About

Welcome to J&E productions, thanks for visiting!

J&E productions began in 1999, when the availability of digital video cameras and editing software finally alowed my wife and I to begin creating high-quality ski videos for friends and family.  Through the years we have continued to create ski videos, capture still photographs, and assemble online trip reports of our snow-related adventures throughout the U.S. and Canada.  Some of our articles include An Idaho Powder Paradise, featuring Brundage Mountain Resort in McCall, Idaho, Montana’s New Frontier, covering Moonlight Basin in Montana, and Kicking Horse: Skiing Adventure in the Canadian Rockies. We have also produced the online video for There’s No Place Like Home, a feature article about the Summit at Snoqualmie.  Many thanks go out to First Tracks!! Online Ski Magazine for their collaborative efforts.  Living in the snowy environment of Vermont’s Northern Green Mountains, we also report extensively on the local winter weather from our house in Waterbury and the higher elevations, and the snowfall data I collect in association with CoCoRaHS is updated on our web log and in the New England Forum at Americanwx.com.

From here, you can access other areas associated with J&E Productions:

15 Replies to “About”

  1. Hi guys-

    Great site. I’d like to link to this from our AdventureSkier.com site, as it’s a great resource for VT backcountry skiers. We’d greatly appreciate if you could list AdventureSkier.com on your site as well.

    Have we met?

    Thanks and let’s be in touch.

    Brian Mohr
    EmberPhoto.com
    AdventureSkier.com

  2. Hi Jay,
    many tanks for your great page ! I’m from Germany, but since I’ll be in Vermont for Christmas, I’m thinking about doing some alpine ski-touring in the Stowe area after Christmas. According to your snowfall measurements there might already by enough snow. What’s your advice ? Would that be possible ?
    Many thanks and best regards from Gremany
    Christian

    1. Hi Christian, there’s certainly the potential for some ski touring during the holidays in Northern Vermont, as long as the snowpack is at least average. In an average season, the snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield stake will be approaching the 3-foot mark around the holidays, which means that certain high elevation areas will have sufficient coverage. You can see a plot of the average snowpack depth and progress on the season at the following address:

      http://www.uvm.edu/skivt-l/?Page=depths.php

      At that ~3 foot stage of snowpack, high elevation spots with good maintenance such as the Bolton Valley Backcountry Network will typically be options, and other well-maintained glades that don’t have extremely steep pitches will hold potential as well. Keep an eye on the plot at the link above, and hope we can get a good start to the snowpack that is above average. As usual, we’re all hoping for a snowy start to the season here in Vermont!

  3. Hi Jay,

    Are you ever open to allowing others to venture along with you on these short trips? I am local here in VT (BTV) and have seen you a few times hiking Bolton. Let me know.

    Adam

    1. Hi Adam, no problems with others coming along, it’s just that between work, family, church, ski program, other obligations, weather, etc. it’s tough to plan trips ahead of time and I’m usually squeezing them into available windows on relatively short notice. I’ll send an email though so we can get in contact.

  4. Hey I stumbled upon your site a few weeks back and been keeping up. I currently live in CO and till recently you guys were having a much better season then us. How does the snow compare to Co in terms of dryness? I have only been a few times here, moved here from Michigan. I know co is superior but man is it busy and expensive here. Thinking of moving somewhere else or buying property in another state to go to in winter and ski. Shoot me a email I have tons of questions..

    Tim

    1. Hi Tim, the Northern Greens get some incredibly dry snow (sub-6% H2O) through a couple of key mesoscale mechanisms: 1) lake-effect snow that carries over from the Great Lakes, and 2) upslope snow from moisture that is wrung out of the atmosphere by the spine of the Green Mountains. The “dryness” of snow (i.e., how fluffy it is) is actually much more about the structure of the flakes than the air temperature near the ground. Those LES and upslope mechanisms often involve very good dendritic growth, so the snowflakes have long arms and they stack up easily. We do get plenty of typical synoptic (~10% H2O) snow as well, but often times our storms will finish off with upslope snow to give that density gradient to the snowfall that makes for such great powder skiing. The main issue here in Vermont is that you’re not going to get the consistency of Colorado in terms of dry air and cold temperatures – we’re going to have the occasional thaw during the winter, and the thaw-freeze will harden up surfaces until the next storm cycle. But, the ski resorts in the Northern Greens all average 300+ inches of snow a season (pretty much on par with most resorts in Colorado). With the most snowfall in the Eastern U.S., along with the number and size of the ski resorts, the zone from the Central through Northern Greens is really the premiere lift-served skiing location in the U.S. east of the Rockies.

  5. Hi,
    Looking for some information on Gilpin Mountain VT, however your post from 2001 about the mountain appears to be down. Was wondering if you could get that post back up?
    Thanks

    1. Sorry for the delay on taking care of this, but I’ve had a bunch of recent trip report posts to create from the past few weeks of great skiing we’ve had. It’s been a nice start to the season with all the November and December snows, but it’s been hard to stay caught up with reports. And thanks for the heads up on the break in the link to the Gilpin Mountain post. A while back I removed most of the standard images and html files that were sitting on the server outside of the WordPress file system – apparently the type of GoDaddy server I’m using isn’t really set up to handle files in those areas, and having too many of them can quickly bog down the website. I was experiencing this on our site, and eventually I worked with GoDaddy support and they helped me figure it out. Unfortunately that means that a few old reports that I created as html pages will be missing, so I’ll have to update them. In any event, I edited the text and created a brand new WordPress post for the Gilpin trip with the existing images, and clicking on that link on the backcountry page should bring you there. Let me know if you run into any further trouble!

      Gilpin Mountain Trip Report form February 18th, 2001

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