst through the clouds (who scripted this, Steven Spielberg??) and the first of sixty-eight brave skiers and snowboarders headed down from the starting gate, into the chute and across the pond.  Two hours, twenty degrees of warmer weather and four rounds later, we had our winners.

David Stoffregen was only the third snowboarder in the competition’s history to be named the King of the Pond.  He barely inched out Tim Kirchoff, the skier making it the farthest.  Jessica Demetrokopolous was named Queen of the Pond for the second time, after another wonderful rivalry with her sister.  We’re still waiting on the names of the other winners (best costume, best splash, etc.) and will pass those along as soon as possible.

With brilliant sunshine lingering late in the afternoon and temperatures nearing 60 F, we took a few more runs down Upper & Lower Willoughby and called it a day.   The plan is to stay open for another week, through April 5th, but Pond Skimming is the Northeast Kingdom’s Sacre du Printemps.

–SN

(all photos by staff photographer Alyssa Nichols)