Stowe, VT 12JAN2020

An image of Ty and Dylan getting their ski gear on in the locker area of the Spruce Camp base lodge at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont.
The boys get suited up for our first BJAMS ski program day of the season by the lockers in Spruce Camp.

Today we were at Stowe for our first BJAMS ski program day of the season.  In terms of weather, this was one of those days where we probably wouldn’t have ventured out to the slopes if it weren’t for the program.  We’ve been in the midst of Winter Storm Isaiah over the past couple of days, and it’s been a warm storm that has switched last week’s wintry conditions over to spring conditions.  That actually wouldn’t be a deterrent for skiing, but the anticipated strong winds and temperatures dropping into the 20s F through the afternoon were concerning.

We were at the mountain early enough that I took a couple of runs with E and the boys, and we found conditions to be spring-like and decent.  We had a touch of rain, which quickly changed over to snow in the higher elevations and made its way down to the base.

“It looks like the mountain picked up about an inch of snow from that back side precipitation of the storm, and we’ve got a potentially good week of additional snow coming. ”

During my instruction session today I was working with a student named Viviana, an absolute first-time, never-ever skier.  We worked on the magic carpet all afternoon, with one break in the middle where we got to hang out with E and the boys, their ski groups, and a number of other people from the program while we had some good food at the Great Room Grill.  Viviana spent her ski time figuring out how to pressure her wedge to slow herself down and make turns, and she had progressed quite a bit by the end of the day in having the strength to stop herself.  That actually says a lot, because the soft conditions we had at midday gradually changed to very hard conditions by the end of the afternoon.  The cold air moved in, the groomed surfaces became much slicker, and the ungroomed surfaces became a frozen moonscape.

Strong winds put the Over Easy Gondola on hold at the end of the day, so we had to take one of the shuttles back to our car at Mansfield, and the wait for the shuttle felt like forever because of the frigid winds.  It was only about five minutes of course, but many of us had dressed for the gondola vs. being out in the open.  We found our car was encased in quite a layer of refrozen material from the wet snow that had fallen, so it took a bit of time to warm it up and melt that off.

It looks like the mountain picked up about an inch of snow from that back side precipitation of the storm, and we’ve got a potentially good week of additional snow coming.  There are four potential winter storms in the next six days, so depending on how they play out, it could set things up very nicely for the upcoming holiday weekend.

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