Bolton Outlaw Archives - J&E Productions

March 20, 2024November 3, 2024

Bolton Valley, VT 20MAR2024

An image of a ski track in deep powder after a mid-March snowstorm brought over a foot of new snow to Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont

An image of heavy snowfall at the Wilderness Summit area during a mid-March snowstorm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Solidly heavy snowfall at the Bolton Valley base area elevations today gave way to very heavy snowfall coming down at over 2 inches per hour in the summit areas

In Bolton Valley’s lift rotation schedule, today was the first time the Wilderness Chair would be running since the weekend, so it was a good place to be to get in on all the snow that’s fallen in the past couple of days. So, after ski touring yesterday, today seemed like a good opportunity for some lift-served turns with Wilderness thrown in.

It was snowing all the way down to the valleys this morning, but not necessarily accumulating too efficiently in the lower elevations. Up above 2,000’ in the Village though, snow was accumulating easily. Snowfall was moderate and steady in roughly the ½” to 1”/hr. range when I first arrived, but by the time I’d made my first run and worked my way over to Wilderness, it had picked up substantially to somewhere in the 2”/hr. range. It was the type of snowfall that covers you in white flakes in mere moments if you aren’t moving around on the lift enough to shake it off.

An image of the Valley Road area with powder ski tracks in additional snow that had fallen after grooming during a mid-March snowstorm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Even areas that had been groomed were taking on additional snow and had seen a solid resurfacing from all the recent snows.

As might be expected with substantial snow falling day after day, the ski conditions are excellent out there right now. There’s still firm snow that you can find on piste in high traffic areas and steeper slopes, but just head off to untracked or lightly tracked areas, and you won’t really be interacting at all with the old base. I found that even well-groomed areas could be really nice – my first run down Alta Vista was on the groomed surface, but it hadn’t seen much skier traffic at all, and there had been at least another couple of inches of snow since it was groomed, so the turns were all silky smooth with no noise anywhere. Off piste I found about a foot of powder up in the 3,000’ range, and slightly less down around 2,000’, but there’s enough liquid equivalent in all the new snow now that it will support bottomless turns throughout that elevation range.

Wilderness was skiing really well thanks to the especially low skier traffic in recent days, and they had Bolton Outlaw open, which I hadn’t skied in quite a while. It’s steep enough and has probably seen enough traffic from ski touring that I was still contacting the old base, but I was able to cut over to the steep terrain of the Wilderness Liftline Headwall, and that was nearly untracked and yielded excellent turns. The Wilderness Chair stopped three times in fairly short order when I was nearing the Wilderness Summit on one of my runs, and I thought that it might be due to wind issues, but the lift operator at the base let me know that it was just issues with people loading – apparently they were still working out the shape of the loading ramp there. All that new snow can bring about complications that I never would have thought of.

An image of evergreens coated with fresh snow during an ongoing mid-March snowstorm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Evergreens around the mountain today bore the fruits of continued rounds of recent snowfall.

The snowpack in the Northern Greens is in good shape – the depth at the Mt. Mansfield Stake passed 80 inches today, so these recent storms have helped it cruise right above average for this time of year. There’s still more snow in the forecast right through the weekend, so it wouldn’t be surprising if the snowpack depth increased further in the coming days.

A weather alert map from the National Weather Service office in Burlington Vermont showing a Snow Squall Warning for the western slopes of the Northern Green Mountains during a mid-March period of repeated snowfall events — The rounds of snow just keep rolling through the area, and the Snow Squall Warning put out by the National Weather Service Office in Burlington is just what you’d expect as the heavy snow hits the western slopes of the Northern Greens

December 17, 2022December 29, 2022

Bolton Valley, VT 17DEC2022

An image of Ty skiing fresh powder on from Winter Storm Diaz on the Bolton Outlaw Trail at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont

An image of Ty skiing powder on the upper slopes of Wilderness after Winter Storm Diaz at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Ty Shredding some of today’s fresh powder on the upper slopes of the Peggy Dow’s run at Bolton Valley. Winter Storm Diaz dropped a good 16 inches of fresh snow on the upper slopes of Bolton, and the wind direction was perfect to avoid the scouring often seen on the upper pitches of Wilderness.

Since Winter Storm Diaz dropped another good shot of snow overnight, our plan yesterday was to head up to Bolton for more lift-served skiing. Making a final check on the snow report before heading up though, I discovered that the resort had lost power like a lot of other spots around the area. With that news, and the announcement that the Wilderness Uphill Route was open, we switched our plans over to ski touring at Wilderness. When we got to the resort, power was back on and the lifts were running, but since we’d already taken the time to gear up for it, we stuck with the ski touring plan since it held the potential for a lot more untracked snow anyway.

With the existing base snow from ahead of the storm not entirely consolidated, it was tough to get a sense for how much new snow the resort had picked up specifically from this cycle. But, we were able to get total snowpack depths, and with repeated measurements by both Ty and me, we came in with total settled depths of 16” at 2,000’ and 20” around 3,000’ The resort updated their storm accumulations and reported 12” new at 2,000’ and 16” new at 3,000’, so that fit perfectly with what our measurements were suggesting.

The skin track Wilderness Uphill Route was nicely set from previous traffic, and there were actually two tracks that let us skin side-by-side for easier conversation. Traffic on Lower Turnpike had been moderate, and we counted about 20 descent tracks. I wasn’t sure if we were going to go all the way to the Wilderness Summit depending on how scoured the upper elevations were, but with a lot of the flow with this event coming from the east, there was essentially zero drifting even at the highest elevations, so that set up some potentially great skiing on the upper slopes.

An image of Ty sitting on a bench with snow at the Wilderness Summit at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Ty enjoys a snowy seat this afternoon at the Wilderness Summit

The snow from this storm cycle certain fell right-side-up, and there was a lot of substance to the lower layers, but it skied DEEP. We quickly discovered that even on 115 mm fat skis, low and moderate angle pitches just didn’t cut it. You had to hit black diamond pitches or higher, and once you did, the powder skiing really rocked. We hit the steepest pitches we could find, like the upper slopes of Peggy Dow’s and the Cougar Headwall, and even when we tried to test the limits of the snowpack by attempting to get down to the ground on turns, you just couldn’t. We picked up about 1.30” of liquid equivalent from this storm down at our site in the valley, so the mountain must have had at least 1.50” of liquid atop the previous base. I’m not quite sure how this storm brought the slopes to an almost midwinter feel in terms of substance and coverage, but the combination of liquid equivalent, right-side-up snow, and whatever existing base there was, just hit the sweet spot to make that happen.

An image of Ty Telemark skiing in deep powder from Winter Storm Diaz on the Bolton Outlaw Trail at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Ty dropping into some powdery Telemark turns on Bolton Outlaw

When we were about halfway through our first descent and only had moderate and lower angle terrain below us, I suggested we stop the descent there and hit the Wilderness Summit again to try Bolton Outlaw for our next descent. Bolton Outlaw is quite steep with a lot of obstacles, and it often gets scoured and/or skied enough to make coverage an issue, but from what we’d seen of it, and what we’d experience with the skiing up to that point, it seemed like it might be just the ticket. And it was – it had just the pitch we needed, and coverage was too good to be true. Each time I’d come over a rise and over a ledge I’d expect to hear a rock, or a log, or something under my skis… but that just didn’t happen. We’re of course talking touring levels of skier traffic here, but whether you were skiing packed or untracked snow, you just didn’t break through to whatever was below. It’s still hard to figure out how the coverage got so good without a real consolidated base below, but I’d put it right up there with some of the best runs we’ve had on Bolton Outlaw during any part of the season.

April 10, 2020April 18, 2020

Bolton Valley, VT 10APR2020

An image of ski tracks in powder snow on the Bolton Outlaw trail after an April snowstorm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont

An image of fresh snow from an April snowstorm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — With the current storm ongoing, a trip to the higher elevations revealed that there’s already been a solid coating of fresh snow put down

As the forecasts have been hinting at over the past several days, a late season winter storm has moved into the area as we close out the week. The forecasts have been suggesting the potential for a foot or more of snow along the spine of the Northern Greens, and as is common in these late season events, substantially lower accumulations were expected upon descent down into the valleys.

While the initial stages of this storm were focused in New Hampshire and Maine, producing more than a half foot of snow at relatively low elevations, the more potent part of the system for our area was expected to be the upslope precipitation on the back side of the storm. The precipitation at our house at 500’ elevation down in the Winooski Valley had largely been rain for this event, but this morning we began to get some snow and a bit of accumulation.

The snow really struggled to accumulate in the valleys today, but up in the mountains it was a different situation. By midafternoon as I checked on the Bolton Valley live webcams I’d say there was already an inch or two at 2,100’ in the Village. For the local mountains, the slightly lower temperatures had definitely helped promote accumulations today relative to yesterday, where you could see the new snow down at the main base kind of accumulate and melt back to expose areas of old snow. Those areas of snow were pretty well covered up this afternoon. From images shown by the Vista Peak cam, it was clear that there had been at least a few inches of snow up at 3,150’, but it was hard to get a detailed sense for the new snow due to the winds.

What I’d seen from the webcams by the afternoon was certainly enough to get me to head up to the mountain for an exploratory tour, but I wasn’t quite sure enough of conditions to entice the rest of the family to go.

At the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road at roughly 340’, there were no signs of snow accumulation, but right around 900’ you could see the first traces of white, and they quickly jumped up by the time you hit the Bolton Valley Welcome Sign at ~1,000’. There were a couple of inches of new accumulation at the Timberline Base, and continuing on up to the Village. I found a solid 4-5” in the parking lots. Heading farther upward with my tour in the Wilderness area revealed the following elevation profile with respect to storm totals:

340’: 0”
900’: T
1,000’: ½-1”
1,500’: 2”
2,000’: 4-5”
2,500’: 7”
3,000’: 8-9”

Right near the start of my ascent on Lower Turnpike, a skier cam swishing by through the powder on his descent and shouted “Don’t head up, it’s not worth it!”, but I laughed in reply because it was obvious he was being sarcastic. The turns looked fantastic and belied his remark even down at that elevation with a nice 5-6” of medium-weight powder.

An image of the Wilderness Chairlift with a fresh coating a of April snow at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — The chairs at the bottom of the Wilderness Lift revealing a fresh coating of snow.

Indeed, despite this being a late season storm, the snow wasn’t really wet at all out there today (at least where I was touring in the 2,000’+ range). It was reasonably dense and offered plenty of bottomless turns, but certainly not unlimited bottomless turns on all the steepest pitches. We’ve had roughly 1.25” of liquid equivalent from this event down at the house, so there’s certainly a decent amount of L.E. in that snow at elevation where they’ve had little if any rain. Today I toured up to the Wilderness Summit, then around to Bolton Outlaw and on back down toward Lower Turnpike. The turns were excellent and there had been very little skier traffic.

It was interesting up on the mountain today because a bit of sunshine appeared near the start of the tour, but by the time I was finishing up it was pounding heavy snow made up of big flakes. It was in the 20s F and snowing so hard in the Village at that point that it felt like it had to be accumulating down in the valley, but it was an impressive gradient as I headed back down the mountain and the snow still wasn’t really accumulating much below the 1,000’ level.

January 5, 2019

Bolton Valley, VT 05JAN2019

An image of Ty skiing powder in White Rabbit area of Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont — Ty enjoys the great weather and takes in some powder today on our visit to Bolton Valley

With help from our most recent winter storm, Bolton Valley is reporting 6 to 9 inches of new snow over the past several days, so Ty and I decided to head up today to ski a bit of that powder. We got to the Village in the late morning, and were surprised to find the upper parking lots were hitting capacity. We poked around in the lots for a bit though, and eventually got a spot from someone who was leaving. Parking at the main base was at an unusual premium today because there was a big Nordic race taking place. They certainly had a really fantastic day for the event – the sky was a mix of sun and clouds, and temperatures were just edging above freezing at the 2,000’ level.

An image of snow banks in the parking lots near the village at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Fresh snow covering snow banks today in the busy Bolton Valley parking lot

With temperatures expected to rise a few degrees above freezing, Ty and I quickly got on our way over to Wilderness to make sure we could get in some powder turns before any potential temperature effects on the snow. We started off with a warm up on Bolton Outlaw, connecting down to the Wilderness Woods area and Lower Turnpike, where we found plenty of powder along the edges of the runs. I was definitely leery of the subsurface on Bolton Outlaw based on my experience over at Timberline on Thursday, but I ended up being really impressed with the overall conditions we found. The new snow has settled some and it’s now had a chance to form a much better bond to the underlying surface. In addition, there’s definitely been some additional liquid equivalent added to the surface snow relative to what I found earlier in the week. There was plenty of loose snow on Bolton Outlaw, but even when you got down to the subsurface there was substantial grip. Steep, natural snow trails like Bolton Outlaw being in good shape bodes well for the overall surface conditions on the mountain, so it’s not surprising that most terrain has been reopened now.

“There was a good half foot or more of powder in there in general, and a nice subsurface that made for some excellent overall turns.”

Ty and I also visited White Rabbit, where we found just a couple of tracks and acres of fresh powder. The freezing level was rising, so we had to start paying attention to aspect and sun protection, but the effects on the powder were still fairly minimal overall. There was a good half foot or more of powder in there in general, and a nice subsurface that made for some excellent overall turns.

The forecast suggests we’ve got a small system coming in to the area tonight, and then another couple of larger systems in the coming week, so folks should be alert for more potential powder turns in the near future.

December 18, 2018December 19, 2018

Bolton Valley, VT 18DEC2018

An image of a ski track in powder snow in the Wilderness Woods area at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont

An image of snow drift near the Wilderness Summit area at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — One of the impressive snow drifts I found while ski touring near the Wilderness Summit today at Bolton Valley. Our recent bout of upslope snow brought some nice accumulations of powder, but also a shot of wind as well!

This week, the pace of winter storms and snowfall has slowed down a bit here in the Green Mountains compared to what we were seeing at the beginning of the month, but the weather models have been suggesting the chance for some of our classic upslope snow on the back side of this latest system. Scott put together a nice summary of the event’s potential at Braatencast, and it certainly looked like we’d have a chance for some decent powder turns today.

With the intensity of the snowfall at our house yesterday evening, it was pretty clear the mountains would have at least a few inches of new snow, so I planned to catch some turns in the morning. When I checked the Bolton Valley snow report this morning, I was sort of surprised to see the mountain only reporting 4 inches of new snow, especially since we’d already picked up about 5 inches down at the house. I figured that they might have missed out on some of the snow because it was blowing downwind of the Green Mountain Spine, but after touring around at the resort today, I can say that definitely wasn’t the case.

An image of the Bear Run street sign in deep snowbanks along the Bolton Valley Access Road near Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — As I drove up the Bolton Valley Access Road, it was very obvious in places that hadn’t been scoured by wind that the mountain had seen a good shot of fresh snow.

I was actually planing to earn some turns and ski tour a bit before the lifts opened at 9:00 A.M., but I was up there later than I’d hoped and it was right around opening time. That didn’t matter too much though, because winds were fierce and the Vista Quad wasn’t even running, so I just headed off to Wilderness for a tour as I’d initially planned.

With those harsh winds, you’d be hard pressed to know that much snow fell at all from just looking around the base area parking lots. The accumulations were really patchy on a lot of snowbanks because the new snow had been ripped away and sent elsewhere. Once I got onto the skin track on Lower Turnpike and out of the wind though, the actual snow accumulations became apparent. Indeed I’d say that the 4 inches reported was a safe way to go in terms of being conservative, but aside from scoured areas, that definitely represented the low end of accumulations I encountered. Omitting the extremes of drifts and scoured areas, my checks revealed settled snow depths of 4 to 10 inches throughout my tour. That wasn’t really elevation dependent, it seemed to just be a factor of how the snow sifted down in various areas. Drifts I found up around the 3,000’ elevation were generally in the 2 to 3-foot range, though there were some bigger ones as well of course.

“Omitting the extremes of drifts and scoured areas, my checks revealed settled snow depths of 4 to 10 inches throughout my tour.”

The skiing was obviously much different than what you would get from just four inches of fluff. With a number like that I’d be expecting to get good turns on only low angle terrain, but bottomless turns were pretty standard all the way up to about single black diamond pitch as long as the subsurface was smooth. I was on my 115 mm boards, but one could certainly still float on something skinnier. I’d say the storm must have put down a half inch of liquid or so on the mountain based on what I was skiing.

Upon reaching the Wilderness Summit on my tour, I started down Bolton Outlaw, thinking it would be pretty smooth from minimal early season traffic. It wasn’t long before I realized that the Wilderness Lift has indeed run this season (I actually rode it with Stephen on opening day), so there’s been enough skier traffic to produce some moguls. I was definitely hitting the subsurface with the steep pitch and moguls, so I quickly dove off into the Outlaw Woods, and the turns in there with a smooth subsurface turned out to be just about perfect. I was also able to get first tracks in the lower Wilderness Woods, and they were excellent as well. Getting into the trees was generally a great option because the snow had settled in there very nicely thanks to protection from the wind. I hung around for a couple of lift-served runs off the Snowflake Lift, and with the typical low traffic there I found plenty of untracked snow.

An image showing ski tracks in powder snow on the Lower Turnpike trail at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont — In areas where winds hadn’t affected the snow today, the turns were simply wonderful in up to 10 inches of powder.

This was definitely an upslope snowfall event that was focused on the mountains. When I left the resort and headed west toward the Champlain Valley, snow accumulations really tapered off. There was just a bit of accumulation in the Richmond Village area and it seems like just a trace to nil in the Burlington area.

We’ve got a warmer weather system expected to affect the area at the end of the week, so the next chance for snow won’t be until Saturday afternoon into the evening on the back side of that storm.

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