Looking up at Gondolier from the Spruce Peak base area
Ali and Wini were heading to The Shed for dinner today, and since I had the time and E and the boys were out of town, it was the perfect chance to get in an evening of skiing and dinner in Stowe. I stopped off first at Spruce Peak where the coverage is still excellent; that’s a really good gauge of just how much snow is out there because the bottom of Spruce Peak is both low elevation AND south facing – it’s hard to find a tougher challenge to the snow than that. The skiing was great, with a couple of inches of beautifully smooth corn that had softened during the day and had partially recrystallized into airy goodness. Dinner with Wini and Ali was great; definitely one of those classic Vermont spring evenings, and with the current snowpack it looks like there can be many more! For all the details and images, go to my trip report from today.
Looking between the chairs of the Timberline Lift to take in the view of Whiteface across Lake Champlain
Unlike yesterday, where temperatures stayed rather wintry and didn’t give the snow a chance to warm up, today the temperatures were warmer and the sun was starting to break out in the afternoon, so I headed up to Bolton for some turns. The snow coverage is still great all the way down to the Timberline elevations, so I made turns there and found some excellent spring corn. The full details and all the pictures can be found in my Bolton Valley trip report from today. There is a lot of skiing to be done in the coming weeks, so get out and enjoy that great snowpack!
The snow depth went to zero today at our back yard stake in Waterbury. (Click on the image for the full size plot)
As of this morning, the depth of snow at our back yard stake has reached zero, so I’ve updated my Waterbury snowpack plot and included it in this post. This means that the last day with snow at the stake was 4/12, and the average I have for that value is 3/27 ± 14 days, so this season is a couple of weeks later than that average. The next benchmark I’ll monitor will be when the final snow in the yard is gone, and based on data I have from ’07-’10, that average date is 4/12 ± 10 days, so roughly a couple of weeks later than when the snow has melted out at the stake. As of today, the yard snowpack has been around for 130 days, but that is actually still below average (138 ± 14 days) because of the late start to the season; the start of continuous snowpack this season was on the later side at 12/5 vs. an average of 11/27 ± 9 days. Unless the rest of the snow in the yard melts unusually fast however, the end result of the snowpack season will probably be somewhere around that average value.
I’d say that winter temperatures were more consistent than usual this season, so it’s a little easier to see the steady climb in snowpack from a value of 0″ on 12/4 through the value of 39.5″ on 3/8. The average rate of increase during the period was 0.42″/day. This was a decent snowpack season, with snow depth days from my stake coming in at 2,227 depth-days vs. the average of 1,812 ± 741 depth-days. However, the combination of the rather late start and long stagnation through mid January (visible on the plot) while the storms were going south, meant that it certainly wasn’t up where the ’07-’08 season was at over 2,500 depth-days.
Melting snow from warm temperatures caused the Winooski to rise today - our local VAST snowmobile bridge was basically floating on the river.
With the recent warm temperatures melting some of the snowpack, the Winooski was quite high today, so I’ve added a couple of pictures of our local VAST snowmobile bridge. The bridge was refurbished in the fall, and from the pictures one can see that the boards are still pretty light in color. Normally the bridge is 5 to 10 feet above the river, so that provides a sense of the rise of the water level due to the melting snow, and with the fields off to the south taken over by water (visible in the background) the Winooski was several times its normal width.
A close up view of the south side of the VAST bridge and the flooded fields beyond
Jay joined the kids for some half pipe fun at Stowe today.
After closing out our lift-served Bolton Valley ski season yesterday, today we headed to Stowe for more spring skiing. We ran into many of the friends that we’d seen yesterday, and since the boys had been excited for a couple of weeks to check out Starr, we took advantage of the great snow and base depths to ski it from the top. We also got to the ski the entirety of Goat, another Stowe classic, and we even worked in a couple of runs through the monstrous half pipe. Stowe will be running the lifts for another week, so we’ll see how the weather looks and we may head back for more turns. For the full details and pictures, read my Stowe report from today.
Ty hits the spring snow at the top of Bolton's Show Off trail with the mountain's wind turbine in the background.
Today we headed up for what will probably be our last lift-served day at Bolton this season, since Bolton won’t be running their lifts after this weekend and we’re planning to head to Stowe tomorrow. It was as excellent day with some almost wintry snow to start in the morning, which gradually became more and more spring-like as the day went on. We skied with many friends and family including my mom, Stephen, Johannes, Helena, Claire, Luke, and Claire’s sister Missy and her whole family. The last regular turns of the season on the mountain are always bittersweet, but it was a great way to end the lift-served portion of the winter at Bolton with full coverage and a deep base. For all the pictures and the full text from our adventures, check out my report from the day. The season ended around average with 330 inches of snowfall, and we’re already looking forward to next season when we expect to see more of Claire and Luke who just became Bolton Valley 2011-2012 season passholders!
I headed up to Bolton Valley today and got in on some of the powder from the recent snowfall. The depth of the new snow was topping out in the 9-inch range, but the nice density gradient had it skiing deep just as Denis commented in his report from Stowe, and Powderfreak indicated in his initial update as well. It was another great April powder day in the Northern Greens, read my full report to see more pictures and details.
The snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield stake hit 100 inches after yesterday’s snowfall – click for the full size plot
The snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield stake has been flirting with the 100-inch mark for several weeks, but thanks to yesterday’s snow, the afternoon reading indicated that we’d finally hit the century mark. A depth of 100 inches at the stake is a nice benchmark indicating an excellent snowpack in the Northern Green Mountains, so the base depths for skiing should be decent for quite some time. Down in the valley, the snowpack at our house in Waterbury was at 16 inches as of this morning’s reading. I’ve added my latest plot for the Mt. Mansfield and Waterbury snow depths in this post.
The kids from BJAMS gathering together at the Stowe fire pit on our final ski program day of the season
Today was our final BJAMS ski program session of the season at Stowe, and we had a nice sunny day with great coverage to finish things out. The conditions were actually an excellent combination of going from mid winter up high to spring-like down low, with easy to ski snow at all elevations. I was amazed at the way the Nosedive Glades had mid winter snow. Groomed surfaces seemed much better than last Sunday’s heinous frozen granular, presumably because of some extra snow and warmth from the sun helping out. While the non-groomed trails were OK, they probably weren’t quite as fresh as last week when we had all that upslope snow. We did ski the lower part of Lookout and found some decent packed powder surfaces, but also spots of iciness that had to be avoided. The snowpack on Hackett’s Highway under the triple continues to be impressive – I could touch my ski pole to the trail while riding the lift. We had Ty, Dylan, Jack, Luke, Ethan, and Madeline in the group – and they had quite a blast hitting the big half pipe. My friend Chris joined our group, so with Claire and Sue we had four adults for the six youngsters, providing plenty of supervision. It looks like Stowe will be open for a couple more weeks, so we’ll likely be there for some visits if the skiing looks good. Coverage shouldn’t be much of an issue with roughly 100 inches at the Mt. Mansfield stake and more snow that fell today.
Jay enjoying the spring powder and sun in Bolton's Wilderness area
We headed up to Bolton today to check out the powder from our recent storm, and conditions were great. We had some snowfall in the mid morning period that gave way to more sun as we approached noontime. For all the details and powdery pictures, check out my report from Bolton today.
