March 2024 - J&E Productions

March 12, 2024September 7, 2024

Bolton Valley, VT 12MAR2024

An image of Ty skiing in waist-deep powder after a March snowstorm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont

An image of Ty jumping out of exploding powder as he skis a line in the Maria's area at the end of a March storm cycle at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Ty takes off as he blasts through another line filled with the powder from our recent March storm cycle.

As our most recent storm cycle progressed into its second half yesterday, it brought prodigious upslope snowfall, but heavy winds also pounded the upper mountain areas at Bolton Valley. That meant that the Vista Quad Chair never ran, so all that fresh snow would still be sitting there for today.

For Ty, today was one of his days off from work, so the two of us headed up to the mountain for a ski session. At this point in the ski season, we’re well past President’s Day and school vacation week; it’s mid-March, and today was just a random midweek Tuesday, so we didn’t expect a lot of visitors to the mountain. Apparently nobody told the skiers about that though – we arrived up in the Village within a half hour of lift opening, and we were already having to park all the way down by the Sports Center in an impromptu middle lane of cars. Where did all these people come from? What we eventually discovered was that every parent in the state had decided to pull their kids out of school for the day to get in some skiing. On our Vista lift rides, we literally paired up with multiple dads and their kids who had done this, so apparently it was the thing to do!

An image of a car covered with wind-driven drifted snow after a March storm cycle at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Winds had hit the mountain overnight on the back side of the storm cycle, so it was important to visit sheltered areas today for the most pristine powder and highest-quality turns.

The weather today was clear with brilliant March sunshine, so it was quite a contrast to yesterday’s snowy maelstrom, but winds were still brisk near the summits. Despite the bit of remaining wind, overall, today had that feel of the “day after” the storm. The new snow from the storm had been pounded and scoured in exposed areas like the tops of trails near the Vista Summit, but thankfully most terrain was protected enough to hold onto quite an excellent bounty of soft accumulations from the storm. There was a bit of wind crust in areas depending on exposure, but nothing that ruined the skiing aside from reducing the explosiveness of the powder relative to yesterday’s consistency in the more exposed areas. My snow depth checks revealed the same roughly two feet of accumulation that I’d found near the middle of day yesterday, so there was probably some additional accumulation and continued settling that left things about where they were.

An image of Ty skiing powder in the trees after a March storm cycle at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Ty works his way down through another powder line left by our most recent March storm cycle.

We prioritized hitting some of the steepest terrain to really make use of the resurfacing that the storm brought us, so we visited areas like Devil’s Playground and the Vista Glades, which I hadn’t yet visited at all this season. There were still a lot of nice areas of untracked snow, and areas that had seen skier traffic still provided top notch conditions. The storm was so potent that even the steepest terrain has the coverage to keep you from encountering the old base snow, so you can just drop into anything and anticipate your edges biting into packed powder without the worry of touching the crusty stuff underneath. Along with the steeps, we also visited some of our favorite areas for powder turns, and as long as the snow was protected from the winds, it was still delivering that cold smoke that we enjoyed yesterday.

March 11, 2024July 27, 2024

Bolton Valley, VT 11MAR2024

An image of Colin on his snowboard inverted during a back flip off one of the jumps on the Intro trail during a big spring snowstorm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont

An image of Dylan skiing through a cloud of powder during a late winter storm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Dylan puts up a cloud of smoke on Spell Binder as he blasts through the two feet of powder that our current winter storm has delivered so far.

With the storm cycle transitioning into its back half overnight, the upslope really turned on in the Northern Greens. Bolton Valley was reporting 20 inches for the storm total in their early morning update, so I headed up for some turns with Dylan and Colin. There was solid 1”/hr. snow falling in the valley and up at the resort, so I was worried about vehicles struggling to get up the Access Road like Ty and I experienced a couple weeks back, but the road was in nice shape and we made it up to the Timberline Base easily.

An image of Colin exploding through powder snow during a March snowstorm in the KP Glades area of Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Colin was on his snowboard today and simply exploded through the powder whenever he had the opportunity.

An image of Dylan halfway through a backflip on skis during a March snowstorm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Dylan arcing his way through a backflip during the boy’s jumping session today

The upslope winds were roaring all throughout the resort, and the Vista Quad was not likely to get off wind hold at all during the day, so we spent our entire session down at Timberline. Relatively speaking, the lower elevations of Timberline meant that the winds were at least somewhat gentler, and the temperatures a bit warmer. And, temperatures were low enough everywhere for even the lower elevations to continue pulling in cold smoke powder, so Timberline was definitely the place to be. Even calling the weather “cold” is relative though – we’re talking “March cold”, which is nothing like “January cold”. Temperatures were well up into the 20s F and quite pleasant. There were no lift queues for most of the morning, so it was simply hop on and run laps until we approached late morning when more people started to arrive and others realized that Timberline was the place to be. We did overhear conversations from people who were arriving from other resorts like Stowe that were having wind hold issues as well.

An image of Colin jumping on his snowboard amidst a cloud of powder snow during a March winter storm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Colin reaching for a grab on his board as he explodes out of the powder and through the air on Spell Binder

As expected with the beautiful right-side-up nature of this storm cycle, the powder skiing, and even the packed, on piste skiing, were excellent. We picked up 2.34 inches of liquid equivalent from the storm down in the valley at our site, so the mountains must have seen close to 3 inches of liquid from the event. When you get to those levels of fresh liquid equivalent on top of the snowpack, you’re looking at an unmitigated resurfacing of the slopes. And aside from the occasional scoured areas, a thorough resurfacing is just what we found. During our session, my depth measurements at around 2,500’ were indicating roughly 24 inches of accumulation, and I see that’s what the resort is indicating for their storm total as of their midday update, so that seems very much in sync with what I found. For our session, we made use of the solid resurfacing dump and jumped into just about all of our steepest favorites. There were really only a couple of very steep spots that we skipped (craggy cliff bands and super steep lines in very dense evergreens) that I knew wouldn’t quite be there since the snowpack below 2,000’ was a little too lean coming into this system.

An image of Dylan jumping off a cliff band in the Intro Woods area during a March storm cycle at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Dylan launches off one of the cliff bands in the Intro woods during today’s ski session. So much snow and liquid equivalent have fallen from this storm so far that you can feel free to launch yourself off just about any obstacle you encounter.

All in all though, it’s been an excellent storm cycle thus far, and the boys clearly picked a good week for their spring break.

March 10, 2024July 4, 2024

Bolton Valley, VT 10MAR2024

An image of Dylan adding a ski track on the Vermont 200 trail in some March powder from a late winter storm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont

An image of Dylan surfing in some of the plentiful March powder from a late winter storm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Dylan rides through the thorough resurfacing of snow that our latest winter storm continues to drop on Bolton Valley.

Dylan is on spring break this coming week, so he was home in Waterbury and raring to go for what’s been looking like a great stretch of skiing. Dylan joined us as E and I headed up this morning for a session at Bolton Valley to check out the snow from the front end of this current storm cycle, and as the resort snow reports from around the state have indicated, the higher elevations received a solid shot of snow. We’ve picked up roughly 1.4 inches of liquid equivalent in the snow and mixed precipitation that has fallen down at the house, so up on the mountain they’ve likely seen upwards of an inch and a half of liquid equivalent in their accumulations. That’s certainly enough for a solid resurfacing, and the resort seems set in that regard all the way from the summit areas above 3,000’ down to the lowest slopes at 1,500’.

An image of vehicles from the 4x4 Center covered in fresh snow from an March winter storm at the Timberline Base area of Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — As soon as we arrived at Timberline we could get a sense for how much snow had fallen down at the 1,500′ level based on some of the 4×4 Center’s vehicles parked by the base.

An image of Erica throwing up some March powder from a late winter storm while skiing at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Erica out on the mountain throwing around some of today’s new snow

The early morning snow report from Bolton was indicating 8 inches of new snow, but my own measurements while out on the mountain up above 3,000’ were already reading 10 to 12 inches by midday, so they’d obviously continued to pick up some substantial accumulations since that first report. Their midday report is now indicating 10 to 12 inches new, so that lines right up with what I was finding. As noted above, it was a solid resurfacing, and I’d say we were getting 95%+ bottomless turns on even the steepest slope angles, with just a few spots here and there where you might touch down depending on skier traffic, obstacles, deposition, etc.

An image of Dylan adding the first ski track below the Wilderness Lift in some March powder from a late winter storm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Dylan puts down a fresh track in some of this morning’s new snow.

The only knock against the snow at this point is that it’s rather dense, so the usual caveats apply with respect to the quality of the turns. We suspected that the snow was going to be dense going into today’s session, so we went with alpine setups instead of Telemark, and that was definitely the right call for stability and ease of turning in the thick snow. Snowboards would also have been a good choice for what we saw out there, and skiing in and on the snow today had me thinking fondly of some of those surfy turns on a board. The snow became denser the lower one went in elevation, so although we parked at Timberline in the morning, we stayed above 2,000’ essentially the whole time, and only returned back down below that elevation when were we returning to the car at 1,500’ at the Timberline Base. The powder turns out there are still great, since the snow is so dense that you can really lay into whatever you want and tackle any pitch with the confidence of not dealing with underlying obstacles, but both the powder and groomed conditions are better the higher you go. While the new snow was dense, it wasn’t wet or sticky until we dropped down toward the Timberline Base around midday. That was likely a result of both the initial snow being wetter, and temperatures creeping above freezing in the lower elevations by that point. If the snow transitions to a drier consistently for the next part of the storm cycle as the forecasts suggest, it should be an excellent topping off for what’s fallen thus far.

March 3, 2024May 29, 2024

Bolton Valley, VT 03MAR2024

An image of Jay making a Telemark turn in some early spring snow in the Timberline area at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont

An image of the Timberline Quad Chairlift and the lower slopes of the Timberline area in early March at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Today we found a quiet afternoon with spring snow at Bolton Valley’s Timberline area.

I didn’t expect yesterday’s cloudy conditions and temperatures in the 30s F to do much in terms of softening up the snowpack, but with today’s forecast calling for temperatures in the 40s F, there seemed to be much more potential for softening the slopes. Temperatures looked optimal in the afternoon, so E and I headed up to Timberline for some runs. The weather for our session started out with a mix of foggy and cloudy conditions, and even a light mist of rain, but that quickly dissipated and moved on to produce mostly sunny conditions by the end.

An image of Jay making a Telemark turn as he drops into a run in spring snow on the slopes of the Timberline area at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Jay dropping into some Telemark turns in Timberline’s soft spring snow.

When I checked the snow report earlier today, I saw that some of the natural snow trails were closed down at the Timberline elevations, and that initially had me worried about the available coverage. When we got to the mountain though, coverage was actually much better than the trail report had led me to believe. Twice as Nice was indeed closed, but it wasn’t as if it was devoid of snow – there were bare spots on the back sides of some of the rolls that would have made the skiing challenging, so I can see why they had it closed. I though Spell Binder was going to be closed, but it wasn’t – they’d made snow on the steep headwall section at some point, so it had an incredible amount of snow. The lower parts of the trail that have not seen any snowmaking were under a sort of “soft” closure – they had signs suggesting it was closed, but no rope and most people were skiing it. From the Timberline Summit, Intro was open with wall-to-wall coverage, and they blew in so much snow in the gap above the Timberline Mid Station that the ledges aren’t even visible.

Conditions were definitely soft enough to get in some nice corn snow turns, but it wasn’t really warm enough to soften the snow too deeply into the snowpack. We found that terrain that had not been touched by other skiers was the best, because you could peel away a couple inches of snow without encountering the firm subsurface too much. Areas that had seen higher traffic revealed more of the firm subsurface and resulted in louder turns that were much less spring-like.

An image of Jay making a Telemark turn on the slopes of the Timberline area at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Stretching out for another Tele turn in the soft March snow

An image of a Rome snowboard in the snow from within the Timberline Base Lodge at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — A view from inside the Timberline Base Lodge today during a break from afternoon skiing

It looks like the coming week will feature some warmer spring-like days in the first half, which should be enough to get the snow softened more than today. Later in the week, the weather cools a bit and becomes more unsettled with snow chances. There’s nothing in the modeling yet that indicates a slam dunk March storm with solid mountain snows, but some runs show the potential. We’d need a decent shot of liquid equivalent to get much of a resurfacing, but the base is ready if we do get enough, and the more that falls as snow, the more terrain that would be in play for quality turns.

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