This morning though, I was feeling notably better, and it seemed like a trip to the snow would be in order. Assessing what I’d seen for coverage on the Bolton Valley Web Cam at 2,100’, and comparing the pictures that Powderfreak posted yesterday from ~2,500’ on Mansfield, it looked like Stowe had picked up the better accumulations, so I set my sights there. Around midday I was ready to head out. I knew that the snow wasn’t going to be dry in the lower elevations, because temperatures were already well up into the 40s F, but even if the snow turned out to be sticky, I’d still get a nice hike out of the deal.
The first traces of snow along the Mountain Road appeared in the 900’ – 1,000’ elevation range just below The Matterhorn, and up at the Mansfield Base Lodge there was about an inch of patchy wet snow. A quick survey of the area had shown me that North Slope had some of the best-looking coverage, and apparently, that was because the resort had actually made some snow there. I threw my skis on my pack, unsure of whether or not I’d be skinning, and headed up the stairs to the base of the lifts. I just happened to run into Claire and Luc, who were up because Luc was anxious to get in some turns on the available snow. We hiked together at various stages, and since she was hiking back down, Claire stopped at the Crossover elevation while I switched over to skins, and Luc and I continued up to the top of the next pitch of North Slope around 2,400’. There were actually a fair number of people out and about for the “day after” the storm, but I guess it wasn’t too surprising with the nice warm temperatures.
One of many folks out enjoying the day at Stowe
Luc headed down before me to catch up with Claire, and when I finally started my descent, I found out that the snow conditions were quite good. I’d been worried about the warm weather making a mess of the snow, but the combination of natural and manmade snow, along with some skier traffic, turned a good portion of the route into dense, spring-like snow that skied very well. I hit Tele turns where the snow was good, stuck in some alpine turns where conditions were more variable, and had quite a good ride for a quick outing. We’ve got a warmer week coming up, with highs in the mountains generally in the 40s F, but it looks like we might have more cold and snow as we head toward the weekend and Thanksgiving week, so we’ll see what chances that period brings for additional turns. For now though, I’d say there’s enough snow on North Slope to last through some warm days for people interested in earning some turns this week.
There’s still plenty of great snow at Stowe for anyone that wants to earn some turns.
Between almost daily soccer coaching, practices, and games now stacked on top of the usual routine, the spring schedule for E and the boys has been pretty crazy, but fortunately I was able to get them to sneak in a trip to the slopes today. I saw great pictures of the coverage on Nosedive from Powderfreak’s report on Wednesday, so we knew it was a good bet for spring turns and headed off to Stowe in the mid-morning. We’d been hoping Joe would be able to join us, but he ultimately decided it was just going to be a little too much to manage the hike and still have enough left in the tank for dancing tonight at the BJAMS Bash.
We parked in the Midway Lot and had to walk about 50-100 yards over to the start of the snow on Lower Nosedive. You could definitely see the effects of the past couple days’ summer-like temperatures, because bare areas were making substantial intrusions into parts of the trail. The snow coverage is still fairly continuous though, with just one actual break of about 20 feet about halfway up. We topped out a bit shy of the 3,000’ mark, which was about as far as E and the boys wanted to push themselves with more soccer games tomorrow. In terms of the skiing, the snow quality was fine, with nothing overly mushy despite the temperatures. We’d all brought ski pants, but E and the boys were pretty gutsy and skied just in their shorts. I’ve been there before, and especially since I was Telemark skiing I decided to stick with full ski pants and knee pads. E was skiing Tele as well, but she didn’t care – she and the boys all felt that the cooling of the snow and breeze was worth it, and fortunately there were no notable falls to contend with.
Nosedive is still just about continuous, but areas are starting to melt out.
There were several groups of skiers around that we encountered on either the ascent or descent, and it was quite the fun atmosphere. We tested out playing Pandora on one of the cell phones on the ascent and that worked out well – Dylan made an Imagine Dragons station that had me grooving my way up the mountain at a really quick pace.
On the way out we took a peek at some of the other routes on the mountain that had substantial snow, and the best alternative to Nosedive looked like it was that North Slope area above the terrain park. Temperatures look to cool down somewhat as we head into next week, so that should slow the melting process a bit. These warm days have been great, but they’re causing the snow to disappear quickly!
A snapshot from the Bolton Valley Web Cam today – the patches of snow on the bottom half of the mountain got me interested enough to see what the higher elevations held.
Our protracted stretch of pleasantly warm and sunny weather has continued this week, and it’s allowed the ground to dry to the point that on Tuesday, I headed out for a mountain bike ride to sample some of local terrain by the house and into town. Indeed even some of the typically wettest terrain down by the Winooski was dry enough for riding, so things are ready on that front, but after seeing Powderfreak’s ski report from yesterday at Stowe, it reminded me that I should probably get back out on the slopes while the snow is available. I can still see bright areas of white snow on the slopes of Bolton Valley from my office in Burlington, but from that distance it’s hard to know exactly how continuous the coverage is. I popped up the image from the Bolton Valley Web Cam and could see that there were only patches of coverage on Beech Seal on the bottom half of the mountain, but it looked as if the snow at the bottom of Bear Run might be stretching upward for some substantial coverage.
I headed up to the resort with plans to at least get in a hike, since the areas without snow already looked pretty dry. I saw the first signs of snow along the Bolton Valley Access Road at the base of Timberline at 1,500’, and it was clearly leftovers of manmade snow. Up in the Village it was very quiet, and I’d thought about getting a sandwich from the Deli, but it was closed. This is probably one of the quietest times of the year, so I guess that shouldn’t be too surprising. I took a quick walk up to the slopes and could see that Spillway had some large areas of snow, and it was enough to suggest that I should throw my skis on my pack and bring them along.
The snow on the lower parts of Spillway ended up being rather patchy, so I headed toward Sherman’s Pass
The visible snow near the base that appeared to head up to Bear Run was the start of a reasonably long section that went about halfway up the trail, and from there to Mid Mountain the coverage was a lot more fractured or nonexistent. Above Mid Mountain I began to hike toward Spillway, since I’d seen the snow up there, but once I saw far more substantial coverage on Sherman’s Pass, I switched my route in that direction. I stopped my ascent at around 2,600’ near the top of the steeper Sherman’s Pass terrain above Mid Mountain, since there was another gap in coverage at that point.
For the descent, I found that the snow definitely had some sun cups and dirty areas, but there were a variety of areas with decent turns, and the coverage there basically brought me down to Mid Mountain before I took off my skis to connect to the lower half of Bear Run. That bottom part of Bear Run offered the longest stretch of continuous snow, and it carried me to within about 50 yards of the base lodge. With Bolton’s western exposure and more limited snowmaking than some of the larger resorts, May turns are often spotty, and this year was fairly typical in that regard. Based on what I saw, today’s turns were likely my last of the season at Bolton Valley, so that’s probably it until the fall. There’s a ton of snow left at Stowe and some of the other resorts around, so hopefully I can get out to some of those spots for more turns this month.
The snow is still holding up nicely and delivering great turns on the slopes of Spruce Peak
There’s still almost six feet of natural snow at the Mt. Mansfield Stake, and with manmade snow supplementing coverage in the lower elevations and Mansfield’s penchant for snow preservation, there’s going to be skiing on the mountain for quite some time to come. There’s even a lot of snow left across Route 108 on Spruce Peak, but with the way much of that ski terrain faces south, it’s going to disappear much faster. With that in mind, I decided that today would be a great day to make some turns on the slopes of Spruce Peak before it was too late. The weather made outdoor activities a no-brainer, with partly sunny skies and temperatures in the 60s F. I’d planned to head to the slopes at some point today, but by mid morning, E could sense that none of the boys in the house were moving quite fast enough to enjoy the great day, so she quickly started ushering us out. Unfortunately she wanted to take care of some spring cleaning chores, and after a long week of soccer practices and some games tomorrow, the boys were supposed to rest their legs today. That left me en route to a solo outing at Stowe for the afternoon.
“The corn snow on the Main Street and Side Street areas was superb, with just a couple of inches being shaved off, and none of that bottomless mush that can sometimes form in the warmer weather.”
The lower mountain valleys are pretty much bare now aside from the stray snow pile, but even from Waterbury I could see the slopes of Mansfield and Spruce Peak glistening white with copious amounts of snow. The slopes of Spruce Peak were still looking good as I got close up, and with the main Spruce Peak parking area generally closed to traffic for continued construction, I headed up to the base of the Sensation Quad to start my tour. I found a few other cars, and a family playing in the snow in the Meadows area, but overall it was pretty quiet. I walked for just a minute to get to some the snow on Side Street, and then I was able to put on my skis and skin up the rest of the way. There were a couple of small breaks in snow coverage, but they were pretty inconsequential and you’ve basically got continuous snow all the way up to the top of Spruce Peak.
Looking out at Spring in Valley from the top of Spruce Peak
It was a good ascent, and I was definitely in need of the workout with ski time slowing down over the past couple of weeks. I wrapped around by the top of the Sensation Quad and continued on the trails up by the Spruce Peak Summit, then enjoyed a good 15-20 minutes taking in the views to the south. I also consumed a good amount of food, since I was pretty tanked by the last 10 minutes or so of the hike. I sent a phone picture to E to let her know I was at the top (and of course to let her know what she was missing), and then packed everything up for the descent.
Low traffic on the slopes of Spruce Peak made for some very smooth turns in the corn snow.
The corn snow on the Main Street and Side Street areas was superb, with just a couple of inches being shaved off, and none of that bottomless mush that can sometimes form in the warmer weather. The manmade snow was actually the best for turns because it was so dense. One great thing about Spruce Peak this time of year is that traffic is especially low, and you can really find a lot of unblemished, or very lightly tracked slopes for some excellent spring turns. I did see a couple of other groups of skiers here and there, but traffic was light as one would expect. Between the ascent and plenty of Telemark turns on the ride down, I’d say my legs got what they needed. I’m tempted to try to figure out how to get in some more turns tomorrow among the boys soccer games, because the forecast is looking fairly similar to what we got today.
Ty putting together a nice bit of air above the spring snow today at Stowe.
Today was Stowe’s final lift-served day of the season, and with a pleasant, sunny forecast, we headed off for some runs in the afternoon. Temperatures were in the 50s F at the base, and the Mansfield parking lot was awash in group after group of tailgaters. We got a nice parking space in front of the Mansfield Base Lodge from someone who was just leaving and hoofed it up to the base of the Fourrunner Quad. There was a lift queue of a few minutes, which seems to be common this time of the year when the Fourrunner Quad is bearing the lion’s share of the workload.
Playing on the bumps of Hayride
Overall, the skiing was a little sloppy in spots, but there’s generally been plenty of freeze-thaw cycles to get the snow turned into corn. We did find some snow high up in the bypass chutes that was almost wintry in consistency because it was so protected from warmth. Hayride was fun, with some steep bump lines, although they were generally spaced wider than our preference. Lower National had much better bump lines as is typical. We also had some fun cruising on Lord. As usual during the corn harvest season, we had our own corn harvest of sorts each run as everyone got the snow off their skis to supply snowballs for lift tower and chair target practice.
Typical of April, the weather looks like it will soon be changing, and after this relatively sunny and warm week, next week looks to be cooler and wet with some potential for snow. The forecasts suggest that a cutoff low pressure system may form in the region, and those can sometimes deliver copious amounts of precipitation as the storm sits and spins. We’ll have to watch and see if anything develops, but there’s always the potential for late season snowstorms this time of year in the mountains. Some recent favorites that come to mind are April 28th, 2010 and April 10th, 2012, which each delivered hefty dumps of snow to the mountains for fun April powder turns.
Well, spring finally came to the Northern Green Mountains today, and it was a welcomed sight.
Today was the final lift-served day of the 2014-2015 ski season at Bolton Valley, and with the weather featuring temperatures around 60 F and sunny skies, we headed up this afternoon to enjoy some warm spring skiing. The weather was really quite a blast of spring after a long, cold winter, and with a sign at the base of the Timberline Quad Chair that read “AND ON THE LAST DAY… SPRING ARRIVED!”, it was obvious that we weren’t the only ones feeling that way. Indeed the first third of the month has been quite cool, but that’s kept the base of the snowpack in good shape, and even added some rounds of powder that we’ve been able to enjoy over the past couple of weeks. The good snow preservation was very obvious as we rode the Timberline Quad and looked down – there were just a few rocks poking through here and there. That says a lot since the Timberline terrain is low elevation and faces west; it’s typically the first place on the mountain to start losing its snowpack.
We started the afternoon off with a trip on Spell Binder, and found a nice ridge to ski down the center of the headwall. The snow was well softened into spring corn of course, and it was even a bit sticky at times. I’m sure the absolute primo time for the snow was a bit earlier in the day, but what we got was still quite good. Twice as Nice was fun, and that’s when everyone started to have snowball fights on the slope – I managed to avoid getting hit most of the time, although Ty was in hot pursuit down much of the trail.
Spring fun on Spell Binder
We decided to head over to the main mountain to see how Spillway was skiing, and it was a bit slow getting through the flats of Villager, but we had fun pushing and pulling each other along. The main base area was hopping, with lots of people out on the back deck of the lodge, and a D.J. playing tunes and taking requests. Spillway had some very nice corn snow, with a ridge along the skier’s right that was great for skiing, or grinding, depending on your preference. The boys did a lot of grinding/drifting on it, and Dylan had an especially long slide that left quite a track.
It was getting close to closing time as we approached the base, so we played it safe to ensure we could get back to Timberline and made our way to the Snowflake Summit to catch the connection. That route was a little slow at times as well, being a green slope, but we had more fun pulling and pushing each other with “crack the whip” types of moves. Areas with pitch were skiing nicely. I actually think that the snow down low at Timberline was better in some respects because it probably had seen a bit more corn snow cycling, but all elevations will be getting there eventually. With Bolton Valley’s lifts closed for the season now, we’re thinking Stowe next weekend, depending on the weather, and then we’ll see where our ski adventures take us for the next couple of months before summer arrives.
Temperatures were around the freezing mark in the valley, but dropped into the 20s F up in the higher elevations. I swung past Timberline and found about 3-4” of new snow there, but I kept going up to the main base area, planning to use the Wilderness ascent route. It was in the mid 20s F, blowing, and indeed downright wintry up in the Village. I made my way over to the base of Wilderness, and broke trail up the ascent route, since nobody had been out in that area before me. There really wasn’t any noticeable difference between the accumulation of new snow up there above 2,000’, and I found essentially the same depth as I did at the base of Timberline and even our house, so there wasn’t too much elevation dependence with this snowfall. This was actually my first time getting to use the official ascent route on Wilderness since it’s been in place. I stuck to the climbers left where the signs are, although my usual preference up there is on the climber’s right for whatever reason. I can’t figure out if it’s because it feels more sheltered or what.
I ascended to near the mid station elevation, switched over, and started my descent. The snow was reasonably dense, so with my 115 mm AMPerages it was easy to float on the available snow. There were a few scoured spots due to the winds, so I did touch down in a few of those however. I skied a bit of the Wilderness Woods, but with the contours in there, the wind had actually scoured a few more spots, so I quickly returned to Lower Turnpike. It was a nice run, certainly nothing epic, but there was some good powder skiing, I got in a quick workout, and naturally it was a great way to start the day.
Back down in the valley, snow totals had fallen off west of Bolton Flats, and in the town of Bolton itself it only looked like there was an inch or two of new snow. Snow totals seemed the least in the zone heading westward from Bolton to around Richmond, and then they increased again as I got into the Champlain Valley. I’m not sure exactly why the snow stuck to the trees so well in the Burlington area relative to other towns to the east, but it was unquestionably the most picturesque area I saw west of the mountains. Eyewall’s pictures do a great job of showing how beautiful this snowfall was in the Burlington area.
After fresh powder overnight an into the morning, the sun came out this afternoon to provide some great skiing up at Bolton Valley
The local ski resorts here in the Northern Greens picked up about a half foot of snow from a storm that started overnight, and by early this morning the snow levels even dropped down to the bottoms of the valleys. Since everyone in the family has been a bit under the weather this week with a cold that seemed to focus on stuffy noses, we were generally taking it easy this morning and resting up. By that afternoon I was feeling decent though, so I decided to head up to the mountain to check out the new powder and catch a couple of runs.
The sun was just starting to come out in spots as I left the house in mid afternoon, and as I headed up the Bolton Valley Access Road I could see the last flakes from the storm blowing lightly through the air. I’d opted to head all the way up the main mountain based on the strong elevation dependence of this recent storm, and I grabbed a spot in the top parking lot from someone who had already left. The winds up high were sufficient to keep the Vista Quad from running, so I walked right over to Wilderness for a run. The sun was really starting to come out and produces some wonderful views of the fresh snow, but it was still cold like mid winter, with temperatures around 20 F. I decided to take a run through White Rabbit as I’d done last Saturday, and found that the storm had totally erased any signs of previous tracks. Indeed the snow was right in line with the report, as there was roughly a half foot of powder out there. Although the powder turns on White Rabbit were fine, I’d already encountered some potentially challenging conditions in some places where the subsurface snow hadn’t fully refrozen, so you could sink down through the new powder and get into some mush. In a way it was a really good excuse to call on the extra floatation of fat skis, although I’d just brought my midfat Teles today. They worked fine, although once I got down toward the end of Snow Hole I found that the lower elevation meant less freezing of the underlying snow and more potential to punch through the soft subsurface. The main traveled areas of Snow Hole were skiing fine though, so I just stuck with the spots that had previously been packed and skied. Lower Turnpike was skiing beautifully, as was the Wilderness Lift Line based on the quiet sounds of people making their turns while I was on the lift.
Sampling the Outlaw Woods today
For my next run I headed up Wilderness again, and this time visited the Outlaw Woods. The subsurface there in untouched areas was less secure than what I’d found on White Rabbit, and perhaps that was due to more exposure to the sun. With the Vista Quad down on wind hold, I cut left at the Wilderness Mid Station and headed over to some of the Vista trails to see how they were skiing with no traffic. The trails were awesome with the packed surface underneath, and a few fresh inches on top. I caught some turns at the bottom of Hard Luck and they were fantastic – it probably would have been worth a skin up to higher on Vista, but I hadn’t brought my skins since I’d planned to take it pretty easy as I recuperated from being under the weather this week. I made my way over to the Snowflake Summit and found Snowflake Bentley totally untracked, so I put a nice signature down that and then headed onto Lower Bentley to do virtually the same thing. From there I just skied down past the townhouses and back to the parking lot. It should be interesting to see how the skiing shapes up for tomorrow with the way it’s cooling down tonight – it might actually improve the powder skiing in the lower elevations if that subsurface tightens up.
Wiley getting out into Mansfield’s trees for some powder today.
After our morning session at Bolton working with Josh and Mike, we headed off to Stowe for BJAMS ski program. With the recent fresh snow in the past couple of days and the bright sun of late March, the alpine areas of Mansfield looked blindingly white as we approached from the south. The overall timing of the trip was actually quite good, and we were even able to grab some lunch at the Great Room Grill before the start of program. The line for the main grill area was long, and at first I thought it might be groups of ski racers from the races going on, but upon hearing all the British accents, I quickly realized that that’s who it was. They’re certainly getting some midwinter-like conditions on their ski vacations this weekend.
After lunch we suited up and headed to the base of the Spruce Peak lifts to gather our group for the day. There were some absences, so there were only six students (Ty, Dylan, Wiley, Elizabeth, Luc, and Jonah). I had Joe to help me as a second coach though, so we had a very good coach to student ratio for exploring whatever we wanted. Based on the snow conditions, and in the interest of expanding the student’s repertoire and keeping things fresh, I decided that we should take a trip to the Outer Planets area. I can’t recall the last time I’d been out there, and I didn’t really have a chance to make a recon trip this season, but I knew everyone could handle it.
I told the students that we’d be heading out past Angel Food on the traverse, and that we’d play it by ear as we scoped out the terrain. The traverse was in great shape, and the powder up there was midwinter light aside from areas exposed to significant sun. In those areas you could see that powder was just starting to take on some melt, so we knew that we might want to factor that into our skiing if we had options. Once past Angel Food, we continued on the traverse for a few more minutes and headed upward with some side stepping. I didn’t recall ever seeing any specific trail signs in the area, but I told the kids to keep their eyes peeled for anything they might see in that regard. I didn’t see any obvious trail signs, but I did see an interesting piece of artwork on a paper birch just above the traverse that presumably had some interesting meaning – it was a pair of eyes with almost mask-like surroundings. Not long after passing that image, I felt like we’d gone far enough and opted to take the next obvious line for the descent. I chose one with a couple of tracks, which in this case was good; we were doing a bit of exploring, but I didn’t want to take the kids on anything too exotic that might push things over the edge. Eventually as one gets farther and farther into the notch, things can get overly steep, and that’s not what we were looking for.
The line we got into, perhaps Yeranus but I can’t say for sure, was well defined, much like a mini Angel Food. As we pushed farther down the line, it got a bit less defined at times, but in general it didn’t matter because the hardwoods all around were eminently skiable and we could just fan out wherever we wanted. The snow quickly transitioned from somewhat settled midwinter powder to a wetter powder as we descended. Fortunately, it skied well, and the main issue arose when you’d stop. You’d melt enough snow to make it sticky, but as soon as you started skiing that went away. The snow continued to transition until we got down into what was becoming a very supportable spring-type snow. That really skied well with a few inches of dense proto-corn that shaved away nicely over a supportable base. A few minutes into the run, I could see that the terrain was going to be rolling over down below us, and it naturally got me wondering if we were going to have to deal with some sort of cliffs. When we finally arrived at the top of that section, I could see that a pair of very steep chutes lay below us. I was fairly committed to the right chute, which was the narrower of the two, and it did have a bit of ice in the throat that I could navigate with a bit of side-slipping. I let the kids know that the chute to the left was larger and offered a better entrance, so those who could, headed that way. Luc was committed to the chute I was in, and got hung up in there and lost a pole below that tumbled down to me. It took a couple minutes of strategic ski placement, and me tossing up his pole, but he managed his way through. Meanwhile, Dylan had circumvented the whole deal simply by skiing the snow just to the left of both chutes – the snow was great there and the trees were quite open. I love how he finds these great ways around obstacles.
Those two chutes quickly converged into a beautiful gully that must have been 30 plus degrees in pitch. I suspect it’s the pièce de résistance of that run, because it’s a few hundred vertical feet from there down to the notch road. The group skied most of it before cutting off to the right where a tree had fallen that required a bit of a limbo move to get past it. I later learned that Ty, or course, ducked under the tree and skied it anyway. On the notch road it was about 10 minutes of traversing before we were back to Stowe’s equipment barns and the Gondola area. There was some grumbling about the trek to get back to the lift, and everyone was dropping layers and getting warm in the sun. It was hard to complain when we were out there cruising along on the snow on such a great spring day, but as fun as it was, I knew I wasn’t going to push the kids to run another lap in there. We’ll have to get back there some time after a nice dump of snow and see how that gully skis.
We made another Gondola run on Gondolier and found the on piste conditions rather mixed – there was some winter snow, some areas of hard refrozen stuff, and some areas of nice soft snow lower down. We took a break at the Midway Lodge, and based on what we’d found for snow, Joe and I decided that it was best to head back to Spruce Peak and see if we could find some good spring snow on its south-facing slopes. The upper elevations of the Sensation Quad were still high enough to be generally a mix of midwinter snow and refrozen snow, and it really wasn’t until we got down to the Meadows elevations before the snow was consistently spring-like.
The day concluded with a BJAMS ski program tail-gating party in the parking lot of the Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center. Although temperatures were only in the low 30s F, there was no wind and that late Much sun was doing its work. It wasn’t the kind of day that you’d be stripping down to your shorts, but in ski gear it was very comfortable, and indeed we saw a lot of groups having similar parties today. It was a fun way to finish off the official ski program season, although I think many of us will be back in the coming weeks for some additional ski days, even if they aren’t official program days. The nice part about those days is that we can play it by ear with respect to the weather, and there’s no need to cancel if the weather is sour. The forecasts suggest we’ve got some additional storms coming as we head into April, so we’ll see how much extra snow we’ll have before the season finishes up.
