J&E Productions

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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Like yesterday, today was another warm, sunny day, and we headed off to Stowe in the afternoon for our weekly program.  I was very curious to see if spring conditions would develop to a greater extent than the spotty softening we’d found at Bolton yesterday, but with Spruce Peak’s southern exposure, I was confident that we could at least find a decent amount of corn snow over there.  During our drive up to Stowe, the midday views of all the snow-covered alpine areas in the surrounding peaks were very impressive.  There’s a nice-looking snowfield atop Hunger Mountain, and obvious lines were popping out in various spots up and down the Worcester Range.  Hopefully people are getting out and hitting these spots.

I was supposed to have two snowboarders in my group for the day, so I started off the afternoon on my board in preparation for riding with them.  Before group began, I went off with Ty and Dylan for a run off the Sunny Spruce Quad, and we hit Fredie’s Chute.  The snow was already plenty soft, so the turns were great.  With its southern exposure and ledgy areas though, there are already a few bare spots starting to open up on.  Seeing that the snow conditions were already excellent in terms of softening, I was planning to work on bumps for the afternoon with the kids.  So, when my snowboarders didn’t show up and I was left with a group of exclusively skiers, I quickly switched to skis.  A couple of fantastic carves on West Slope had me enjoying my board, but I find skis far superior in the bumps.

With just three skiers in tow, two of them being Ty and Dylan, we were off to find ourselves some soft bumps.  We worked our way over toward the Sensation Quad and did a run on Whirlaway.  Whirlaway is a favorite of James, one of our other students, but since he was out for the day, the other guys ripped it up in his honor.  We next took on Upper Smuggler’s, and for the first time this spring they got to hit the final, very steep section of Upper Smuggler’s that has often been closed this season due to low snow depths.  It’s another southern exposure trail, so a couple of bare spots were appearing, but coverage was almost perfect and the boys had a lot of fun.  As it turned out, they hadn’t had their butts kicked quite hard enough, so I decided that we should do a run on Chin Clip.

We headed down Chin Clip just as the sun was leaving it and things were starting to tighten up, but we still caught good snow.  Coverage was perfect as far as I saw, and the endless bumps were huge; it was classic Chin Clip.  We ran into a group of three Telemark skiers during our descent, and they were very impressed with how the boys were playing in the bumps.  When they asked how I was able to keep up, I told them that I spend a lot of time on my Telemark skis; then, when I get on my alpines I feel like a super hero.  At least that’s what my quads tell me, and they seem to know what they’re talking about.

A few pictures from the day have been added below:

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With temperatures at the house closing in on the mid 40s F by midday today, we were expecting corn snow up on the mountain, but as it turns out, that wasn’t quite what we found.  We started off at Timberline, and if anywhere on the mountain was going to feature spring snow, the lower half of Timberline was going to be it.  We joined up with Stephen and Helena, and once we got off at the Timberline mid station, we headed over to Spell Binder based on a request from Dylan.  The Spell Binder headwall was far from spring snow, it was mid winter snow, but pretty firm since there had obviously been some temperature fluctuations down there.  It may have been due to the cool west or northwest breeze that was blowing, but only the lower elevation spots in direct sunlight featured corn snow.  Those spots were good, but you had to stick to the skier’s right of the runs, and even then you were looking at partial runs.

If we weren’t going to get much in the way of spring snow, we decided that we’d head to the top of the main mountain and see where we could find the best winter snow.  I didn’t know how high the freezing levels had gone during the week, but once we got to the top of Wilderness, I could see that they had certainly gone above 3,000’ in areas exposed to the sun.  We skied Bolton Outlaw, and the snow was OK for presumably going above freezing at some point, but certainly not like last Saturday.  I checked out some of the snow in the trees, and it turned out that up around the 3,000’ mark, snow that had not seen any sun was still dry and powdery.  Based on what I saw up there, it looked like north-facing terrain from about 2,500’ on up likely held onto some good powder.  While sunny and at times warm, the weather was pretty dry last week, so that may have helped with the preservation.  I bet some of the north-facing lines below Paradise Pass or off the peak of Ricker Mountain would deliver some great turns.

One note of interest that I observed from the Wilderness area was the state of the snowpack in the higher reaches of Ricker Mountain.  There’s a lot of snow up there.  You can actually see snowfields starting to form in some areas due to the big storms that came through at the end of February.  Also, I saw that the big trail map at the top of the Wilderness Lift was starting to get buried, and as I recall it’s pretty high off the ground.  I can see new lines forming all over the place high up on Ricker Mountain now, so I’m sure there are plenty of good turns up top for those that have time to hike above the lifts.  If the boys had the stamina and inclination at this point, that would be a fun way to spend some days.

Lower down on Wilderness we took some turns in some of the trees off Old Turnpike, and the untracked snow wasn’t half bad.  There was some nice settled powder in spots, but it was highly variably because if you got to a spot where the sun had hit (which was most places), there would be a sun/melt crust.  Lower Turnpike itself featured great snow as usual.  There was good packed powder on the shaded side of the trail, which transitioned right over to corn on the sunny side with little if any hybrid in between.  You could almost alternate winter and spring skiing with each turn if you wanted to.

Although there was the slight breeze and the air temperature was probably just in the 30s F, the bright sun made things quite comfortable so the base area had that spring feel in the afternoon.  We hung outside with the kids for a bit and got some waffles from the hut before making a last run back down to Timberline.  By the time we headed back down, the Timberline area was already closed, so it had that spooky, private ski area feel.  A few images from today are attached below:

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We’d skied at Stowe Thursday in the midst of the big storm cycle, but today was our first chance to see how things had shaken out for the snow surfaces once things had settled down.  The slopes looked gorgeous as we approached the mountain, with lots of sun among some fair weather clouds.  I was initially encouraged by the snow surfaces when we took an early run on Spruce Peak a bit before 1:00 P.M; the sun had warmed up the snow and there had seen enough cycling to produce some corn.  Gone was the wet surface that had persisted in the lower elevations during the storms, and it was really fun slicing smooth arcs into the open terrain of the NASTAR Hill area.

I was hoping that the skiing would be soft like that all around, but that certainly wasn’t the case over on Mt. Mansfield.  Unlike Thursday, where the middle elevations of Mansfield seemed to offer the best skiing in terms of balancing visibility with reasonably dry snow, the middle elevations had some of the most difficult snow today.  The top third to perhaps half of the mountain had fairly nice mid winter snow, but below that there had been enough warming that the surfaces had become hard.  Off piste was also pretty messy around there.  The saving grace in the very lowest elevations was that they had started to corn up a bit, but the middle elevations just stayed hard and high traffic areas on piste were well on their way to the icy disposition they’d had before the big resurfacing.  Our final run of the day down North Slope was a great example of that phenomenon, and I’m not sure I can say that the surface was actually any better than what one would have seen back during the snow drought before the big storms.

It really would have been nice to have some upper mountain lifts to use under those conditions, or if I wasn’t with the kids in our group it probably would have been fun to do some laps up in the Alpine.  When the stake is in the 100” range as it is now, the top of Mansfield does start to turn into one huge snowfield.  With these recent sunny days I’ve been staring at the east side of Mansfield from UVM and seeing how white it is in the alpine areas.  Some more substantial clouds did come in later in the day today, and at about 3:00 P.M. when we were up at the Octagon, it started to flurry a bit.  Nothing seemed to come of that however.  We’re planning to be up at Stowe again next Sunday afternoon, so we’ll see how the conditions are.  There doesn’t appear to be any significant snowfall coming this week though, so with additional traffic and some spring temperature cycling in the lower elevations I’d be surprised if snow surfaces were improved at all.  I’m sure the coverage will be outstanding though.  I bet surfaces will still be nice in the highest elevations, but we might spend a good deal of time over at Spruce if the sun gets things corned up there.

I did get one picture from today as we approached the mountain; it really was a gorgeous day for the most part, even if snow surfaces weren’t great at all elevations, and you can see where some parts of the Mansfield alpine are really loaded with snow:

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Today was our first chance to see how Bolton had fared from the big midweek storm.  Numbers wise, they’d picked up almost four feet of snow from the initial round of precipitation, but as we’d seen at Stowe on Thursday, the snow was fairly dense and more difficult to ski in the lower elevations.  The mountain had reported another 5 inches overnight to top of the previous snow, so that was quite encouraging in terms of setting up some fresh powder skiing.

We parked at Timberline (~1,500’), but immediately worked our way up toward the Vista Summit (~3,150’) to see how the snow was skiing in the highest elevations.  Up at the Timberline Summit (~2,500’) the snow was skiing well and the new powder was fairly dry, but it quickly began to get thicker as we descended to the village area (~2,150’).  Once we reached the Vista Summit, we certainly found the best conditions of the morning – even the headwall of Cobrass was skiing pretty well.  There were some clouds around, but we’d broken out into the sun at the top of Vista and it was quite a sight.  The cumulus clouds off in the distance looked much more like something one would see in summer vs. winter, and presumably spoke to the interesting weather pattern that had recently brought about the big snows.  We made a long descent back to the Timberline Base to have an early lunch, and skied some of the Villager Trees along the way.  We hiked for some extra turns in there with the boys, and the powder was OK at first, but after a few hundred vertical we were getting down into the elevations where the new powder wasn’t as dry, and the subsurface became harder since it was derived from wetter snow.

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We had a good lunch down at Timberline, which was rather deserted at first due to the early hour, then headed back up toward the main mountain.  Based on what we’d found in our travels up to that point, there was no need to ski anything at Timberline since the snow on the upper mountain was so clearly superior.  We got a call from Stephen that he was cycling the Vista Glades, and with the huge amounts of snow and colder temperatures up there, that seemed like a perfect choice.  The Vista Glades were in excellent shape, with all the ledgy areas well covered thanks to the copious dense snow.  E and the boys weren’t all that familiar with the Vista Glades since we don’t often ski them, but once they were in there and saw how much fun the skiing was, they agreed that it had been a great choice.

With upper elevation terrain in mind, we headed over to the Wilderness are next so we could check out Bolton Outlaw.  As a testament to just how much snow, or likely how much dense snow and liquid equivalent had fallen, the top pitch of the Wilderness Lift Line actually had pretty decent coverage.  That’s saying a lot.  I’m not sure if it was actually open at that point, but it had been well traveled by plenty of skiers.  Bolton Outlaw was excellent, and there wasn’t even a need to venture off into the powder on the sides because the trail itself was just so soft.  We were definitely up in the elevations where the drier snow had fallen and the temperatures had never gone above freezing.  Below Bolton Outlaw, we skied the steep pitch of Cougar, which provided one of the best scenes from the day.  Ty was skiing very fast due to the extra reliability of the snow surface, and he dropped into Cougar and skied the bumps at full tilt, followed by a huge hand in the air at the bottom.  E said he’d clearly been watching plenty of Olympic ski action.

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Below the level of the Wilderness mid station, we played around in the various glades and found good powder down to a point.  It was a gradual change in snow quality with elevation of course, but once we got down to around the 2,300’ elevation, the untracked snow had reached a stage of density/wetness that it was getting tough to ski.  Fortunately, in the Wilderness area we were just about down to the base elevations and back on piste by that point, so it worked out pretty well.  The snow quality and skier traffic were so good over at Wilderness that I would have been happy to simply stay there for the rest of the afternoon.  However, Ty eventually started to get tired (probably because he had been skiing pretty hard) and wanted to head home.

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In terms of the overall weather for the day, it was quite an eclectic mix:  one minute we’d have bright sunshine, and then ten minutes later it would be snowing at a decent clip.  As the afternoon wore on, the snowfall won out, and in the middle afternoon it was snowing at about an inch per hour for a while; I’d say it put down a quick half inch or so.  The temperatures were excellent, being a few degrees above freezing down at the Timberline base elevations, and several degrees below freezing up at the summit areas.  Even though I didn’t have a chance to get many pictures from that part of the day, the time spent over at Wilderness today was so good that it will probably end up being one of the highlights of the season.

Today Stephen and Johannes joined us for some turns at “Stowequalmie” as it seemed.  Down at the base elevations (~1,500’), the temperature was a couple of degrees above freezing, and the precipitation was mixed rain and snow, but not too far up in elevation it was all snow falling.  The uppermost elevations were in the clouds, so visibility was low up there, but those areas also had the driest snow.  The middle elevations were sort of that sweet spot where visibility was up, and the snow was still nice.  The lower ½ to ¼ of the mountain had great visibility, but the snow was fairly wet, so off piste skiing wasn’t quite as easy as it is with our more typical Vermont fluff.  Some groomed areas on piste on the lower mountain had that wet pack snow that I’ve experienced on the lower elevations of Whistler Blackcomb.

In terms of the powder in the middle and upper elevations, it was fairly dense, and boy was it deep!  As others have mentioned, there were feet of it.  The snowpack up there also seemed a bit upside down however.  I think some denser snow had fallen on top of some drier snow from Wednesday, so it created that phenomenon.  Off piste, it reminded me very much of a trip E and I had to Schweitzer back in 2001, where four feet of Cascade Concrete had fallen on the mountain and many people simply found themselves drowning in it because it was so difficult to ski.

With our crew and the conditions, we didn’t spend much time off piste aside from playing in the snow off the edges of the trails, but we had a good time on the trials.  Any issues of iciness or coverage were long buried, and it was great to see the mountain looking better as we approach March.  Freddie’s Chute under the Sunny Spruce Quad is finally all covered, so we had a fun run down there.  Ty really loved blasting the moguls on West Smuggler’s, since with the weather pattern we’d been in previously, it had probably been a couple of months since he’d skied moguls without at least some concern for hard snow or low coverage.  Stephen spied all the untracked snow sitting in the meadows area and wanted to try a run there.  He didn’t initially know why E decline the chance to check it out, but she know what the untracked snow would be like down at that elevation.  I brought them over and we had a lot of fun, but I think they learned how difficult it can be to ski deep, wet snow.

As the afternoon wore on, the mix of precipitation at the base elevations changed over to mostly wet snow and picked up in intensity.  We hung out for some après ski in the Great Room Grill and it was a bit tough to pull ourselves away as we watched the snow continue to fall.  A few pictures from today are available below:

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We were up at Stowe this afternoon, and thanks to the foot or so of snow that they’d received in the previous few days, on piste conditions were certainly improved over what we’d experienced the prior couple of Sundays.  I wouldn’t say it was a huge improvement though.  I had a combined group of students with another parent, and we split for one run where I took the more advanced guys down the lower part of Hayride.  It was a great challenge for them, steep with big bumps, but it was also still horribly icy.  I had one student who is thinking of bumping up to the young advanced group, and based on his eagerness and ability to manage that nastiness with nice control, it looks like he should move up.  The quad was still down, so the line at the gondola was very long, but lines were minimal at the double and triple.  When we rode the Lookout Double, the Lookout trail seemed like it had decent snow quality, although there were still some areas of low coverage.  I haven’t been on the double in a long time and I’d forgotten just how awesome the Lookout Trail actually is.

Tuesday, 2/23/2012 Update:  E and the boys were up at Stowe yesterday and conditions sounded similar, although they did enjoy the lack of weekend crowds.  Perhaps this current system will really be the one to get the conditions back on track for those heavily used trials, since it sounds like there could be a good shot of liquid equivalent in it.

This morning we woke up to find that 4.9 inches of 2-3% H₂O Champlain Powder™ had fallen at the house overnight.  I’d expected the more typical inch or so that we’d been receiving with the impulses of moisture that were supported by the upslope flow, but conditions for snow growth had clearly improved and we were happy with the surprise.  The Bolton-Stowe area was reporting 6-7 inches of new snow, so Ty and I headed up to Bolton to catch some of the morning freshies.  It seemed like the skiing was going to be great with another half foot on to of the 10 inches of dense snow they’d picked up in the previous couple of days.

Up at the Timberline base (~1,500’), I checked in a couple of spots and found 7 to 9 inches of new snow, which was a bit more than I’d expected based on the morning report.  Ty played in the new snow for a bit while we hung out and waited for the lift to open.  A few more people showed up, but the lineup was still only about 10 people when they started loading around 9:30 A.M.

We mixed up the skiing between on and off piste, and conditions were good, but not perfect.  The main wrinkle was that there had been a little bit of icing later yesterday before the overnight fluff, so that sat atop the previous snow.  The crust was thin and pretty inconsequential in terms of the actual skiing, but you could still hear it and the overall feel of the turns was therefore not as smooth as it might have been.  Some places, such as areas in the trees that had some protection, were totally devoid of the crust, so those spots were especially sweet.

I brought E’s camera for Ty to use, but we had to get home to get ready for afternoon ski program at Stowe, so we didn’t really have time to get set up for him to get any pictures.  So, the subjects for the day were just Ty and the surroundings, but I added some shots from this morning’s session below:

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Today we headed up to Bolton to get in on some of the 10 inches of snow that they’d picked up in the past couple of days, and it certainly didn’t disappoint.  The snow was derived from the typical northwest upslope flow that has been supplying just about all the precipitation we’ve received in the past several weeks, but for once it wasn’t ultra fluffy Champlain Powder™.  This snow actually had some substance to it.  Unfortunately I don’t have any information on the amount of liquid contained in Bolton’s recent snowfall, but I do know that the past few days have dropped 0.42 inches of liquid equivalent at our house (495’), and 1.23 inches of liquid equivalent up at the stake on Mt. Mansfield (~3,700’).  Since the Bolton Valley area has actually picked up more snow than Mt. Mansfield so far in this event, I’d estimate their liquid to be somewhere up around the number from the stake.  So, even though we still haven’t been in on any big synoptic snowstorms in quite a while, I’d say that Bolton finally managed to sneak in a moderate resurfacing with 1”+ liquid equivalent.

I noticed the effect of the new snow immediately in the morning when we hit Twice as Nice, which had been suffering with coverage a bit since it’s been allowed to bump up.  You could just fly right through the bump lines without having to worry about whether or not there was a rock or patch of ice on the back side of a mogul.  We were able to meet up with Stephen, Johannes, and Helena right after our first run, and everyone that hit Twice as Nice found it to be a blast.  There are a few black pitches on the trail, but for the most part it’s a blue square trail so the moguls are great for learning.  People seemed to know how nice it was because it was well skied, and a few of the icy spots started to reappear later in the day.

Yesterday was presumably the bigger fresh powder morning on the trails, but traffic may have been light with some of the wind holds, because there were fresh lines left on the sides of the trails and we found hardly any tracks in the trees.  We probably split the day about 50/50 in terms of time on and off piste, and had fun in the Showtime Glades, Enchanted Forest area, KP Glades, Villager Trees etc.  Our last run of the day in the Villager Trees required some uphill traversing though the deep powder left from the past several weeks, and that was tough on Helena and Dylan since it was the end of the day.  We got them though it though and they made some great turns once things were under way.  The fact that Stephen promised hot chocolate down at the lodge was a good motivator as well.

The depth of powder around on the mountain ranges somewhat depending on aspect, winds affects, traffic, etc. but the kids were constantly requesting that I check the depth of the snow as we made our travels through the trees, so I got a lot of sampling.  The values ranged anywhere from about nine inches up to almost four feet, so there is plenty of deep snow out there.  With this denser accumulation from this event though, it doesn’t actually take much to make it bottomless, so even higher traffic areas with depths on the lower end of that range were skiing beautifully.  I found a few random spots of crust around, but they were extremely scattered so I’m not sure exactly what caused them.  There had been talk of a bit of freezing drizzle on the mountain, but the way these crusty spots were so isolated makes me think it was the sun or something like that.  Weather wise today, it was simply excellent down at Timberline; the temperature was right around freezing, there was no wind, and the day featured a bit of sun and then a bunch of light snow.  Up at the Vista Summit though, things were socked in with clouds, the wind was pretty strong, and it was a much different scene.  That was really just the top few hundred feet of the main mountain as far as we could tell, but we only went up there once.  Some pictures from the day have been added below:

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