Bolton Valley, VT 04MAR2023

An image of Dylan catching some air while dropping into the KP Cliffs area of Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont during Winter Storm Quest
An image of Ty jumping in powder snow in the trees during Winter Storm Quest at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Ty blasts his way through some of today’s fresh powder in Bolton’s Timberline area today. Thanks to plenty of liquid equivalent in this recent snow from Winter Storm Quest, you could charge as hard as you wanted on even the steepest terrain and get soft, reliable turns.

I’m not sure exactly when the snow from Winter Storm Quest started up around here, but it was well into the overnight hours, and I’m not even sure if I saw any accumulation before midnight.  So, waking up this morning to find over 8 inches on the boards for 6:00 A.M. CoCoRaHS observations meant that the snow must have been coming down in the 1 to 2 inch per hour range.  There were plenty of large flakes falling at that point, and this morning’s liquid analysis revealed that the water content in the snow was 8.5%, or a snow to liquid ratio of approximately 11 or 12 to 1.

Ty and I got up to the hill just about the time of the opening of the Timberline Quad, and had a great bunch of runs while we waited for Dylan and Colin to join us.  During those morning runs, it was quickly obvious that the new snow that had fallen had laid in a massive resurfacing of the slopes.  The snow was actually on the dense side due to fairly small flakes up at Bolton Valley, and I’d say it was running a bit above 10% H2O up there.  The snow was dense enough that you wanted terrain on the steeper side to really have a good flow on the descent, and that was fine, because in terms of sufficient coverage of the base snow and any underlying obstacles, it didn’t matter how steep the terrain was.  On piste, off piste, it didn’t matter; just pick the steepest lines you could find, ski as aggressively as you wanted, and you weren’t hitting the subsurface.  We tested many of the steepest lines available on Timberline like the Spell Binder headwall and the Tattle Tale Headwall, and they skied beautifully.  We hit steep off piste lines that I don’t usually find to be that great because their pitch is often too much for the quality of the snow or achieving bottomless skiing, and it just didn’t matter.

An image of Dylan jumping in powder snow from Winter Storm Quest at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Dylan tweaks some style into one of his jumps in Doug’s Woods during today’s ski outing at Bolton Valley

In terms of surface snow depths, our checks in the 1,500’ to 2,500’ elevation range were about 15 inches if we had to pick a best estimate, but it was really hard to tell exactly how much snow came from just this storm.  The new snow was sitting atop snow from other recent storms, and it all just continues to stack and set up excellent surfaces.  It snowed all morning, so that kept piling on new snow to the accumulations as well.  Total snowpack depth is 40 inches or more above 2,500’, and the snowpack depth at the Mt. Mansfield stake being over 60 inches speaks to that.

An image of Colin spraying powder while skiing in the trees during Winter Storm Quest at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Colin spraying around some of that powder on today’s excellent ski outing

Later in the morning we finally met up with Dylan and Colin, and we just went around hitting some of our favorite steepest off piste lines all over the mountain.  Timberline had no lift queue for essentially the whole morning, but after about midday, the temperature at those lowest elevations seemed to creep up toward freezing and the snow became even a bit denser.  It was somewhat subtle, but you could tell when you skied a run that the powder in the lowest elevations was a bit thicker than it was above 2,000’.  After most of the morning at Timberline, we focused on the main mountain for the early afternoon where everything was above 2,000’, just in case Timberline continued to warm and the powder got wet.

An image of Ty spraying powder while skiing during Winter Storm Quest at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Today’s powder had plenty of substance to it, but as Ty shows, it you could still spray it around with ease.

We joined up with Parker and his dad for a final run on the main mountain before making a big long run all the way down from the Vista Summit to the Timberline Base.  Temperatures clearly hadn’t gotten too high to really ruin the powder because it was still fine all the way to the Timberline Base at 1,500’.  Ty, Dylan, Parker and I finished off our day around midafternoon with a visit to the Timberline Base Lodge and some great food from El Gato, and we definitely felt like we’d earned a good meal with the energy we’d put into the day’s skiing.

It continued to snow most of the day, and after a bit of a lull around midday, the snowfall picked right back in the afternoon to the level it had been in the morning.  So, we knew there was definitely more accumulation on the way.  Back down at the house at 500’ that afternoon we could see that temperatures had definitely gone above freezing because some of the new snow had settled, but the mountain elevations seemed to fare quite well with respect to any melting or settling.

Bolton Valley, VT 26FEB2023

An image of Dylan performing a twisting jump among the powder while skiing in the trees at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
An image of Parker skiing in bottomless powder snow at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont
Parker surfs along through some of that bottomless powder out there today at Bolton Valley

Today had been looking like a good ski day for quite a while.  The cold air was moving out to bring our temperatures back up into the 20s F, and low pressure from the Ontario/Quebec border passing southeast across our region looked to bring us more fresh snow.  The weather models had been showing a nice shot of liquid equivalent coming into the area, and it seemed to hold some potential for a nice topping off of the current powder that’s out there.

I was working on some exam questions in the early morning in my home office and had the blinds closed, but I eventually finished off a section and decided to take a break.  I opened the blinds to find that we were getting hit with heavy snowfall made up of some massive flakes that were nearly 2 inches across at times.  The forecast did call for some snow starting around 10:00 A.M., but this was a bit early, and the intensity was impressive.  A quick measurement out back revealed that the snow was falling at a rate of around 2”/hr., and it was stacking up fast and dry with that typical consistency of upslope champagne.

An image of Colin jumping amidst the powder while tree skiing at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Colin catching some air in one of our tree lines today.

For today’s ski session, the plan was to head out with Dylan, Colin, and Parker, and there’s nothing like seeing the heavy snow pounding outside your window to kick the mood up a notch.  I didn’t wake Dylan up immediately because I wanted to make sure he had the sleep he needed, but when I did check on him a bit later it turned out he’d been up anyway.  He hadn’t opened his blinds, but he’d already gotten a text and picture from Colin; the same huge flakes had been pounding down at his place as well.

With the new snow not coming in until mid-morning, we’d planned on a late morning start up at Bolton Valley.  That timing worked out well, because they’d already picked up a few additional inches from the intense snowfall.  And, the snow that had just fallen was the perfect consistency to top off all the powder that was already out there – my morning liquid analyses from the house revealed that the snow came in at just 1 to 2% H2O.  So, it was incredibly dry and set up some excellent right-side-up, bottomless powder skiing.

An image of Dylan skiing powder snow among the trees at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Dylan slicing and dicing his way among today’s fantastic powder up at Bolton
An image of Parker blasting his way through a tree while tree skiing in powder after a storm at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont
Parker blasts his way through one of the many tree lines we hit today among all the new snow at Bolton Valley.

I had a tour planned that brought the boys around to some of the lesser used areas of the resort, so they had a great time and got to ski plenty of untracked powder.  I’d say powder depths we encountered were generally in the range of about a foot, and there’s well over an inch of liquid equivalent in that surface snow now.  With the new champagne on top, it skied quite well and was typically bottomless in the case of first tracks.  You’re still hitting bottom at times on the steepest slopes, but that old base is becoming more and more distant with every one of these storms that comes through the area.  On that note, it appears as though we’ve got another storm cycle on the doorstep for tonight into tomorrow.