J&E Productions

Snowfall came into the area last night, and accumulating snow reached down even into the Winooski Valley.  The ground was whitened in the yard this morning, and as of my 6:00 A.M. report we’d picked up 0.3 inches of snow and 0.52 inches of liquid at the house (495’).  Reports coming in from the higher elevations were indicating more substantial accumulations as expected.

With the appearance of the new snow, I headed up to Bolton for a few turns this morning.  Leaving the house (495’) at around 7:30 A.M. or so, the temperature was in the upper 30s F.  As I drove west from the house, the coating of snow that we’d received quickly vanished, and there wasn’t really anything on the ground from the Chittenden County line westward to the bottom of the Bolton Valley Access Road (340’).  Climbing the road, there wasn’t even a hint of snow until right around elevation 1,200’ near the Catamount Trail access below the big S curve.  From that point up, the accumulations started to build with elevation.  At around 1,500’ at the base of Timberline there was roughly an inch.  Accumulations on the road began at around 2,000’, and up around 2,100’ at the main base I found 1 to 2 inches of new snow and a temperature a bit above freezing.  There was some wind, mixed precipitation, and nobody around.

I skinned up Beech Seal to mid mountain (2,500’) where new snow accumulations had increased to a couple of inches, and it was hard to tell with the new accumulations, but some of the old base snow had certainly been lost since Ty and I were up there on Sunday.  There is still a really nice line along much of the skier’s left of Beech Seal, with a good base under this new snow.  Above mid mountain, I skinned up Cobrass, and by around 3,100’ near the Vista Summit, I found about 3 to 4 inches of new snow.  As I’d heard in some of the forecasts, snow levels were expected to rise pretty high today, and the precipitation I encountered was mixed at best all the way up to the Vista Summit.

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I descended via Sherman’s Pass from the summit, since many of the steeper trails seemed dicey, and with the dense snow and my longer skinny Telemark skis, there was plenty of excitement on just low and moderate angle terrain.  Below mid mountain, I opted for the Bear Run route because I knew the coverage had been good on Sunday.  Over the course of the entire run from the Vista Summit, there were a few areas of survival turns where I was avoiding underlying obstacles below the new snow, but in general the turns were really nice on the old base.  The snow was dense enough to make things bottomless, and while it certainly wasn’t flying up like Champlain Power™, it was sweet enough that I would have contemplated another run if I’d had the time.  I was surprised that I didn’t see a single other person or even and skin/ski tracks while I was up there.  I did see plenty of deer tracks though.

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The precipitation remained mixed the entire time I was there in the 8:00 to 9:00 A.M. range at all elevations, and when I was leaving, it seemed to have cooled, and any liquid precipitation was starting to create a glaze on parts of my vehicle.  Back down that the base of the road (340’), and all the way into Burlington, the temperature was around 40 F, and the valley temperatures were similar when I came home in the evening.

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We got more precipitation today, and it looks like there’s roughly an additional half inch in the rain gauge since I emptied it this morning.  I’ll get the 24-hour total tomorrow morning.  The upper atmosphere warmed and was providing the mixed precipitation today, but the NWS says the 850 mb temperatures are going to come back down and change things back to snow – I’m just not sure at what point that happened, or is going to happen, but it looks like tonight based on the NWS point forecasts.

The new snow that I skied this morning was pretty dense, but based on the snow depths I saw, I’d still recommend junkboards for any runs without notable sections of previous base at this point.  However, reading Scott’s Bolton report from this evening, it sounds like the mixed precipitation may have really locked things up and that may change how well the new snow serves as a base.  There’s more moisture to come with this system, so if this first round can serve as some extra base in places that didn’t have it, that will expand the options for turns in the coming days.

Clouds built in yesterday evening, and the forecast showed the potential for a repeat of the snow we’d seen Friday night into yesterday morning.  I checked the temperatures atop Mt. Mansfield, and they were about 10 degrees warmer than when the previous day’s moisture had come through, but they were certainly still cold enough to support some snow.

Not expecting too much precipitation down at our location, I hadn’t even looked at the local radar during the evening, so I was rather astonished to find 0.44 inches of liquid in the gauge when I checked it yesterday morning.  It seemed to have come out of nowhere.  I did get a look at the recent frames of the BTV composite radar, which showed some moisture departing, but I didn’t look any further into it.  The temperature was roughly 37 F at the house though, which suggested that accumulating snowfall was just a couple thousand feet up.  I checked Stowe’s snow report, wondering if they had gotten in on the same moisture as my location, but all they were reporting was an inch of new snow.  In the highest elevations, it had been below freezing all night, so Stowe had to have missed out on some of that moisture; even with temperatures just a bit below freezing, the amount of liquid we received at the house would have produced more than an inch of snow.

Once the other morning CoCoRaHS reports came in, I could see that my station appeared to be in a bit of a hot spot for the overnight precipitation.  A couple of the other Waterbury stations reported liquid totals at around a third of an inch, but the totals seemed to fall off among the western slope stations to the north:

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Perhaps Mt. Mansfield just hadn’t gotten in on the best moisture, but Bolton Valley was much closer to our location, so maybe they’d done better.  We had other obligations to take care of in the morning, but maybe an afternoon trip up to Bolton was in order.

When afternoon came around, Ty was the only one game for a little exercise, so he and I headed up to Bolton to check things out.  There were only a few patches of leftover snow down at Timberline, and no sign of any new accumulations, but the main mountain was looking pretty good.  It was obvious that there had been some new snow up there.  Even though it was mid afternoon, about a half inch to an inch of new snow remained on the snowpack down at the base elevations (~2,100’).  The lower flat part of Beech Seal didn’t provide continuous snow cover, and although the upper sections had good coverage for skinning, we still opted to hike to mid mountain (~2,500’).  Up there, we found roughly an inch or two of new snow, and residual accumulations even in some shaded places where the old snowpack was absent.

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We took a snack break, and I asked Ty if he wanted to keep hiking or switch to skins; he opted to go with skins.  As we worked our way up Sherman’s Pass, we met a couple of Telemark skiers that said if we were looking for powder, the lightest stuff was up near the summit.  It would have been nice to head up there, but I let Ty make the call based on his energy level.  Ultimately, we skinned up to around 2,800’ on Hard Luck, to a point where Ty wanted to start skiing.  We found a couple inches of new snow there, which was by that point fairly wet due to rising temperatures and the afternoon sunshine.  I would have liked to know the depth of the new snow accumulations in the morning before the temperatures began to rise, as they were presumably more than what we saw.

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Still, like we’d found at Stowe yesterday, the new snow skied well over the softened base.  We took a route over toward Spillway, since it seemed to have the smoothest snow, and then below mid mountain we took the Bear Run route because the snow on Beech Seal hadn’t been all that smooth.  We were able to ski right back down to the base of the Mid Mountain Chair at around 2,150’.  I got some pictures as usual, and Ty had E’s point and shoot camera and got a few of his own.  He even got a decent action shot of me skiing, and I was impressed because that can be tough with the delay on E’s camera.  I had contemplated skiing down via the big terrain park, but Ty’s choice of Bear Run was the way to go, since some areas between the terrain park features looked to be melted out.

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We didn’t ski Spillway above the smooth bottom pitch, but above that point it was bumpy and seemed to be continuous as Matt indicated in his report from Monday.  This week’s temperatures have only been slightly above average, and the lows have been well below freezing each night so the snow shouldn’t be disappearing too fast.  If we end up getting more snow this weekend, there should be some more fun skiing up at Bolton.

April has generally continued our March trend of warm temperatures and very low snowfall, but leading up into the weekend, the forecast suggested that there was the chance for some overnight snows in the higher elevations.  Moisture didn’t look plentiful, but at least the temperatures were returning to more normal levels, and things were lining up to potentially produce some minor snow accumulations each night.

Yesterday, I started monitoring the temperatures near the Mt. Mansfield ridgeline (3,950’) thanks to the real-time sensor that Powderfreak told us about, and the air was already below freezing in the morning as a cold front came through.  One shot of moisture had come through the area yesterday afternoon/evening, and with that I’d already seen snow crashing out of the clouds along the Green Mountains south of the Winooski Valley.  While that precipitation had moved on eastward according to the radar, there were some developing echoes off to the northwest of the Burlington area, and according to the forecast, those held the chance for snow.

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When I was outside this morning checking the gauge for my 6:00 A.M. CoCoRaHS report, I was surprised that I was only being hit with the occasional spit of precipitation – the BTV composite radar actually suggested that there was a decent amount of moisture flowing into the area:

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We hadn’t received any snow at the house, but Stowe’s 6:00 A.M. morning report was indicating an inch of new snow – hat’s off to Stowe for always getting their reports out so early, even when the weather trends aren’t the most exciting.  I was surprised that they had only reported an inch of new snow, since it seemed like there could have been a bit more snowfall than that in the highest elevations based on the moisture and air temperatures in the low 20s F.  At that time of the morning however, it was the only indication I had of any snowfall.  I’d told E and the boys that there was the potential for at least a few powder turns over the weekend, but if the snow was going to be very minimal and temperatures on the mountain were going to stay down in the 30s (or even 20s) F, I didn’t think they’d be keen on heading out for dust on crust.

Everything changed right around 7:20 A.M. though, I looked outside and steady snow had started falling at the house.  It was light to only occasionally moderate, and it wasn’t sticking with our air temperature at 36 F, but it was looking good and it was the first snow we’d seen at the house in a while.  Right around that time, Allenson indicated that he was getting accumulation over in Corinth, and j24vt said that he’d actually accumulated an inch of snow in the lower elevations of Stowe.  It snowed for about an hour at our house, and although in our location it didn’t amount to more than a couple transient tenths of an inch of accumulation on the snowboard, it was a good sign.  If snowfall could make it all the way down to our location, there was likely to be additional accumulation in the higher reaches of Mt. Mansfield.  The temperatures had remained in the low 20s F high on the mountain, so the snow actually had the potential to be pretty dry as well:

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With snow falling at the house, it wasn’t hard to convince E and the boys to head out for some turns.  We were still suspicious about dust on crust in some locations, but the plan was to use the quad to get up to the higher elevations, and then hike up the Toll Road from there to get some turns in the new snow.

Although somewhat excited to go skiing, E and the boys weren’t “jump in the car half dressed” excited, but we eventually headed out to the mountain toward mid morning.  We hadn’t picked up any lingering snow accumulations in the valley bottoms in our area, but I could see some hints of white in the hills on the other side of the Winooski Valley, and obvious white accumulations up in the Worcester Range as we drove through Waterbury.  Just as exciting was the fact that as we got to Waterbury Center, cars began to trickle past with accumulations of snow on them.  Ty and Dylan had fun picking them out, and the snowy cars started to become a bit more numerous as we headed farther north toward Stowe.  It didn’t quite have the feel of an April snow though, because spring seems to have progressed much more quickly than normal this year, and there’s no residual snow on the ground.  It almost had the feel of one of those October snowstorms, where folks who live in the higher elevations come down with cars laden with snow, giving you just a taste of what might be going on up in the mountains.  Perhaps with the lack of leaves on the trees it was actually more like an early November snowfall event, except that some trees had buds and green was starting to show in places.

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Whatever the case, it was fun to see the snow accumulations on the ground gradually appear and increase as we passed through Waterbury Center and headed north toward Stowe.  By the time we’d reached the Moscow/Stowe area, the accumulations had become much more consistent, and as we finally approached the Mansfield area, it was obvious that a nice whitening had taken place.

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We found it quite windy in the Mansfield parking lot – I joked with E that of course such a “massive” storm would bring a lot of wind with it.  I was initially worried that the quad wouldn’t even be running because of the wind, but we saw people on it, and the ride ended up not being that bad at all.  I’d say the parking lot was actually one of the windiest places we encountered.

E had been concerned about how things were going to go with regard to loading the boys onto the lift with all our packs.  Somehow the way that we used to frequently ride lifts with the boys IN packs was less stressful to her, but I reassure her that I had a good system that I’d used with Ty before.  I securely attached the boy’s packs to mine, and I could hold them comfortably in one hand during loading.

Even with the new snow, the bumps of Liftline and National looked quite menacing and hard as we looked down on them while riding the lift.  The new snow had settled into the troughs, but the peaks of old, dirty snow were quite prominent.  We were glad our plans were bringing us elsewhere at that point.  At the top of the quad, we cut past the Stone Hut, and headed toward upper Toll Road to find no wind and really nice temperatures.  I was surprised to see that nobody had yet ventured up onto the road at such a late hour, but based on the number of cars in the parking lot, there weren’t all that many people on the mountain to begin with.  We put on our skins, Dylan strapped on his snowshoes, and up the trail we went.

The new powder was very nice, roughly medium weight, and about 2 to 3 inches of it had settled in along the upper elevations of the Toll Road.  Temperatures were still in the 20s F, so for the time being the snow was staying dry.  The clouds were low and swirling above our heads near the Nose as we hiked along, but it wasn’t too long before the clouds began to break away and reveal blue skies.  The views got better and better as the clouds broke away, and by the time we neared the top of the road it seemed like an entirely different day.

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We only spent a few moments up at the top while we removed our skins, but it was quite pleasant.  The wind was howling through the big tower near the Mt. Mansfield Summit Station, but it didn’t seem to be making it to our side of the ridge.  We carefully navigated a few sections of thin snow at the very top of the road, then got into some nice turns for the rest of the descent.  The appearance of the sun had come at a bit of a price, as the snow that got lit up was just starting to lose its fluff and get thick.  Fortunately that process hadn’t yet progressed too far.  I think everyone had some good turns

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The final descent back to the parking lot was actually a bit of a treat.  We’d initially written that part of the day off as potentially dust on crust, but it was far from that.  By the time we’d descended, the sun and temperatures had already warmed the subsurface snow to a nice spring consistency, and left on top of that an inch or two of new snow that was either settled, dense, or wet depending on the elevation and sun exposure.  We took a combination of Lord and then Tyro, and then finally went through the half pipe at the boy’s request.  The lower part of the route featured many areas of untracked snow off to the sides, and made for some excellent turns.  The skiing was so nice that I actually brought up the idea of heading up for some more turns, but it was well into the afternoon, and E and the boys already had burgers on their minds – and I guess we really hadn’t had any sort of lunch.

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On the way home we stopped in at Rimrock’s for food, and possibly because of the strange mid afternoon timing, it was deserted except for a couple of people at the bar.  This did give the boys a chance to mill around without bothering anyone.  The Bruins game was on in the background, and we were casually following it since they only needed 1 point to secure a playoff spot.  However, things suddenly got a lot more exciting when they scored three shorthanded goals in the span of 64 seconds.  One of the guys at the bar thought that had to be a record for three shorthanded goals in such a short span.

So in the end, a little spring snow had made for quite nice trip to the mountain, and it sounds like some of the SkiVT-L folks even had a bit of an impromptu party for good measure.  Things were very much spring later that afternoon in the valley, but towards evening, clouds began to build in and the forecast was calling for the process to repeat itself with a little overnight snow followed by clearing.  These little events aren’t much, but when snowfall has been so infrequent, they help to liven things up and keep the ski vibe going a little stronger.

Today was another nice one, so we were back at Stowe for a bit more of the spring weather and spring skiing.  I think the temperatures were about 15-20 degrees cooler than yesterday, which was of course still quite warm with base temperatures around 60 F.  Combined with a breeze that hadn’t been around yesterday though, the cooler temperatures were enough to keep us wearing vests over shirts.

We hadn’t had a chance to get to the Quad terrain yesterday, so we started off with a full run of Nosedive.  The boys had a good time working on the steeper bumps in the upper sections, where Ty commented that he thought it was Dylan’s best bump skiing to date.  Middle/Upper Nosedive had pretty good coverage, but it seemed like coverage in the lower half had changed a lot since the yesterday.  Apparently things just continued to melt with the day temperature of 70-80 F followed by a fairly warm overnight that didn’t get down to freezing.  Also surprising was the way in which the bumps on the bottom half of the trail seemed to have disappeared.  I didn’t think that the mountain was grooming with the warm temperatures, but something changed from yesterday.

After some snowball fights when we waited at the gondola base, we next joined up with Fred and his family and did a Cliff Trail run over toward Lower Nosedive.  Fred was on Telemark skis for the first time in many years, and it was his first time in plastic boots or cable bindings, so it was quite a change from his older stuff and he commented on all the differences that he could feel.  On the next trip up to the Gondola, we stopped in at the Cliff House and Fred got us all drinks while we hung out on the deck.  It was actually a little chilly up at that elevation with the breeze, but the sun was keeping us warm enough.  Fred talked with one of his buddies from behind the bar about which big boulder on the cliffs above was going to come down and take out the Cliff House kitchen.  It seems as though they have been watching them for years.

We made our way back over to the quad and finished off the day with a late lunch on the deck of the Octagon.  It was after 3:00 P.M. so there was nobody else around, but we got to take in the classic views of the Chin, Jay Peak, The White Mountains, etc.  Ty at first couldn’t figure out what that building was that he could see underneath the Chin, but once we told him it was the Cliff House at the top of the gondola, he remarked that he could see the deck we’d been on earlier.  When he said that I realized it was probably the first time I’d ever hit both of the Mansfield mountaintop decks in one day.

For our final run we stuck to the Lord area, and worked with the boys on riding the steep ridges along the edges of the trails.  In some of the steepest shots the angle was just too extreme for the boys to hold an edge, so that was good practice to see how they could re-engage them, or end up sliding off in the trees.  They ended up doing some of both.  Personally, I noticed that when the pitch became too steep, it was almost as if there wasn’t enough room for my uphill leg and ski to remain in a Telemark stance, and I’d have to switch to an alpine configuration to keep both edges engaged.

There was definitely a change in snow coverage between yesterday and today at Stowe, probably one of the more dramatic one-day changes I’ve seen, but of course yesterday had some of the highest temperatures I’ve witnessed in terms of spring skiing.  Some spots that seemed perfectly fine yesterday had become narrow passages by today.  There’s still lots of snow on the upper parts of Mansfield, but it looks like they’ll need to keep working with the groomers to keep things connected at the bottom of the mountain.

A couple of shots from today are attached below:

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Today was a really gorgeous day, and we headed to Stowe with Stephen, Helena, and Johannes to get in on some spring… or perhaps even summer skiing with the way the temperatures went.  We arrived at the Spruce Peak base at around 10:30 A.M. and the temperatures were in the 60s F.  We spent the morning at Spruce, and as far as I could tell, I think it was just snowmaking terrain available over there.  There was still a good amount of terrain to choose from though, with just one race taking place – it looked like there was a slalom running on slalom hill.  A big treat was being able to ski the entirety of Main Street from the summit, since it often seems to be occupied by racing when we’re there.  Everyone had fun blasting the corn on some of Main Street’s steeper pitches; it must be quite an experience to hit those at super G speeds during the races.  Coverage was fine, with a few areas opening up to ground, but they were marked or obvious.  The very bottom of the Spruce terrain was definitely getting slushy in the warming temperatures, and we found our skis sticking a bit in a few spots, but in general we found that the corn was skiing fine even without waxing.

By later in the noontime hour we broke for lunch at the Great Room Grill, and then headed over to Mansfield for the afternoon.  We never made it over to the Quad area, but instead stuck to the Gondola.  I suspect options over on the Chin Clip side were limited, since they had a rope right near the top of the gondola preventing access to that side.  We skied parts of Perry Merrill, Gondolier, and Cliff Trail/Nosedive.  That first steep pitch of Perry Merril actually had some nice bumps.  Although I couldn’t see it, coverage must be getting thin on a section of Lower Gondolier, because they had it roped and everyone had to head back to Perry Merrill.  Everyone seemed to enjoy Lower Nosedive, it had lots of soft bumps, and jumps off to the sides, and coverage was great.  Off to the skier’s right of Nosedive, I even found some areas where the snow hadn’t quite softened.  That was amazing considering the temperatures, and certainly speaks to the snow-preserving power of Nosedive.

I’ve heard that this is the last weekend for the Gondola and Spruce Peak before they become hike/traverse only.  There’s enough snow to keep some trails open in both spots, but options would start to get pretty limited anyway.  When we left around 4:00 P.M., the temperature was 80 F at the Spruce Peak base, and 84 F lower down in the valley toward Stowe.  I’ve attached a few shots from today below:

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Based on today’s forecast of cloudy skies and temperatures in the 30-40 F range, there wasn’t a huge incentive to ski, but we did head up to Stowe for our afternoon session so I can provide an update.  Skies were actually pretty bright with a few small breaks in the clouds when we arrived at Spruce a bit after noon.  I’m not sure of the temperature at the base at that point, but it was probably around 40 F.  Fortunately, along with some sun, that warmth was enough to get the corn snow on the Spruce terrain to soften up nicely, at least to the top of the Sunny Spruce Quad (~2,500’).  I never got above that elevation on Spruce, but below that everything skied great.  The areas like West Smuggler’s, Freddie’s Chute, and the upper parts of Meadows that seem most susceptible to snow loss, were closed or inaccessible due to coverage, but just about everything else off Sunny Spruce was in fine shape as far as we saw.

The kids wanted to head over to Mansfield, and the conditions had been so nice on Spruce that it seemed like it would be worth a trip to check it out.  Conditions on the Mansfield side were definitely not the same as what we’d experienced over on Spruce; only the bottom few hundred vertical feet of Mansfield had softened up.  The bumpy part of upper Perry Merrill was a nasty bulletproof moonscape, and most of Gondolier was hard except for the last couple of pitches.  Cliff Trail felt like a mini half pipe of ice with the occasional crowds of skiers trying to squeeze through it.  The saving grace on some trails was the strip of soft snow that had been pushed to the sides, but the somewhat concave nature and narrowness of Cliff Trail meant that it didn’t even really have those.  Cliff Trail, which was probably my favorite Stowe run as a kid, has certainly become one of my least favorite runs this season.  Lower Nosedive was bad enough that I actually switched my left and right skis to get some new edges for the first time this season.  At around 3:00 P.M. the temperature written at the bottom of the Forerunner Quad was 36 F.  Although I’m not exactly sure what time that was from, it seemed reasonable based on the elevation where the snow started to soften.  With the sun heading west and the clouds coming in, it also seemed as though it had cooled a bit from earlier in the day.

As bad as all the Mansfield skiing had been, by far the roughest run of the day was our last one on Mansfield.  Luke, one of our students, wanted to ski Midway from National, which meant taking part of National/Liftline.  I was actually most inclined to take him on it for the absurdity of it all: rock hard ice and hard pack bumps on steep pitches.  Ty was also in our group, and was initially uninterested in going on such an escapade, but I talked him into it.  I suspect he’d never skied anything quite so heinous in terms of the combination of pitch and firmness, so it would be a “good” experience.  I had the boys look at Upper National as we passed by above it, just to see what they would say.  It literally looked like a no-fall zone at the very top, as it must be an almost 40-degree pitch covered with pure ice in places.  With no intention of actually subjecting them to that terrain, I asked them if they wanted to ski it, just to see what they’d say.  I don’t think they quite understood the actual gravity of trying to ski that, but they definitely shied away.  We traversed over to Liftline and I took them on the easiest possible line there.  It was still nasty enough that Luke got stuck on a section of steep ice in the sort of way that you feel you can’t move or you’re going to start a slide for life.  As I began hiking up to assist him, he managed to physically and mentally gain hold on the ice and was able to get back into some turns.  That was nice to see.  Ty did a nice job in general of taking on that part of Liftline, and while he didn’t enjoy it, I don’t blame him.  Down below, things gradually got easier, and on Lower National I did show the boys that while I wouldn’t recommend it, it was possible to ski the porcelain bumps there.  Doing a section of bumps there probably provided as much stress to my knees as the entire rest of the season.  The boys gave an effort in those bumps as well, but quickly got themselves back on the groomed terrain.  The actually goal of the run, Midway, was still all hard, but at least partially groomed.  The only really pleasant part of the run was the very bottom of National, which had fairly soft corn covering moderate angle bumps.  The boys had a lot more fun on that, although it was just a few hundred vertical feet.  Coverage on Mt. Mansfield was great overall, with just some of the steeper natural snow trails having some open spots.

We did one more run over at Spruce before the end of the day, and the snow was still nice and soft.  With the great conditions on Spruce Peak, it didn’t seem like there was much sense in going over to the Mansfield side, but the kids had some fun.  I’d say there wasn’t much melting anywhere at Stowe today, even on Spruce, and that Mansfield glacier should last quite a while into the spring.  They even picked up 4 inches of snow up high last night.  Thanks to Powderfreak’s link, I can see with the real time Mansfield temperature that the higher elevations are already down in the 20s F, and there’s still precipitation coming through.  Similar to last night, it seems like there could be a bit more snow tonight.

We picked up 1.7 inches of snow at the house this morning, which was a lot considering the amount of snowfall we’ve seen this March, so I decided to stop up at Bolton to earn some turns and maybe ride the lifts if the skiing was decent enough.  The reports coming in from the local ski areas indicated that they’d picked up similar accumulations to what I’d seen at the house, but the 1.7 inches I’d measured was comprised of 0.24 inches of liquid, so it definitely had some substance to it.  The snowfall had mostly tapered off in the valley as I was heading up the Bolton Valley Access Road in the ~8:00 A.M. range, but precipitation was still falling in the higher elevations.  I was surprised to see that the precipitation was actually a bit mixed as I approached the Bolton Valley Village, but the temperature was in the mid 20s F.

I was encouraged as I stepped out of the car into about 4 inches of powder, but on the snowbank in front of me, I could see that there was just a dusting, so clearly the wind had been messing with the new snow.  The weather was actually pretty nasty, with some wind, light snow/mixed precipitation, and fog, but there was definitely some new powder to be skied.

I skinned straight up Beech Seal, which was easy with the grooming and minimal accumulations.  It quickly became apparent that I’d need to find sheltered places to hit the powder, because the wind had stripped the snow off exposed areas.  With that in mind, I headed over toward the Cobrass area, and at around 9:00 A.M. when the Vista Quad was scheduled to open, I began my descent.  The lower parts of Cobrass itself were looking somewhat windswept, but the Cobrass Run area had a fairly even coating of snow.  The turns were pretty nice, although I was touching down to the hard base on about 50% of them, and once I was down below Cobrass Run, I was into the terrain that had been groomed after the new snowfall.  That surface was not nearly as soft as the terrain that hadn’t seen a grooming.  The couple new inches of dense snow was sort of lost as it was churned into the base snow.

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Once down at the base area, I checked in with the lift operators at the bottom of Vista.  With the combination of wind, some riming, and a bit of grooming still taking place, they weren’t quite ready to get underway.  They did ask for the lowdown on the conditions, and I told them what I’d found on Cobrass Run.  So, with the lift situation it was back to manpower for turns, but my initial foray had left me optimistic enough to search out some additional powder.  I ascended by the same route, seeing some nice smooth coatings in the New Sherman’s Pass/Lower Vermont 200 area, but somehow the thought of Wilderness crept into my head, so I continued on up Sherman’s Pass to about the 2,800’ level.  I hopped onto some of the low/moderate angle terrain that brought me over to Wilderness, and the skiing was OK, but nothing too fantastic as I did cross some windswept areas.

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I’m not sure why it hadn’t occurred to me earlier, but as I saw the Wilderness Lift line showing signs of the wind’s effects, I just kept heading north to Lower Turnpike.  That wound up being the pick of my morning.  I started down, and there was initially a little scouring in spots due to wind, but as I headed lower and lower into more sheltered terrain, the coating of snow got smoother and smoother, and the skiing got better and better.  It wasn’t long before there was only the occasional contact with the old subsurface snow, and as much fun as the corn skiing has been this March, it was very satisfying to fell that consistent powder float again.  That definitely made the morning, and I was ready to catch a lift ride and do it all again, but the chairlifts still didn’t appear to be loading.  All the skiers I saw seemed to be congregating around the handle tow, so based on the time I decided to call it a morning and head to Burlington.

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The precipitation was very light snow as I left the mountain a bit after 10:00 A.M., and the temperature in the village was 26 F.  Descending the Access Road offered up some of the snowier views of the day as I got down into elevations where the wind had been more minimal.  The temperature at the bottom of the Access Road was 32 F, and mid 30s F when I got into Burlington.

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When I was leaving Burlington later in the afternoon afternoon, it was sunny and the temperature was 50 F.  Most of the valley snow had melted, but the last clouds were pulling away from Mt. Mansfield offering some nice views.  I was surprised to see that we had retained much of the new snow at our house due to the shade, and it was neat to have the yard entirely white again, since our snow at the house had almost disappeared through the course of the month.

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This afternoon up at Bolton was very much like last Saturday: generally overcast, but warm enough to keep the spring corn soft and enjoyable.  Temperatures were again in the 40s F and there was some breeze in the higher elevations.  The biggest changes I saw from last week were in snow coverage.  After yet another week with warm temperatures and no snow, significant bare spots are starting to show up at the Timberline elevations.  From what I saw in my daily Bolton Valley email snow report from today, the mountain is still 100% open in terms of on piste terrain.  But, if we have another week like the past three, it would be very likely that they would have to start closing some terrain heading into next weekend.  It still may not be possible to keep everything open, but fortunately, this week doesn’t look as though it will continue the recent weather trends.  We actually could have some snow down at the house by tomorrow morning, which would be the first time in three weeks.  That’s a sign that something is changing.  Also, the NWS point forecasts for the higher elevations of the Green Mountains around here have some sort of snow in them almost every day this week.  We haven’t seen anything remotely like that since back in February.  There’s still a lot of questions as to where the moisture will go and where the freezing levels will be, but at least the mountains have got the chance to accumulate some snow this week.  Also, much cooler temperatures are going to slow down the melting we’ve seen so far this month.

In terms of skiing, after focusing on his Telemark skiing last weekend, Ty wanted to get back in the bumps today.  So, with warm temperatures I said we’d hit some of the steep bump runs off Vista, and E and the boys would get a good workout.  With a puzzled look, E initially asked me what bump runs I was talking about, because she had no clue.  I was sort of surprised, but what I did was simply run upstairs and grab my laptop to show her my current desktop background.  It’s a shot I picked up from the Bolton Valley Facebook Page a couple of weeks back:

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After three weeks with nothing in terms of snowfall, the snowpack isn’t quite as bounteous as in the picture, but the coverage is still great aside from a few isolated pockets, and the bumps are still there – except I think on Hard Luck.  We didn’t ski it, but it looked like it had been groomed.  I laughed at the fact that I had to show E and the boys that picture.  In almost four seasons at Bolton, I’ve yet to bring her and the boys down any of the runs like Spillway, Show Off, Hard Luck etc.  I know that we’ve touched on a few edges of the runs in our travels through the off piste, but we certainly haven’t hit the runs together or hit the bumps.  I know that Ty has skied Hard Luck before, but that was in powder back in the middle of April 2007 when we earned turns with Dave, and there were no bumps to be seen.  Up to this point when the whole family has been together, there hasn’t been an occasion to ski any of those trails, since Dylan hasn’t been quite ready to tackle them.  Also, I don’t recall those trails developing bumps like that every spring, probably due to the combination of too much snowfall/too little traffic, etc.

Anyway, Dylan has progressed this season to the point that he’s got the skills and stamina to tackle just about any bump run, so tackle them we did.  We started off down at Timberline, but quickly made our way over to the main mountain and up to the top of Spillway.  Having not skied Spillway with bumps in I don’t know how long, I’d forgotten how steep some of those pitches are.  The bumps were huge at times; it felt like you were dropping several feet in the air per turn.  Ty was definitely challenged; with the combination of very steep pitch and huge bumps, he had plenty of crashes as he tried to take them aggressively and find out what worked for him.  Dylan was more conservative, but very smooth and he didn’t even seem to be phased by the pitch at all.  Although it’s not as long as Chin Clip, Ty definitely found the steep pitches and huge bumps on Spillway more challenging than when we’d skied Chin Clip a couple weeks back.

We moved over to Show Off for more bumps on the next run, and compared to Spillway it was easier skiing judging by the way Ty handled it.  We also hit the Vista Glades, which the boys consider a playground because of all the terrain features.  Vista Glades had some good sections of bumps, and then we added more by skiing Schuss below it.  On the lower mountain we teamed each our upper mountain runs with the bumps on the Vista Quad lift line, and then a run through the smaller terrain park below it.  With just Spillway, Show Off, and Schuss, E and the boys got a good sampling of bumps off Vista, and they had a lot of fun.  Now that Dylan is ready to handle them, I’m sure we’ll visit those runs more frequently when conditions warrant.  Dylan’s stamina has grown by leaps and bounds this season, and is certainly one of the hallmarks of his improvements this spring.  Ultimately that’s going to enable longer days with more varied terrain as we move forward.

Today we were back at Stowe for our weekly program, and the afternoon began with similar conditions to what we’d experienced at Bolton yesterday.  There wasn’t any significant precipitation; it was just mostly cloudy with a couple holes of blue sky and temperatures in the 40s F.  My group stayed on Spruce Peak for the entire afternoon, where surfaces were spring corn and the skiing was excellent.  There were certainly a few spots of ground opening up on steep, south-facing trails with natural snow.  One example would be Freddie’s Chute, which had essentially complete coverage when we’d skied it last week.  The ledges there on the skier’s left showed a lot of exposed spots today, although the right side still had full coverage and skiable lines.  We weren’t actually going to be skiing it with the group we had today, but I noticed that patrol had roped off the entrance corral anyway.  We didn’t head to the upper parts of Spruce, although it sounded like some ground was showing through up there as well.  We skied all the usual terrain on the lower half of Spruce, and there were no coverage concerns on any of that.  Toward the end of the afternoon it started spitting rain showers, and then for the final few runs the precipitation intensified over in the Spruce Peak area.  Fortunately, the skiing was winding down by that point.  It’s going to be sunny and warm for the coming week, so I’m sure that some of the more sensitive south-facing terrain on Spruce will lose additional coverage.  But, it should be clear with most nights going below freezing, so the corn cycling should go well.  Mansfield looked great in terms of coverage when we were there, although I’d imagine a few of the lower-elevation spots in the sun could start having some open spots and the snowpack at the stake will probably drop some this week.  The big storm that brought inches of rain to southern parts of New England didn’t seem to be much of an event in this area, as I only recorded 0.15 inches of liquid in my rain gauge for the entire system.

I had an intermediate group today, with a couple of students that were working on transitioning fully over to parallel, so we did a lot of drills to get them on their way.  After yesterday’s experience, Ty decided to ride his Telemark skis again to work on his Tele turns, so instead of going with one of the more advanced groups, he came with us and tried to focus on that.  I was on my Telemark skis to enable working with Ty, but it was nice to be able to use that Telemark versatility and work just as smoothly on alpine turns with the other students.

I’ve attached a couple of scenic shots below that I captured around noontime today:

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We headed up to Bolton this afternoon for a bit if skiing, unsure if the conditions were going to warrant much of a stay.  Weather wise, there was neither fresh powder nor bright sun, so it was looking like our first lackluster sort of day up there in a while.  We hit the Timberline area at around 1:30 P.M., where the temperature at the 1,500’ elevation was probably in the low 40s F.  Fortunately, the snow was nicely softened into spring corn and the skiing was fantastic.  As soon as we’d started our first run down Twice as Nice we knew we were going to stick around.  A quick check in the trees revealed that the off piste hadn’t really softened to the perfection that we’d found on the trails, whether due to the shelter of the trees or lack of traffic.  Basically though, it was a great day of on piste spring skiing, just without the sunshine.  As of the end of the day, coverage was wall to wall all the way down to the lowest elevations of Timberline (~1,500’) so that was nice to see.  We didn’t venture to the main mountain, but with its additional elevation, coverage should only be enhanced over Timberline.  I could tell that a couple of the more sensitive spots on Timberline were close to opening up to ground, so without any new snow over the next few days I’m sure there will be a few areas to watch out for unless the groomers did some patch work.  It sounds like the big coastal storm was bringing some precipitation to parts of southern New England, but it was simply dry and overcast while we were up at Bolton.

With neither off piste nor major bump skiing in mind for the day, E and Ty decided to ride their Telemark skis.  For Ty, it was his first day on his Teles in quite a while, probably over a month, so he was excited to get back on them.  A few weeks back I’d picked up a couple of binding wedges at OGE, and this was his first chance to try his skis with them.  I guess it can be common to have too much forward lean in kids’ Telemark setups, with “rocker launch” being a potential issue, and although it didn’t seem to be a major problem with Ty’s rig when I checked the resting height of his boot’s heel, it seemed like it was worth picking some up wedges for a few bucks since they’ve been recommended and he might benefit.  Ty didn’t indicate that he could feel any major differences in his skiing with the wedges in place, but they certainly weren’t a problem.  I’ll have to check the heel of his boots and see where they rest now.  Even though Ty couldn’t discern any major changes with the wedges installed, potentially through progression alone, E and I agreed that he had his best day yet on his Telemark gear.  He’s still working on being able to hold a lower stance through turns, and I can see that that’s going to challenge him for a while.  He’s able to hold his lower Telemark stances longer and longer however.  Ty noted that he’s got a weaker side with regard to his Telemark stance/turn, and like E, he worked on that during the afternoon.  The most obvious advancement for Ty was his ability to come into airs in one Telemark stance, switch it up in the air, and land in the opposite Telemark stance.  I enjoy playing around with that a lot, and whether because Ty had reached that stage of progression, or he had enjoyed seeing the ski jumpers doing their Telemark landings in the Olympics a couple of weeks back, he really got into it today.  Finding that he was able to land his jumps in a Telemark stance kept Ty pretty invigorated all afternoon, so he may go with his Telemark skis again tomorrow at Stowe.

Since it was pretty gray and overcast, I didn’t get anything in the way of scenery shots, but I did grab a few shots of the boys in action in the corn snow:

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