Stowe, VT 10APR2021

An image looking up from the Mountain Mansfield Ski Academy lodge parking lot toward the Main Street trail on Spruce Peak at Stowe Mountain Ski Resort in Vermont
A view up from the MMSC lot today toward Spruce Peak and the snowy Main Street trail

Today I headed to Stowe to go for a tour on Spruce Peak, and again the weather was simply sunny and fabulous.  I hadn’t been to the resort in a while since we didn’t have our school’s ski program this season due to COVID-19, so I poked around the Spruce Peak Village for a bit first.  There’s a huge new building going up where the ski patrol building was at the base of the Sunny Spruce Quad, so that’s another substantial addition to the village area.  I’m not sure what’s going to be going in there, or if it’s more lodging?  As usual, the crowd of folks earning turns was in the MMSC lot, and I found about a dozen cars or so there and ran into Shalagh, who was there skiing with some of her friends.  You almost can’t help but run into someone you know on these days.

All I can say is that Main Street delivered what were unquestionably the best turns of the weekend, and probably the best corn snow I’ve skied the entire spring season so far.  I’m not sure what it is about Main Street, but year after year after year, it just seems to deliver superior corn snow.  Maybe it’s because it faces south and really starts its corn snow cycling early, or maybe it’s because they blow that massive amount of dense snow for the racers, or maybe it’s because it gets so much less traffic than the trails on Mansfield.  Perhaps it’s a combination of all these factors, but it just delivered ridiculously smooth, perfect peel-away corn snow turns when I was there.

An image looking down the Main Street Trail on an April ski day at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont
A view of Main Street during my descent today, with Mt. Mansfield and its trails visible across the valley

In terms of the ascent route, Main Street is really the best option with respect to continuous coverage for skinning, but those steep pitches are rough.  Despite the tough ascent, my legs felt great making Telemark turns on the way down.  Everything just seemed to flow, and I’m sure a lot of it was the quality of the snow.  The snowpack there seems quite deep, and it’s definitely worth more trips while that snow is around.