Bolton Valley, VT 23DEC2011 (P.M. Session)

Although I couldn’t get the boys interested in rolling out earlier enough to join me in my morning session up at Bolton, they were keen on coming up with me for some afternoon/evening turns.  E wanted to take care of some holiday chores with all of us out of the house, so there was plenty of incentive for us to hit the slopes.  With the minimal terrain of just Bear Run and a few other things available, we also convinced both boys that it would be an excellent day for them to get out on their Tele skis and work on their Telemark turns.

While temperatures at the main base elevation (2,100’) had been just a bit below freezing when I’d left the mountain in the late morning, they had dropped a lot by mid afternoon and it was in the low 20s F when we arrived.  We did three runs off the Mid Mountain Chair, and the boys immediately jumped into the little pathways in the trees along the edge of the trail when they saw they had sufficient coverage.  The boys both worked on their Telemark turns, and they even attempted some synchronous turns during their practice so that I could try to get pictures.  We enjoyed some nice little powder shots off to the sides of the groomed terrain, and we kept going a little wider off the trail each run to catch the untouched snow.  Although we’d seen a couple of people skiing it, Ty and Dylan eventually realized that the bottom of Sprig O’ Pine was open on natural snow.  One had to be a little careful to avoid any rocks, but it’s a pretty grassy area there so there weren’t actually that many to avoid, and getting to ski the powder definitely made it worth it.  Dylan had had our skiing plan all laid out for us, that after three runs we’d go into the lodge for some food, but the boys decided to take a couple of runs on the Mighty Mite without their poles, and that delayed snack time.  They ended up working on some Telemark turns in the powder off to the skier’s right of the Mighty Mite slope.  There were also a couple of jumps over there, and I had fun watching Dylan get stuck on the top of one of them because he didn’t have quite enough speed to make it all the way over the hump.  While the light snow continued to fall into the afternoon, by the time we were heading in for food around 3:30 P.M., the clouds had actually blown right out to entirely blue sky.

We had a late lunch/early dinner in the lodge, and the boys really went to town on the food.  As the sun went down, the light came on for the slopes and we headed back out for a few twilight runs.  The evening runs consisted of more Telemark practice with a jaunt to that natural snow section of Sprig O’ Pine on each run.  The temperature was around 20 F when we left the mountain about 5:45 P.M., and after the earlier clearing we’d seen, it was snowing again with some big flakes.  It was colder in the valley as well once we descended – mid to upper 20s F.  As of the 6:00 P.M. snowboard clearing at the house we’d picked up another 0.3” of snow to bring us to 3.3” total for the event.