Vermont Skiing & Winter Weather
I headed up to Bolton Valley today and got in on some of the powder from the recent snowfall. The depth of the new snow was topping out in the 9-inch range, but the nice density gradient had it skiing deep just as Denis commented in his report from Stowe, and Powderfreak indicated in his initial update as well. It was another great April powder day in the Northern Greens, read my full report to see more pictures and details.
We headed up to Bolton today to check out the powder from our recent storm, and conditions were great. We had some snowfall in the mid morning period that gave way to more sun as we approached noontime. For all the details and powdery pictures, check out my report from Bolton today.
Waterbury event totals: 2.8” Snow/0.06” L.E.
After that quick inch of snow we picked up yesterday, that was it for snowfall down here at the house as far as I can tell. We were back up at Bolton for some more turns starting around midday, and it was snowing pretty hard for the first part of the afternoon. Friends that we met up there said that it had snowed like that all morning. It’s nice to see what’s going on up at Jay, because they were a bit left out of the pattern earlier in the season with so much activity focused to the south. I’ve added the 7-day and seasonal snowfall totals for some of the VT resorts below:
Jay Peak: 30” (359”)
Stowe: 18” (311”)
Bolton Valley: 14” (316”)
Killington: 4” (251”)
Right now the snowpack is 98 inches at the Mt. Mansfield stake, and if one looks at the SkiVT-L plot for the snow depths, this is right around the date for the typical maximum. The historical data suggests a small dip after the end of March, but the snowpack really seems to hang around at this level until roughly mid April before it actually starts to fall off., so I could see the peak snowpack depth being anywhere in that range, especially with the current weather pattern.
The upslope snow has been rolling in, and although we haven’t had a ton of snow from this event yet, snow surfaces are getting a nice freshening. This morning down at the house we were on our way toward picking up a quick additional inch of snow to put us at 2.8 inches for this end of the week event, and 9 inches for the week. Bolton was reporting 13 inches over that span, with the snow continuing to fall. Today we were back up at the mountain again for an afternoon session with Stephen and his kids, and for the first half of the afternoon it was snowing at a good clip. Everyone joined in for a run on Spell Binder, and using the knowledge about the aspects with best snow that the boys and I had learned yesterday, there were some really awesome bottomless turns available on the skier’s left. Even with just a few inches of additional snow, the skiing took quite a jump up in quality. We found the same snow setup on Tattle Tale, and all three boys had fun ripping up the powder in their own way. We gave Johannes first tracks on one line, and he decided that a figure 11 was the way to go, while Ty and Dylan accented his line with some curves. We’re starting to nickname Johannes “11”. For the full text and all the pictures, click through to the Bolton Valley trip report from today.
The boys and I hit the powder up at Bolton Valley today and found some great conditions. The snow continues to fall as indicated in the weather updates in the blog and the skiing just keeps improving. For all the details and powdery pictures, go to my March 25th report from Bolton Valley.
I headed up to the mountain for some turns this morning and got in my first powder of the week, with more powder likely to come as the upslope snow continues to fall. I skinned up at Timberline and found 3 to 5 inches of powder at 1,500′, and about 6 inches at 2,500′. The full details and pictures are in my Bolton Valley report from this morning.
We picked up 5.3 inches of total snow with this event down in the valley thanks to the second burst of snowfall that came through last night, and up at Bolton Valley as well as Stowe, they picked up a total of 8 inches of snow. I’ve added a picture of the radar image from around 10:45 P.M. last night that shows the snow still streaming into the area. I’ve added the north to south list of storm accumulations for the Vermont ski areas below, and additional details can be found in my morning update in the Northern New England thread at Americanwx.com.
Jay Peak: 6″
Burke: 5”
Smuggler’s Notch: 5”
Stowe: 8”
Bolton Valley: 8”
Mad River Glen: 5”
Sugarbush: 5”
Pico: 4”
Killington: 4”
Okemo: 5”
Bromley: 2”
Stratton: 4”
Mount Snow: 3”
I recieved an update from Joyce Holsten this morning that the current sale of the large chunk of Bolton’s Nordic/backcountry terrain is not going through, although the parcel is still up for sale.
I headed up to Bolton Valley today to catch some afternoon turns, and the sking was pretty nice. There were a couple of fresh inches, and conditions varied from wintry up top with the surfaces helped out by the new powder, to borderline spring-like down low with the surfaces helped out by the warmer temperatures. The powder off piste was certainly vairable, but there were nice turns depending on elevation and aspect. More details and images are in my Bolton Valley, VT 12MAR2011 report.
We spent the morning around at the house playing in the snow and taking care of snow removal, and then we headed up to Bolton Valley at some point after 1:00 P.M. to check out the new powder and get in some storm day turns. Bolton’s Vista Quad was on wind hold, but Timberline was running well and we spent the afternoon there. I did several depth checks in the 1,500’ to 2,500’ elevation range and got measurement of 26 to 31 inches for the depth of the new snow. There were some gusty winds at times, but Timberline is fairly protected and wind wasn’t bad except on the ridgelines. The new powder was just medium-density snow at ~10% H2O, and I guess the only thing that might made it better would be if it had been topped off with a bit of our Champlain Powder™ fulff, but let’s just say that it was quite a day to be out there. It was certainly not one to be missed, but in case you did, you can check out all the details and the powdery images in the full Bolton Valley trip report from today.