We’ve had some great snow in the Northern Green Mountains over the past week. Three coastal storms have affected the area: a double barrel low pressure system last weekend, a low pressure system hugging the coast in the midweek period, and now Winter Storm Avery this weekend. All told, the local mountains have picked up two to three feet of snow in the past seven days, with Bolton Valley reporting 32 inches during the period as of today. That’s a good pace of snowfall for any week during the winter, but it’s an excellent pace for November. This is when the mountains should be building that natural snowpack, so this is an especially good time to be getting these substantial storms.
“Snow depths were generally 1 to 2 feet throughout the tour…”
The family got out for a tour in the snow from last weekend’s storm, but I had a busy week and wasn’t able to check out the snow from the midweek system. We had time to get out today though, and there’s been enough snow now that even Timberline was an option.
Timberline had already seen lots of visitors as of late this morning, so there was a well-established skin track on the usual Twice as Nice route. Snow depths were generally 1 to 2 feet throughout the tour, and temperatures were just creeping above freezing down at the base, so the powder down in the lower elevations was starting to get just a bit wet. In the higher elevations the snow was fairly dry, middle-weight powder, so the skiing was quite good. I’d say starting at the main base up above 2,000’ would be a good move to optimize the best snow, so I might think about that for my next tour, but even touring down to the 1,500’ elevation is still quite reasonable.
After our tour we headed up to the main base to pick up our season passes, and learned that there’s talk of starting the lift served season a week or two early. I’d say we’re happy either way, since there’s still plenty of touring to do even if the lift-served skiing hasn’t started.
