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.