Bolton Valley, VT 16DEC2017

An image of Ty Telemark skiing in powder on the Snowflake Bentley trail at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont
10 to 12 inches of powder greeted us on the slopes of Bolton’s Snowflake area this afternoon.

It’s been a great week for snow in the Northern Greens.  Last weekend we had some lake-effect snow that dropped several inches in the mountains, and when that was followed up by the larger storm we had in the first half of the workweek, the local resorts were looking at snow totals of roughly two feet.  Since then, we’ve had additional rounds of light snow to keep the surfaces fresh, and the result has been some simply fantastic skiing.

“The general depths of powder we found today were in the 10-12” range, and it’s light and dry and simply delightful to ski.”

Light snow continued on and off today at the house to the tune of an inch or two of accumulation, but Powderfreak said that Stowe had seen a few inches, and the skiing looked really good.  One can only watch the flakes fall out there for so long before you want to take advantage and get in some powder skiing, so taking a trip up to the mountain was inevitable.  Dylan had a friend visiting today, but Ty and I headed up to Bolton Valley in the midafternoon to catch a few runs.  Temperatures had started in the 20s F, but they were definitely falling as the back side of this latest event came through.

An image of Ty Telemark skiing at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont
Ty working on turns in some of the fresh powder out there today

As we were gearing up, Ty decided that he needed to hit the restroom in the main lodge, and when he came back he could not stop raving about the pizza smell inside.  With that, we knew where we were heading as soon as we were done skiing.  Ty had brought his Tele skis today, and we ended up just doing runs off Snowflake to let him work on his turns.  Actually, Snowflake was an excellent choice in general today because thanks to its generally lower amounts of skier traffic, it held some fabulous snow.  Ty had his pick of working on his turns in powder, chowder, or packed snow.  The general depths of powder we found today were in the 10-12” range, and it’s light and dry and simply delightful to ski.

“There’s easily a foot or more of powder in many places over there – it’s just been building up over the past few weeks with little traffic.”

We finished off the day with a ski down through the fresh powder on Timberline, and of course that was a highlight.  There’s been at least a little skier traffic down at Timberline from folks earning turns, but fresh turns are essentially everywhere.  Ty had no choice but to work on powder turns for that run… oh well.  There’s easily a foot or more of powder in many places over there – it’s just been building up over the past few weeks with little traffic.  We’d called ahead to let E know that we were heading down, and she was right there at the Timberline Base to pick us up and bring us back up to the main base.

E couldn’t stay, but Ty and I headed up to Fireside Flatbread as planned, and had a couple of slices at the bar.  Since E and Dylan hadn’t been able to join us, the natural course of action was to get a couple of pies to take home.  Man that crust was good. 

The base depths at Timberline aren’t quite there for lift-served traffic yet, but we’re definitely OK with that.  There’s more snow in the forecast in the coming week, so surfaces and powder availability should remain in good shape.