Bolton Valley, VT 27APR2019

After watching it snow all morning on the Bolton Valley Web cam, I decided to head up for a ski tour around midday to see how the new snow was settling in over the old snowpack.  Similar to our house, the precipitation was rain and there was no snow at the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road, but driving up I encountered residual winter snowpack starting at ~1,400’.  The rain changed over to snowfall right after that, around the Timberline Base at 1,500’.

I found a couple inches of new snow as I parked the car in the Bolton Valley Village around 2,000’, and that depth only increased slowly to roughly 3 inches at the 2,500’ level.  I noticed a bit of a jump in depths when I hit the 2,600’ to 2,700’ range though, so that seemed to be a threshold of sorts for accumulations during this storm.  .

Here’s the new snow depth profile with respect to elevation based on my observations from today’s tour:

340’:  0”
1,000’:  0”
1,500’:  T-1”
2,000’:  2”
2,500’:  3”
3,000’:  4-6”

“…with the dense snow there were actually plenty of nice bottomless turns available out there.”

On the ascent I was a bit worried that the snow was going to be sticky with respect to turns, but the temperature up top around 3,000’ was roughly 30 to 31 F.  So it was certainly below freezing up there, and the new snow was dense, but definitely dry enough for some nice powder turns.  I only found sticky snow to be an issue during the final couple hundred feet of descent to the main base area at 2,100’.  I made my initial descent down Alta Vista, then worked my way over toward Wilderness, and with the dense snow there were actually plenty of nice bottomless turns available out there.  Powderfreak reported some nice turns today at Stowe as well, and he found similar accumulations to what I encountered on my Bolton Valley tour.

The models and forecasts suggest that after a lull this afternoon, there’s a chance for more snow tonight into tomorrow as the back side of the system comes through.  We’re planning to stay at the Lodge at Spruce Peak tonight, so hopefully I’ll have a chance to head out for some turns on Mansfield tomorrow.