Stowe, VT 21APR2013

It was a Telemark day for the family yesterday at Stowe, but today was an alpine day for the boys, in line with plans to hit some steep and challenging terrain.  We were hoping to introduce Dylan and E to some of the Bypass Chutes that Ty and I had skied last Saturday, with additional plans to head over to the Gondola area of Mt. Mansfield and potentially up to some of the steep alpine terrain of The Chin.  The weather was looking pretty good, with clear blue skies and fairly seasonable temperatures.  E had tweaked her back a bit the other day, so she ultimately decided that the best course of action would be to rest it, and I took the boys off to the mountain in the mid afternoon.  On our drive, the one thing I quickly noticed was that today’s temperatures were actually a bit colder than yesterday’s – whereas it was roughly 50 F in the lower mountain valleys yesterday, today I was seeing numbers more in the mid 40s F.  The car thermometer was reading just 39 F when we arrived at the base of Mansfield, and that got me a little concerned about the snow surfaces, since yesterday’s slightly warmer temperatures were already somewhat marginal with the softening.  Today had 100% sunshine though, so I was hoping that could make a difference.

As soon as we arrived in the Mansfield Parking Lot, it was obvious that the number of people at the resort was nothing like what we’d encountered yesterday afternoon.  Yesterday we just pulled up and grabbed a parking spot in the first row, directly in front of the Mansfield Base Lodge, but today I didn’t see a single open spot in the entirety of the east side of the lot.  I eventually decided that it would just be easier to park over in the Midway Lot at the Gondola, since we’d be finishing our day there.  Even over there though, there was a healthy amount of vehicles, so the resort was definitely drawing a crowd for its last official day.  As we made our way over to the base of the Fourrunner Quad, we witnessed the incredible sea of vehicles and skiers that filled the Mansfield Parking Lot.  The sights and sounds were simply everywhere, there was one source of music that was so loud that it sounded like a live band was playing.  I even heard someone mention something to that effect a bit later, but didn’t know if it was true.  Anyway, that’s what happens when you combine that last day of Stowe lift service with weather like we had today.

“It was still reasonably
good corn snow, and
fortunately it improved
with ever turn we took as
 we dropped in elevation.”

Up at the summit of the Fourrunner Quad it was certainly a bit chilly, and I suspect that the temperature was right around the freezing mark.  I thought about doing a run on some of the quad terrain before making our way over to the Gondola, but decided that it was best to get going early so we’d have maximal time for whatever touring we wanted to do.  The snow seemed at least somewhat softened in the sun from what we could see below us on our trip up the quad, but as soon as we dropped onto Nosedive, we found out that anything out of the sun was going to be a total nightmare in terms of surface consistency.  We saw that the upper entrance to Bypass was roped, presumably because of the firm snow surface.  The trip down those next couple of pitches of Nosedive was quite hairy, and I wouldn’t have recommended it for anyone like us that doesn’t keep their edges sharp.  We picked our way down with some survival skiing to find that even the next entrance to the Nosedive Glades was roped off.  Access over to Rimrock was only available once the pitch flattened out a bit, and we got our butts off Nosedive as soon as possible.

Based on the snow surfaces, I didn’t think there was much sense in heading above tree line, but the ascent over to the top of the Gondola still looked viable, so we set our sights on that.  To make it easy on the boys, especially since they’ve been under the weather a bit this past week, I took care of carrying their skis for them.  I skinned with my skis, and attached theirs to my pack.  We actually encountered a number of people heading over to the Gondola via Rim Rock, they were keeping that aggressive traverse that would let them reach High Road and maximize their vertical.  We were heading higher than that though, since we continued up Cliff Trail once we got to that High Road intersection.  After a break at that intersection, we continued on up with the Cliff Trail ascent, and even though it’s just an intermediate pitch, it looked daunting to the boys compared to what we’d just traversed.  It really went quickly though, it felt like we began to see the top of Cliff Trail just after ascending the first steep pitch, and even with the boys somewhat beleaguered pace due to recent fought illness, it couldn’t have taken much more than 10 minutes.  We could still see some sunlit terrain above us at that point, so after a quick break, we continued on a bit more and finally stopped our ascent up near the flats leading to the Cliff House.  In terms of both sunshine and slope, there wasn’t much point in going beyond the first big pitch of Perry Merrill.  We could hear, and in some cases see, people picking their way down through the Rock Garden and other, even steeper lines off the Mansfield ridgeline, and it sounded horrible up there.  That terrain is shaded, high in elevation, and steep.  It looked like it was worse than what we’d found on Nosedive, and that experience was already going down as serving up the most hellacious ski conditions we’d encountered all season.  At least the snow was being well-preserved for future use, but it had me longing for the fresh snow that Ty and I got to play in last weekend.

“…we found out that
anything out of the
sun was going to be
a total nightmare
in terms of surface
consistency.”

The boys finished with a final snack and some roughhousing in the snow off to the side of the trail as we enjoyed some sun, and then we were off for some turns.  We stuck to as much sunny terrain as we could, descending on Perry Merrill and then to Gondolier on the skier’s left.  The snow was only marginally softened, so it was OK, but like yesterday, not really as great as the sunshine might suggest.  It was still reasonably good corn snow, and fortunately it improved with ever turn we took as we dropped in elevation.  All I can say is that the upside of the minimal softening is that even down in those lower elevations below the alpine, the preservation of the snowpack was looking quite good.  I was happy for E though, as she’d made the right call in staying home and resting her back.  Although she missed a fun bit of hiking and touring, which gave us a nice workout, she certainly hadn’t missed out on any extraordinary (or even ordinary for that matter) spring skiing.

For the final half of the descent on Gondolier, we used my camera (Canon EOS 30D) and E’s camera (Canon PowerShot ELPH 510 HS) between the three of us and played “Shootout”.  It’s a contest in which everyone skis in front of the cameras, but also gets behind the cameras to serve as photographers.  The goal is to see who can get the shot of the day in both the photographer and skier roles.  E’s point and shoot camera does have a decent high speed shooting mode that runs at 7.8 FPS in low (~3 megapixels) resolution, and it does a decent job of capturing images, even if you can’t really view your subject the way you can with a DSLR.  The big downside of her camera is that the focus, exposure, and other parameters are set on the first shot and remain fixed – also, you have to stop shooting to adjust the zoom.  For sports photography, this represents a serious disadvantage compared to the DSLR that is rapidly adjusting all these for every high speed shot, and even though it’s only shooting at 5 FPS, it’s going at full resolution and is attempting to optimize the picture every time.  Also, you can zoom on the fly and keep filling the frame with the skier if you want.  E pointed out that I had a huge advantage using the DSLR (since it’s big, the boys don’t typically use it), so it was a bit uneven in that regard, but we’ll see how things come out in the end.