Bolton Valley, VT 05JAN2020

An image of the Wood's Hole area with fresh snow at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
The beautiful snowy scene at Wood’s Hole today

Since yesterday morning, Winter Storm Henry has been bringing snow to our area, and Bolton Valley reported several new inches as of this morning.  With the passage of the system came some wind however, which was enough to keep the Vista Quad on hold.  Watching the Bolton Valley Live Web Cam from home, we could see that the Vista Quad closure led to long lines for the Mid Mountain Chair and Snowflake Chair.  My colleague Stephen said that he’d been skiing in the morning, but the lift lines grew to 30 minutes as more people arrived and he’d eventually decided to call it a day.

Our family had planned to head up for some lift-served runs this afternoon, but the wind hold made that impractical and I ended up heading to the mountain to skin up for some turns instead.  I figured this latest storm would be just about enough to get Timberline in reasonable shape for turns, so with the crowds at the main mountain, I decided to check it out.

“In general, I found 6 to 7 inches of powder in protected areas along the route, which was enough for mostly bottomless turns on low and moderate angle terrain.”

The main skin route on Twice as Nice was well established, but I could see that in general the west-facing trails had seen just a bit too much wind to provide really nice turns.  Having seen that, I ended up descending by the more protected Wood’s Hole and Brandywine route, and that worked out well.  In general, I found 6 to 7 inches of powder in protected areas along the route, which was enough for mostly bottomless turns on low and moderate angle terrain.

We’ve got yet another modest system coming through the area tomorrow, so that should bring conditions up another notch.