Bolton Valley, VT 07APR2011

Image of track on the Glades trail at Bolton Valley
Adding another set of tracks to the Glades trail

I headed up to Bolton Valley today and got in on some of the powder from the recent snowfall.  The depth of the new snow was topping out in the 9-inch range, but the nice density gradient had it skiing deep just as Denis commented in his report from Stowe, and Powderfreak indicated in his initial update as well.  It was another great April powder day in the Northern Greens, read my full report to see more pictures and details.

100 Inches

Mt. Mansfield and Waterbury Vermont snowpack plot for April 5th, 2011
The snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield stake hit 100 inches after yesterday’s snowfall – click for the full size plot
The snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield stake has been flirting with the 100-inch mark for several weeks, but thanks to yesterday’s snow, the afternoon reading indicated that we’d finally hit the century mark.  A depth of 100 inches at the stake is a nice benchmark indicating an excellent snowpack in the Northern Green Mountains, so the base depths for skiing should be decent for quite some time.  Down in the valley, the snowpack at our house in Waterbury was at 16 inches as of this morning’s reading.  I’ve added my latest plot for the Mt. Mansfield and Waterbury snow depths in this post.

Stowe, VT 03APR2011

Picture of the BJAMS Ski Program kids at Stowe
The kids from BJAMS gathering together at the Stowe fire pit on our final ski program day of the season

Today was our final BJAMS ski program session of the season at Stowe, and we had a nice sunny day with great coverage to finish things out.  The conditions were actually an excellent combination of going from mid winter up high to spring-like down low, with easy to ski snow at all elevations.  I was amazed at the way the Nosedive Glades had mid winter snow.  Groomed surfaces seemed much better than last Sunday’s heinous frozen granular, presumably because of some extra snow and warmth from the sun helping out.  While the non-groomed trails were OK, they probably weren’t quite as fresh as last week when we had all that upslope snow.  We did ski the lower part of Lookout and found some decent packed powder surfaces, but also spots of iciness that had to be avoided.  The snowpack on Hackett’s Highway under the triple continues to be impressive – I could touch my ski pole to the trail while riding the lift.  We had Ty, Dylan, Jack, Luke, Ethan, and Madeline in the group – and they had quite a blast hitting the big half pipe.  My friend Chris joined our group, so with Claire and Sue we had four adults for the six youngsters, providing plenty of supervision.  It looks like Stowe will be open for a couple more weeks, so we’ll likely be there for some visits if the skiing looks good.  Coverage shouldn’t be much of an issue with roughly 100 inches at the Mt. Mansfield stake and more snow that fell today.