On an average weekday at Killington, I have found the best place to establish base camp to be the central Killington Base Lodge. If you are strictly interested in beginner or lower-intermediate terrain, you might want to pull in at Snowshed, with the most extensive facilities and services (i.e., restaurants, ski school) of any Killington base area. If you're looking to avoid the population explosion of weekends and holidays, the Rams Head base is the logical starting point. Otherwise, by continuing along Killington Road to its end at the Killington Base Lodge, you land in the best starting point for accessing most of the area's terrain.

One ride up the Killington double chair puts you at the mountain summit, the one vantage point from which you can branch out to any subsection of the ski area. Be ready for a cold ride in the early morning, though; for the first third of the lift ride you stay low in the basin, where morning dampness can take a few hours to dissipate. If you're looking for a warm-up run or two, the high-speed Superstar quad to the left of the base lodge is a good place to go, before the hundreds of skiers who frequent this popular lift scrape off most of the good snow.

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A better option on busy weekends or holiday times is to head instead for the Northeast Passage base area at the junction of Route 4 and Route 100 South. Yes the Northeast Passage triple chair is long, flat, and slow, and it services little interesting terrain. An extra lift ride or two, or three might be necessary to get to terrain you'll really want to ski. But the base area is unusually low-key for Killington, making parking and ticket-buying easier, and lift lines are improbable.

The time you might lose in riding the lift is more than made up for in avoiding the hassles and lift lines you'd likely encounter at the main Killington base. You'll also avoid the traffic build-up at the end of the day at the junction of Killington Road and Route 4, where 15 minutes of stop-and-go before getting onto Route 4 are not uncommon, even with traffic cops working the beat on weekends.