I headed up to Mt. Mansfield this morning to get in a workout and take advantage of the fresh snow that had fallen since Wednesday. Once I got out of the fog that had settled around our house in the Winooski Valley, there were fantastic views of the fresh snow on the Green Mountains, and Mt. Mansfield’s alpine terrain was especially scenic. I started my skin up the gondola side of Mansfield at around 7:00 A.M., and found the following new snow accumulations with respect to elevation:
1,600′: ~1/4″
2,000′: 1-2″
2,500′: ~4″
3,000′: ~6″
3,600′: ~10″
It was a little tough to get the depths on what had fallen because the new snow was so well integrated onto the old base, but those were my best estimates and I’d say they’re pretty decent. In terms of the skiing, the new snow was certainly more akin to dense Sierra Cement than Northern Vermont’s famous Champlain Powder™ fluff, but the turns were really nice; the dense snow did a great job of keeping one up off the old base. For the full details, links, and all the photographs from the day, click through to the full trip report from Stowe on May 6th, 2011.
That first picture and the picture of the golf course (I don’t golf) are spectacular.
Thanks Patrick, I liked those as well. I did up the saturation on the golf course picture a touch to bring out the green (DSLRs don’t typically apply much in terms of saturation under default settings, so it’s often done in post-processing), but it was already quite striking.
Most of my pictures are still on film, however even if I had a good digital, I wouldn’t have the patience and time to play around with them. For example, I just posted a TR from February 12-13, some history, memories and mostly my daughter’s racing.
I have one ready from Sugarloaf on May 8th, but I’m waiting for Lucky’s pics. He likes to play around with them plus he has been done for one week for work and ski in the Gaspé Peninsula.
It certainly takes some work to really optimize digital photos, and with so many different alterations like sharpness, saturation, white balance, cropping, hue, etc., one can spend a lot of time getting them to where you want them to be. My approach is to take those few to several select pictures that you really like or that epitomize the outing, and focus on making them all that they can be.
I wonder how things are up in the Gaspé; this is generally a great time of year with the snowpack up there! I still have to get up there for a visit, although probably not until the boys are older.