Sterling Forest and Sterling Range, VT 21JAN2024

A view of the Sterling Mountain Range in Northern Vermont in January while approaching from the southeast
An image of glades during a January backcountry ski tour up through the Sterling Forest and into the Sterling Range of the Northern Green Mountains of Vermont
A view down through some of the many glades available on today’s backcountry ski tour up through the Sterling Forest into the Sterling Range

Today the temperatures were still quite cold, so I again opted to stick to ski touring instead of riding the lifts, but it was a bit warmer than yesterday, and I decided to go a bit farther afield and higher in elevation. I set my sights on skiing in the Sterling Range, an area that has been on my list of ski touring spots for quite a while, but I just hadn’t gotten around to making the trip. A very convenient access point to the range is through the Sterling Forest area, and they have a really nice parking lot that’s maintained at the top of Sterling Valley Road.

I’d been up to the area in the warm season for mountain biking, but I haven’t been up there much in the winter. The snowpack around the houses up there is impressive, and you can tell that the area gets, and holds, a lot of snow. I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising with a number of houses that are well above elevations of 1,000’. Indeed there’s some good elevation there as you approach the Sterling Forest – the parking area is around 1,700’, which is 500’ higher than where I began my tour yesterday.

An image showing the trailhead area for the Upper Gorge Loop Trail of the Sterling Town Forest in Stowe, Vermont
A view of the trailhead area near the Sterling Forest parking lot as I start off on today’s ski tour

Most people I’ve talked to, as well as reports and videos I’ve seen, use the Upper Gorge Loop trail area as their main thoroughfare for touring. It serves as the approach and as a collector trail if you’re skiing the north side of the basin. For my approach I followed the northerly section of the Upper Gorge Loop Trail, which seemed to be the most popular based on the levels of traffic packing the snow. Following the trail, I began to see skin tracks branch off to head up the north side of the basin, but I continued on the loop trail until I hit its apex, just so I could get the lay of the land. I then skinned back a couple of minutes and took the highest skin track that was available. That brought me to the top of the ridge on the north side of the basin, and along the way I passed numerous open glades that had very few tracks and offered a lot of impressive skiing. I topped out around 2,900’ along the ridge, and descended through the glades back to the Upper Gorge Loop Trail.

Powder depths were very similar to what I found yesterday with respect to similar elevations. I was curious if there might be a difference in surface snow depths since I was about 12 miles farther north in the Northern Greens, but my measurements didn’t reveal any substantial differences.  I did ascend substantially higher on this tour though, so it let me add on to what I’d found yesterday. The powder depth profile I found today was as follows:

1,700’: 7-8”
2,000’: 7-8”
2,200’: 8-9”
2,500’: 10-11”
2,700’: 11-12”
2,900’: 12-13”

There are other options for nice touring out there, such as dropping down the back side of the ridge into the next drainage, but the approach to the slopes in the main basin is already a couple of miles even before you begin the main ascent through the glades, so I couldn’t really tack on more with the time I had. It was a gorgeous midwinter day though, with lots of sunshine, and that definitely helped to bring the temperature up that extra notch relative to yesterday.

A Google Earth map with GPS tracking data for a backcountry ski tour in the Sterling Forest area and Sterling Range in the Northern Green Mountains of Vermont
A Google Earth map with GPS tracking data from today’s backcountry ski tour in the Sterling Forest and Sterling Range in the Northern Green Mountain of Vermont

Stowe, VT 06MAY2023

A black and white image of the Presidential Range with snow taken in May from Mt. Mansfield in Vermont
An image of the North Slope trail with some skiers hiking up for May turns at Stowe Mountain Resort on Mt. Mansfield in Vermont
Snow in the North Slope area was still nearly continuous today, but there are a couple of breaks down by the base

Unlike the previous couple of weekends, there were no real concerns about the weather for skiing this weekend – both days have been looking quite reasonable without any major bouts of precipitation expected.  Today looked great with clear skies all morning, so I eventually headed back out to Mt. Mansfield for some turns.

I was torn between skinning and hiking for the ascent.  There appeared to be nearly continuous snow through various routes on The Nose side of the resort, but there were also plenty of areas in which the snow had melted out and dry ground was present.  Because there were some breaks in the snowpack near the base area on Lower North Slope anyway, and since I’d been skinning for the past couple of weeks, I decided to set myself up for hiking on the ascent.

To generally stay on dry ground, I kept my ascent on trails to the south of the main North Slope/Lord route, and it made the route a bit less steep.  There was still a lot of snow around, so I’d often find myself skirting the snow line on various trails, and I ended up mixing it up with some hiking on the snow as well.

I set my goal on ascending until I found a major break in the continuous snowpack, but I couldn’t really spot any obvious ones from the route I took, and I eventually topped out by the Octagon/Fourrunner Quad Summit.  The views of the Presidential Range were impressive, and it’s obvious that there have been recent snows in the elevations above tree line.

On my descent of the main North Slope/Lord route, I did discover that there’s a fairly large break of about 50 feet or so in the continuous cover on North Slope, but I just couldn’t see it from where I ascended.  Coverage is pretty much continuous aside from that break, and the couple of breaks in snowpack down by the base.

I saw a mix of people who were both skinning and hiking while I was out, and if I was to do it again, I think I’d bring along my skins so that I had them with me.  The snowpack is strong enough in a number of areas such that there are long stretches where skinning is the more practical and efficient approach, and having the flexibility to swap back and forth between skinning and hiking would be a nice option to have for a smooth ascent.  The skiing is still quite good with some great corn snow, and it will probably be around for a few more weeks unless we get some really warm spells.

Stowe, VT 29APR2023

An image of the Main Street trail on Spruce Peak showing some of the late April snow available at Stowe Mountain Ski Resort in Vermont
An image of the base area of Spruce Peak at Stowe Mountain Resort with some of the lower ski slopes in the foreground.
Snow still covers many of the slopes of Spruce Peak, providing some excellent spring turns.

Similar to last weekend, Saturday seemed like the better weather day for skiing this weekend, so today I headed to Stowe for some turns on the spring snow.  I visited the Gondola terrain last time, so for this outing I decided to get in some skiing on Spruce Peak while the south-facing terrain is still offering some reasonable descents.

Starting from the MMSC parking lot, I had to hike for roughly 5 to 10 minutes before I was able to start skinning, and then I eventually made my way over to Main Street for the rest of the ascent.  Main Street coverage is nearly continuous over most of its course except for the very bottom down near the base of the Sensation Quad, and up in the flats near the top.  So, I topped out a bit shy of 3,000’ on the ascent vs. continuing on to the summit station of the Sensation Quad.  I was definitely happy to stop where I did though, because southerly winds were absolutely howling ahead of the approaching storm.  Main Street faces directly south with lots of exposure, so winds were sustained up in the 30 to 40 MPH range near the 3,000’ mark.  I actually pulled into the forest to remove my skins and gear up for the descent, and that gave me a break from the constant buffeting of the strong winds and helped avoid the likely frustration of things flapping around and flying away.

Main Street offered up lots of those steep, buttery spring snow carves that is typically does, and I didn’t spot any major areas of undermined snow that were of any concern.  I was able to get down into the flats above the base of the Sensation Quad with just a couple short stretches of breaks in the snowpack.  Although not quite 100% continuous from the Sensation Quad summit because of the break in the upper flats, the area still offers up quite a good yield of skiable vertical for the investment of the ascent.  Taking in the views across to Mansfield gave me a nice look at the ski options throughout the resort, and there are still numerous ascent and descent routes for great touring.  The snow on Nosedive looks a little more burnt out than I would have expected, but the melt out is different every year, which is part of what makes it interesting.  North Slope and the surrounding trails in that area seem to have some great coverage, so there should be some good options around there for quite a while.

Near the end of my tour, rain shafts started to show up among the mountains to the south, and I was able to watch the peaks disappearing as the incoming storm moved into the area.  The first spits of rain started to hit just as I arrived at my car, so the timing of the storm was right on with what the forecast had indicated.  This past week has been seasonably cool, and it looks like that has helped to slow down the spring melt.  With the forecast looking relatively cool for the next week or so, that should help to preserve the snow and ski options as we head into May.

An image of peaks of the Green Mountains to the south of Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont disappearing as a storm moves into the area.
The mountains to the south of Spruce Peak begin to disappear as a storm movies into the area

Stowe, VT 22APR2023

An image of the Gondolier trail from near the base of the Gondola during an April ski tour at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont
Looking up at the snow on Gondolier at the start of today’s ski tour at Stowe

Based on the forecast, today seemed like the better half of the weekend for turns, so I decided to head to Mt. Mansfield and make use of all the snow that’s still out there.  A look at the Stowe Mountain Cam this morning showed that coverage still looked continuous on the Gondola side of the resort, and since that area generally melts out faster than the terrain under The Nose, I decided to ski that while it was still in good shape.

An image looking out toward the Worcester Range with clouds at summit level viewed from the base of the Gondola at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont
Looking across the valley toward the Worcester Range at the clouds just rising up above the peaks.

Based on what I’d seen from the webcam and views from the valley, the cloud ceiling seemed to be sitting at around 3,200’ on Mansfield, so my plan was to continue my ascent until I hit the lowest cloud deck, or the snow became too firm at elevation, whichever came first.  Indeed, as the webcam view had indicated, coverage on Gondolier was pretty much continuous from top to bottom.  It turns out that there are a couple of small breaks of a few feet, but they’re nothing substantial that would ruin a top-to-bottom run.

It remained mostly cloudy today, and not especially warm with temperatures around 50 F, so I was initially worried about the snow being generally too stiff for quality turns.  It was a little tough to tell exactly how it was going to ski during the ascent, but the sky began to brighten a bit in the midafternoon period, and the cloud ceiling started to rise.  The ceiling rose all the way up to 3,600’, and then slowly continued to rise beyond that, so I opted to make a full ascent to the Gondola Summit Station.  The brightening skies probably provided that extra punch of solar radiation to ensure that the snow quality was decent at all elevations, so in the end, the whole descent provided some fantastic spring turns.

An image of the Nosedive trail on Mt. Mansfield as viewed from the Gondola Summit station during an April ski tour at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont
A view over toward Nosedive and the terrain under the Nose of Mt. Mansfield

I’d expect some decent gaps to open up on the Gondola terrain over the next week if the weather was going to be mild, but the snow there might actually hold out for a while.  The forecast suggests numerous snow chances over the next couple of weeks, so that could result in some accumulation and decent preservation as we head farther into the spring ski season.

First Round of October 2022 Snow for Vermont’s Green Mountains

Since our first snows of the season back in September, we’ve moved on into a new month and another window for early season snowfall.  This time the snow chances are associated with a series of small disturbances that started moving into the area last night and are expected to continue through the weekend.

The first notifications I saw of accumulation appeared this morning in the Northern New England Cold Season thread on the American Weather Forums – Powderfreak indicated that it was snowing all the way down to 1,500’ at the base of Stowe Mountain Resort, and flakes were even spotted as low as 1,000’ around The Matterhorn.  Powderfreak posted some images from both the top and bottom of the Stowe Gondola that showed the fresh snow.  As the snow and clouds pulled away a bit more by midday, he posted a beautiful snowliage image of some of Mount Mansfield’s slopes.

The temperatures stayed cold enough throughout the day that new snow continued to hang around on the ground, with the snow line rising to around 2,400’ in the midafternoon period.  Powderfreak sent along some additional nice views from his afternoon hike on the slopes of Mansfield, and he commented on how it was nice to be back out with the crunch of snow underfoot.

Stowe, VT 01MAY2022

An image showing some of the Mount Mansfield ski trails from near the summit of Spruce Peak at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont
An image of the Main Street trail on a May ski outing at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont
A view of some of the spring snow on Main Street today during my ski tour

While Friday turned out to be a bit too cool and breezy to really soften up the slopes around here, and yesterday didn’t seem much better, today saw more warmth and sunshine as the forecast had suggested.  Mother Nature really wasn’t messing around, with temperatures moving up into the 60s F, a cloudless sky, and the disappearance of those persistent winds.

An image of the Chin of Mt. Mansfield in Vermont as viewed from the Moscow area
The Mt. Mansfield Chin poking up in the background from the Moscow area

There was no question about whether or not the snow was going to soften up today, so I decided to head to Stowe for some afternoon turns.  I hadn’t been to the general Stowe area in a while, but the usual views of Mansfield started to appear as I headed through Waterbury Center, and the alpine terrain was certainly lit up in the May sunshine.

I’d hoped that the south-facing terrain of Spruce Peak still had enough coverage to provide some nice uninterrupted turns, and indeed as I approached the resort I could see that the Main Street area and surrounding trails still had nearly continuous snow down the base of the Sensation Quad.

With the route I took on the lower part of the mountain, I ended up hiking about 1/3 of the ascent, and then skinning the final 2/3.  I was initially questioning my decision to bring skins as I navigated the lower slopes, but once I hit the point where I started skinning, it was definitely the right choice in terms of efficiency; the upper slopes of Main Street have so much snow that it would take more effort to find dry areas for easier hiking.

In terms of the skiing, it was far superior to what I had experienced on Friday.  The warmth and sun took care of getting the spring snow into something that was definitely worthy of turns.  It wasn’t perfect, because there were still some sticky areas from recent snows on terrain that hadn’t seen the sun and/or skier traffic, but those were generally avoidable by skiing the sunnier sides of the trails.

With such a gorgeous day, I was surprised that I didn’t see a single other skier out there during my entire tour on Spruce.  I did see two other cars when I first arrived at the MMSC Clubhouse parking lot, but they were just hikers.  I saw them finishing up their hikes while I was ascending, and the entire parking lot was empty when I got back to my car.  Everyone must have been skiing over at Mansfield!

An image of a single car in the parking lot of the Mount Mansfield Ski Club during a May ski outing at Stowe Mountain Ski Resort in Vermont
The Mount Mansfield Ski Club parking lot where I parked today was just about empty.

A second round of snow for the Green Mountains

An image of the Sugarbush upper mountain webcam showing some October snow on their snowboard as well as the boughs of the nearby evergreens
A view of the Sugarbush upper-mountain webcam from this afternoon showing a touch of new snow with what looks like some additional frozen precipitation weighing down the evergreen boughs

Exactly a week ago, we had our first round of mountain snows for the season here in the Green Mountains, and the latest system moving into the area brought the next round last night into today.  Morning reports came in to the Northern New England thread at the American Weather Forum, with flakes seen down to 1,500’ in Jackson, NH.  Powderfreak reported that the ski trails at Stowe were all white above ~2,400’.  It appears that much of Northern New England has been seeing snow today above ~2,500’, but the persistent clouds and precipitation haven’t quite given us the options for viewing the snow that we had with the previous system.  I was able to check out the Sugarbush upper mountain camera this afternoon and catch a view of the snow and drooping evergreen boughs from frozen accumulation, but that’s as much as I’ve been able to see from the valley.

​Based on Powderfreak’s comments of seeing some frozen precipitation last night at his place in the Stowe Village area, it sounds like we might have gotten our first frozen of the season down at our house in Waterbury as well.  I hadn’t seen anything before heading off to bed, and unfortunately, any frozen precipitation would likely have fallen in the wee hours of the morning as Powderfreak noted.

First round of snow for the season in the Greens

An image showing mid-October snow accumulating at the upper mountain snowboard webcam at Sugarbush Resort in Vermont
Snow accumulating today at the upper mountain snowboard webcam at Sugarbush Resort

Temperatures have been well above average over the past several weeks here in Vermont, but cooler temperatures moved in on Sunday, and reports of flakes and snow accumulations started coming out of the local mountains today.  In the early afternoon, we heard reports of snow above 3,300’ on the Stowe Gondola, and the Sugarbush summit camera at 4000’ was showing accumulation.  Later in the day, accumulation was seen down to 2,000’ at Stowe, with snow falling at the base area at 1,500’.

Stowe, VT 16MAY2021

An image from near the Mt. Mansfield Base Lodge showing Smuggler's Notch and various clouds on a spring ski day with thunderstorms in the area near Stowe Mountain Ski Resort in Vermont
An image of the Lower Standard trail with late-season leftover snow in mid-May at Stowe Mountain Ski Resort in Vermont
Heading up Lower Standard today, I found a little something extra that someone left alongside the snow.

On Friday, we got another update on the state of the snow on Spruce Peak from one of Powderfreak’s frequent Stowe hikes, and I could definitely see that the width of the available snow had contracted some since when I was there on my Sunday outing.

I had enough extra time today, so I headed back out to Stowe for a hike and some more turns.  Based on what I’d seen on Spruce on my last outing, as well as the views across to Mansfield at that point, I decided it was time to check out something by the Mountain Triple.  There’s some easy access snow right down to the base over there, and that fit the time I had.

An image at the junction of the Crossover and Standard trails in mid-May at Stowe Mountain Ski Resort in Vermont
Topping out near the Crossover Trail on today’s hike

As I walked along past the Triple, I surveyed the snow situation and headed toward Lower Standard, which seemed to have the best coverage.  That area makes for a pleasant stroll because it’s generally quite grassy with modest pitches.  Somebody had built the shape of a heart out of rocks on the ground near the ropes course, so that was kind of a nice accent to the area.  The snow on Lower Standard is definitely more broken up than what it was a week earlier, and there are a couple of gaps near the bottom that are really best walked vs. trying to skip across on your skis.

That afternoon we had thunderstorms in the area, and as usual, there were some great views surrounding the resort and toward the Notch as the peaks worked their magic and forced the clouds around.  While I was hiking I started to hear thunder to the east and northeast, off past Spruce Peak and over toward Madonna and Sterling.  Eventually I started to see some tendrils of virga over there, and the thunder was becoming more expansive.  I was just getting up toward the Crossover elevation, which was about where I was going to stop anyway because the snow petered out there, but the timing seemed good with the thunder building.  I started seeing the first visible flashes from lightning just as I was getting back to the car, and the first drops of rain began to fall, so that timing really did work out well.  I would have stayed around for some lightning photography over toward the Notch, but none if was producing visible bolts, it all seemed to be well up in the clouds or too distant.

Stowe, VT 09MAY2021

An image of the snow on the Main Street Trail on a May ski day at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont
An image showing some of the remaining snow on May on the Spruce Peak trails at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont
Looking up at the slopes of Spruce Peak today to get a sense for the best areas to put together some turns.

I haven’t been following the state of the snowpack at Stowe too closely over the past couple of weeks, but Powderfreak’s recent post on American Weather forum definitely provided a nice look at some of the snow on the slopes of Spruce Peak.  I probably wouldn’t have even had Spruce Peak in the mix of top spots to head for turns if I hadn’t seen how much snow was still there, but it was obvious from the post that there was plenty.

Today I had time to get out for exercise, so I chose to enjoy a hike and ski in the Main Street area.  The snowpack is certainly not continuous top-to-bottom of course, but there’s several hundred vertical feet worth of nice turns with deep base as Powderfreak’s image showed.  The snowpack there is starting to get a bit sun cupped, but it’s nothing that really hurts the experience yet at this point, unless perhaps you were to stray the extreme edges where the snow has taken a bigger hit and there’s been no skier traffic.

An image of late-season snow left over from snowmaking on the Main Street Trail in the Spruce Peak area of Stowe Mountain Ski Resort
I was encouraged by plenty of spots with deep snow on my ascent of Main Street today.

Even if natural snowpack on Mansfield is still below average for this time of year, I have to think the coverage there on south-facing Spruce had got be at least typical for this far into May.  From the view across the resort, I could see that the usual spots like Nosedive and some of those areas around the Mountain Triple still have some decent coverage, so it would be fun to mix it up with something over there next.  That Main Street snow has some very deep areas, but it’s just getting a bit too broken up into segments that one eventually has to make the call to go with something with a bit more continuity for efficiency and longer flow of turns on the descent.

An image from Spruce Peak showing the snow in mid-May on the Nosedive trail on Mt. Mansfield at Stowe Mountain Ski Resort in Vermont
Checking out the snow on Nosedive as I look across from Spruce Peak toward Mt. Mansfield

It is always fun this time of year getting to see which parts of the resort are holding the snow best for those late season turns.  It’s different each season depending on the combination of where Mother Nature deposited snow and where the guns were blowing when temperatures were optimal as has been noted in some of Powderfreak’s comments in ski-related discussions at American Weather.