The streamers of moisture heading into our area at around 10:45 P.M. last night
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.
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.
There was some decent powder in the Villager Trees
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.
Dylan taking a face shot in deep powder on Secret Solitude
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.
Snow was quickly turning the area into a wintry scene both up on the mountain and down in the valley.
E and her co-director decided to cancel ski program at Stowe today due to so many parents being concerned about the large incoming storm, so I popped up to Bolton Valley for a bit this afternoon to see how some of the new snow was taking hold. The conditions were actually quite nice, as the new snow is dense and it seems to be bonding to the old snow as it cools down. I skied Hard Luck, which is fairly steep, and although I was certainly touching down on the old snow at times, even that was reasonably pliable and the new dense stuff was providing quite a ride even on pitches in the 30-degree range. I followed up with Beech Seal, smiling the whole way as I ripped fresh snow down the deserted slopes. I didn’t get any images of the new snow from up on the mountain, but I grabbed a shot out back at the house when I was making my weather observations at 4:30 P.M., and the snowy branches were representative of how the trees were starting to look up on the mountain. For all the details, check out the full report from up at Bolton today.
After earning turns and skiing with Stephen and Johannes in the early morning, I headed back to the house for a bit after that session, picked up E and the boys, and we caught up with Stephen and Johannes later in the morning to hit the powder for the rest of the day. We had some light snow and sunshowers in the later morning and early afternoon from yet another small weather system that was pushing through, and then more sunshine as the afternoon wore on. We got into plenty of that famous Vermont fluff, and all the boys seemed to have a good time. Click through to see all the picture and read the full report from today at Bolton.
I headed up for an early, pre lift-service session at Bolton this morning with Stephen and Johannes. We ascended Twice as Nice and hit Spell Binder for first tracks. On the headwall the snow was a little tricky due to some mid-storm skier traffic yesterday, as well as the wind that had picked up in the evening.
The skiing was still decent, even if not entirely bottomless on the headwall. Once we were lower down and out of the wind, the snow quality took a big jump up and anything untracked was just what one would expect. It wasn’t the lightest of the light in terms of Northern Vermont Champlain Powder™, but my analyses from yesterday indicated 5-6% H2O at our place down in the valley, and I’d say it easily skied like that as long as the wind hadn’t gotten to it. Click through to read the full report from today.
It was back on Wednesday when our current winter storm started coming into focus, but at that point the snow totals were still somewhat in question. However, by the yesterday/today timeframe it was looking like the local mountains could see a good foot of snow, so prospects for getting some powder on the slopes were promising. It actually hadn’t even started snowing when I left the house this morning around 6:45 A.M., but by the time I left Burlington sometime after 11:00 A.M. they’d picked up about 4 inches, and here at the house I found 6.3 inches at noontime. That meant that the snow was coming down at over an inch an hour in the valley, so up on the mountain they were likely getting blasted.
E and the boys didn’t have school, so around 1:00 P.M. once we were sure that the powder was building, we headed up to Bolton to get in some storm day skiing. When we first arrived at Timberline, the snowfall was moderate and the flakes were fairly small, but flake size and snowfall intensity were picking up. We started off with some Spell Binder, and the boys were clearly enjoying the powder with the enthusiastic comments coming out of them such as Ty’ “Beautiful Beauty”, and Dylan’s “That’s Talking Powder”; they were certainly original if not extremely descriptive. I did my first depth check on the new snow about halfway down Spell Binder, where the tally was 11 inches. For more pictures and the full story, click through to the full report from today at Bolton Valley.
Ty skins up the Bryant Trail and checks out the powder
Temperatures warmed up above freezing at all elevations in Northern Vermont at the end of last week, so we waited for the powder to build up over the long weekend before finally heading out this afternoon for turns. We had three small systems that dropped snow over the holiday weekend; down at the house we picked up 3.7 inches of snow in the form of 0.21 inches of liquid, and Bolton was reporting 5 inches of snow in the higher elevations. The new powder at the house had settled down to about 2 to 3 inches over the old base, so we knew there would be at least that much up on the mountain. Temperatures wound up being colder than we thought, but the powder was nice – we found 3 to 4 inches of settled powder in the lower village portion of the network at around 2,000’, and up at the Bryant Cabin elevation (~2,700’) the depths of new snow were 4 to 5 inches. It turned out to be plenty of fluff for the low and moderate angle pitches, so many nice powder turns were had, and it was also the first time that the boys had skinned all the way up to the cabin. Dylan had some binding issues near the bottom of the run, so I had to help him through and he got quite a ride. Read about the entire adventure in the full backcountry trip report from today.
Dylan drops in on "Dylan's Drop-Off" in the KP Glades area today at Bolton Valley
It hasn’t been an extremely snowy week, but we did have at least a modest storm in the Tuesday timeframe that dropped 3.6 inches of snow at the house and close to a foot of snow on Bolton Valley. Still, that was back on Tuesday, and things would be getting somewhat tracked up by the weekend, so our plan was to head up to Bolton’s backcountry network with the boys to get in some easy access powder. That idea changed quickly though, when we got a call from James, who was planning to head up to Bolton with Tom and Amy. We still found plenty of powder on terrain serviced by the lifts, and it even snowed and squalled at times to keep surfaces fresh, so a good time was had by all. For all the details and pictures, click through to the full report from Bolton Valley today.
