Corn Snow Archives - Page 6 of 12

March 13, 2016

Stowe, VT 13MAR2016

An image of Luke in the air after a jump in the Tyro Terrain Park at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont

An image of Elisabeth skiing on the Gondolier Trail at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — Elisabeth enjoying today’s spring snow at Stowe Mountain Resort

The sunny weather and soft spring skiing from yesterday carried right into the second half of the weekend as we visited Stowe this afternoon for the BJAMS ski program. Ken’s tweaked knee from last Sunday was diagnosed as a sprained MCL, so I’ve heard he’ll be off skis for four weeks while it heals. Erica had to do a bunch of shuffling around of today’s groups due to various absences this week, and I actually wound up with a group of 10 students. That’s a substantial group even with both Ken and I to manage it together, but fortunately Big Luke was able to step in for his dad and give us a reasonable ratio of coaches to students. All told then with students and coaches, our group was a dozen strong, and I suspected that anywhere we went with our crazy crew… people were definitely going to know that we were around.

“There’s not too much else to say about today’s skiing – the snow is in spring mode and so are the students, so it’s simply bumps, and jumps… and more jumps.”

There was no question about the softness of the snow today at any elevation, and with my group ready promptly and raring to go at startup time, we headed right over to the Gondi for a sampling of its terrain. I could see that there were plenty of bumps on Gondolier, so we tackled that first with a quick photo session in one of the first bump lines. From there were moved over to the Fourrunner Quad and it was lap after lap with spring snow and visits to the terrain parks due to very high demand within the group. By around 3:00 P.M. it was time to head back to Spruce for the s’mores session, and everyone finished the day off with what appears to be becoming the customary “post s’mores free skiing session” off the Sunny Spruce Quad. I think almost all the skiers in the group, even Big Luke, dropped their poles for their final runs. And with our snowboarders Cole and Ryan as part of the crew, I may have been the only person left with poles at the end of the day. Those huge snow whales on West Slope are still going strong, and as you can imagine it was quite a raucous time out there on that terrain with the afternoon sun and continued soft snow.

I finished up a bit early and was able to hike up for a bunch of extra photos on West Slope, and man what a treat it was to be able to photograph with so… much… light! I had the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM out for the first time in a while, and was able to run at a shutter speed of 1/8000 sec and still stay down around ISO 100. The bright March sun on glaring snow was almost too much, and I nearly had to stop down a bit to avoid overexposing the images. For now though, it worked out at F/2.8 once I got all my settings tweaked, so hopefully folks will enjoy the sampling of action shots I’ve put with the report. One of my favorite images from the day was definitely Big Luke in the Tyro Terrain Park – he actually requested the shot, so I had plenty of time to set it up just the way I wanted. He aired it out and I think he’ll be pleased with the result.

An image of Dylan, Ryan, and Cole on the Mountain Triple Chair Lift at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — Chairlift Games!

There’s not too much else to say about today’s skiing – the snow is in spring mode and so are the students, so it’s simply bumps, and jumps… and more jumps. We’ll see what next weekend brings, but the weather models are certainly showing murmurings of a potential winter storm about a week out. We’ll have to see if we can finally get one of these to take a decent track or whether we’ll get another one of the many raw deals we’ve had this season, but I suspect the winter weather enthusiasts are going to have an interesting week of model watching to see what this potential storm does.

March 12, 2016

Bolton Valley, VT 12MAR2016

An image from the Vista Summit of Bolton Valley out to west looking at Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks

An image of Cole riding his snowboard in soft spring snow at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Cole shredding some of the soft spring snow that we found today at Bolton Valley

Today was a sunny, spring-like day in Northern Vermont, with temperatures in the 50s F in the valleys and snow corning up nicely on the mountain slopes. Dylan’s friend Cole was coming over in the mid to late afternoon to stay for the night, and since he had his snowboard for tomorrow’s BJAMS ski program at Stowe, we headed up to Bolton Valley for a few sunset runs.

There was still probably an hour of daylight left when we arrived, and after a quick warmup run on Beech Seal off the Mid Mountain Chair, we headed up to the Vista Summit. We just missed our chance to catch Hard Luck before patrol closed it for the night, but it looked quite nice with the soft spring snow. On our next run we did get to hit Alta Vista, and the skier’s left that often holds powder was again delivering the goods in the form of beautiful spring corn snow. I’d say that was my favorite area of the day, and I heard Cole mention how he liked it as well. I was worried that the snow would start to tighten up as the sun went down, but it stayed quite soft at least up to the point we left at around 6:00 P.M.

An image of Dylan skiing the Beech Seal trail at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Dylan enjoying some spring turns today at Bolton Valley

Aside from the skiing, one of the most fun parts of the day was playing with the spring snow while we rode the chair, tossing snowballs from one side of the chair, up and over the tow cable, to be caught by the person at the other end. Our record was 8 in a row before that snowball finally disintegrated, but the boys are already excited to try it some more tomorrow at Stowe – it looks like we’ve got another find spring day on the way tomorrow based on the forecast.

March 6, 2016March 6, 2016

Stowe, VT 06MAR2016

An image of the Spruce Peak Village at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont

An image of Ken skiing the Green Acres area at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — Ken dropping into a line in Green Acres, where we found some of the best snow today at Stowe.

Based on my tour of the Bolton Valley backcountry yesterday, I didn’t anticipate skiing much powder today with our BJAMS ski group today at Stowe, and therefore I packed narrower skis for me and the boys. I’d say it was the right call, because we spent most of our time on piste, and aside from our initial runs on the softened slopes of lower Spruce Peak, the snow we found was roughly 20% decent and 80% crap.

Fortunately for us, we did start out on the lower slopes of Spruce Peak for the beginning of this afternoon’s session, and off the Sunny Spruce Quad the snow had softened in the sun from top to bottom. The boys had taken some earlier runs, and announced that we should head for Freddie’s Chute. I couldn’t believe that they were serious, because Freddie’s has all natural snow, faces south, and is loaded with ledges and rocks that quickly catch the sun and burn out the snow. Low and behold though, the coverage was there, so even though we haven’t had any really great winter storm cycles in the past few weeks (or at all this season for that matter) the storms of mixed precipitation that we have had are substantiating the snowpack in the mountains to some degree.

After some good turns on the lower slopes of Spruce Peak, we decided to do a few runs off the Sensation Quad. I hadn’t taken the group there at all this season, so it seemed like a good day to do it with no plans for our typical Mansfield powder explorations. I was actually surprised to see all of Spruce Line open for business aside from the initial headwall, and that’s amazing because patrol never seems to open that even when we have a ton of snow. We decided to make our way there by dropping into Green Acres, and that was where we undeniably found some of the best snow of the day. The high elevation and evergreen protection kept the snow soft and powdery in there, and it was deep enough that it was one of the few times today that I wished I’d brought wider skis. Spruce Line had some good shots, but the snow was generally dense or wind-packed, so while good, there wasn’t any of the powdery snow that we’d found in Green Acres. We did some additional runs off Sensation, hitting Sterling, Upper Smugglers, and Main Street Headwall, but they were all generally a mess of ice and firm snow with decent surfaces few and far between. Ken’s description of the worst areas was “plate ice”, which is that glare ice that’s got no redeeming qualities aside from the novelty of seeing the treads of the groomers carved into it. It’s just hideous stuff that really nobody in their right mind should have to ski.

Clouds were moving in at times, and with afternoon temperatures cooling down, snow that had softened in the sun was starting to firm up, so we headed back down to the lower slopes to finish off the day. We did a few more laps off the Sunny Spruce Quad, and even down there the snow wasn’t as soft as it was earlier, so it was changing from corn to frozen granular and becoming much less inspiring. We found that a number of us have similar boot sized and we started to switch around skis – I got to try Jack’s 163 cm Nordica Bad Mind skis (120-84-109), and that was a lot of fun because unlike my Salomon Scream 10 Pilot Hots, they’ve got some edge. I stayed on them for the rest of the day, and I thank Jack for the demo. Not only did his skis have edges, but they’ve only got a half season on them, so they’ve still got plenty of pop in them unlike my Salomons that are over a decade old.

As the boys finished off the last few runs on their own, Ken and I took a run through the Ridge Glades and down in the glades below along the right of East Run. Some of that terrain off to the side of East Run is really steep, probably 35 degrees, and in horrible shape. Ken came into one of those steep lines very aggressively and had a pretty big tumble where his equipment went everywhere. He was generally OK, although he did say he tweaked his knee a bit and something popped, so he’s going to have to assess how things go over the next few days to see if it’s anything serious. That area of trees definitely fit in with the general 20% decent/80% crap, where there was probably 20% decent snow on the whole slope, and the rest was a combination of ice, roots, stumps, dirt, and whatever else isn’t snow – it’s just hideous. We do appear to have some snow coming into the area tomorrow, so hopefully that will add a bit more to the snowpack in areas that need it.

February 28, 2016

Stowe, VT 28FEB2016

An image of Ken skiing the Kitchen Wall area at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont

An image of Dylan skiing the Kitchen Wall area of Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — Dylan drops into one of the Kitchen Wall snowfields today to enjoy some of the snow delivered to Mt. Mansfield from the past couple storms.

On our ski outing yesterday we got a taste of the current backcountry conditions at Bolton Valley, and today we got to see how the lift-served terrain at Stowe has been fairing since the snows from Winter Storm Petros. With additional snows falling overnight from another moderate system skirting the northern border of Vermont, conditions were improving dramatically the farther north one went. We had students in our group from Wolcott and Hyde Park that had picked up 4 inches of snow at their houses, and Jay Peak saw another 7 to 10 inches overnight.

Ken and I had a fairly large group with 7 students today, and based on the way the snow had played out yesterday at Bolton, we immediately took everyone to the top of the Gondola and into the lower reaches of the Kitchen Wall terrain to get a feel for how the powder was skiing. The snow was excellent, with a good 6 to 8 inches of midwinter powder for everyone to enjoy. The students commented on numerous occasions how good the snow was. The best powder lasted down to about the 3,000’ mark before it began to get thinner and a bit wetter. At that point we’d stick to the trails, where conditions varied from midwinter snow to spring like, to ice, depending on elevation and aspect.

An image of Jonah skiing the Kitchen Wall area of Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — Jonah attacking a line on the Kitchen Wall

The kids had liked the first run so much that on our next one we took the high Kitchen Wall traverse and dropped into the untracked powder in one of the snowfields. There was a good 8-12” of snow up there, so bottomless turns were the norm. Even down below in the evergreens we found plenty of untracked lines and the kids’ overall energy was very positive. One line that we found ended up taking us basically through a cave, and you had to do some major body contortions to pull that line off smoothly.

Ken was thinking of paying a visit to Ravine, and I told him that we’d likely be able to ski the top ¼ at least based on what we found last week. We were all amazed to find the top entrance absolutely untracked at 3:00 P.M. on a Sunday afternoon, so some of the boys dropped in, and we eventually found out why it was being left alone. There was nice powder on top, but presumably some of the rain from Winter Storm Petros had wrecked the subsurface. It was a moonscape under there, so after skiing the available powder for a few hundred yards, we switched out to Gondolier for the rest of the run.

Unfortunately for Ken, he really brought the wrong pair of skis today. He was at Sugarbush yesterday where he found bulletproof conditions and struggled on skis with no edges. Anticipating the same thing today, he brought his freshly-sharpened, skinny, 195 cm old-school cruising skis. He couldn’t believe that we were skiing almost a foot of powder up high, and his long, skinny skis were essentially the exact opposite of what he would have liked to have in tight, powder-filled trees. We joked about how we used to ski everything on such skis, no matter how tight, but the new shorter, fatter, rockered, twin-tipped boards are so superior, and one can forget how much work it takes to push around those long sticks.

An image of the West Slope trail at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont with large snowmaking whales — Huge snow whales made for fun times on West Slope today

We finished off the day over at Spruce Peak, where areas in the sun were already turning to spring corn snow. The resort had made some huge snow whales on West Slope, and everyone was lapping those, which held soft snow and some great contours and drops. It’s definitely starting to feel like spring with the lasting sunlight we’ve got, but apparently we’ve still got some winter storm to come – the forecast suggests we’ve got three potential storms this week, so it should be interesting to see where things stand next weekend. Right now the Mt. Mansfield Stake is at 34”, so if things break right perhaps we’ll hit that magic 40” mark that means that most of the off piste terrain is reasonably well covered.

January 31, 2016

Stowe, VT 31JAN2016

An image of the ski groups at the BJAMS ski program at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont as they begin their afternoon program session

An image of Jay, Jack, Emma, and Dylan on the Meadows Quad Chair at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — Today was Jack and Emma’s first time riding the Meadows Chair and exploring some of the Meadows terrain during the BJAMS ski program at Stowe.

E was short on instructors for our BJAMS ski program at Stowe today, so I took on a different group than my usual cadre of experts. I was with Jack, Emma, and Nolan, who are beginner skiers making generally wedge turns. Dylan came along to help me, and Nolan’s brother Lucas was also able to assist. Although our three beginning students have ridden the Inspiration Chair already, I started them off by ascending the small slope up to the magic carpet to let the kids work on edging. We proceeded with a couple of magic carpet runs to check speed control and wedge turns. That went swimmingly, so we moved to Inspiration and worked on wedge turns until everyone had successfully complete the short course of gates that was set up there. Then, it was on to the Meadows Chair.

Today’s visit to the Meadows Chair was the first for Jack and Emma, so naturally that was very exciting for them. Nolan was able to stick with his brother Lucas, which meant that Dylan and I were able to work with the others and give them specific attention. We took the easiest route down from the top of the Meadows Chair, which included some of the gentle terrain features (banked slalom, humps, spines) that the resort has set up for beginners. Both of the kids did a great job (Jack loves the banked slalom), and this was aided by the superb snow conditions that were available today – temperatures in the 30s F created snow that was beautifully soft but not mushy. Jack and Emma are both pretty much at the Stem Christi stage now, and I was able to start working with Emma on that during our last run after Jack had to leave. She’s in fact already done those types of turns before and is certainly ready to improve upon them, so I think she’ll only be incorporating more and more parallel components into her skiing as the next few weeks progress.

It looks like the coming week will be generally mild with some mixed precipitation, so I suspect the slopes will generally be soft until temperatures drop to more February-like levels. At that point surfaces will likely tighten up, so hopefully plenty of new snow will be on the way.

January 10, 2016January 11, 2016

Stowe, VT 10JAN2016

An image showing some boys in the BJAMS ski program having a snack at the Octagon atop Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont

An image of Dylan carving a turn on the Liftline trail at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — Dylan cuts hard into a carve today at Stowe, where soft, spring-like snow was in plentiful supply.

The forecast for today has looked dicey for a while. With a warm storm passing west of the area there was the chance for rain, but depending on the timing of the precipitation, one could encounter just warm temperatures and soft snow. As the forecast was refined it began to look like it would be rain for Sunday afternoon ski program at Stowe, and indeed it was pouring when we arrived at the mountain a bit before noon. With the intensity of the rain, and the addition of some wind, I wasn’t planning to bring my group on the slopes, but fortunately by 1:00 PM when we assembled for program, the rain have moved out to reveal just cloudy skies.

We had a small group today of me and the boys, along with Jack and Norris. There were few enough people that Ken and Luke were able to come along with us as additional chaperones. We started off with a run on the Meadows Quad, and found the snow nice and soft as expected. We stepped it up to the Sunny Spruce Quad and started to hit some wind near the top, but it was still pretty tame and didn’t suggest that we needed to avoid going higher.

An image of Ty carving a turn and pushing some soft snow on the Liftline trail at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — Ty cuts into some soft snow on the steep terrain of Liftline

In general, the rain we’d experienced had been pretty light, so we decided to venture over to Mansfield and see what conditions were like on the big mountain. The Gondola was on wind hold, so we caught a ride on the Fourrunner Quad and encountered minimal wind until the last few hundred feet of the trip near the Octagon. Up there it was a wind driven rain, so we quickly started on our way down and headed to Liftline because it seemed to have a lot of fun contours left over from snowmaking whales. The snow was beautifully soft, which is certainly atypical of the usual conditions there, and the boys couldn’t get over the “giant moguls the size of coach busses”. Indeed you could have a lot of fun playing around on those huge features, using them as jumps, quarter pipes, spines, or whatever. The boys enjoyed it so much that we had to do it again the very next run.

Following that, the boys deemed it time for a break at the Octagon, so we went in and had a snack. It seems as though our timing was good, because while we were inside it seemed to be a real wind-driven tempest outside. That bout of rain had settled down significantly by the time we were ready for our next run, where we skied Nosedive as a good option to get us heading back toward the Spruce Peak Base. We’d ridden up with another skier who said that Nosedive was totally deserted, and groomed nice and smooth, so we were happy to pay it a visit to cruise a nice long run. Indeed below the upper switchbacks, Nosedive was just as he said, so with the boys hitting it at Mach 5 I decided that it was a good run to go for nonstop and really burn the legs. There was a quick pause at the junction with National, but other than that it was a great way to earn one’s dinner. Crossing back on the Over Easy, Ken and I both agreed that in general the conditions today were such that you could just forget about the surface – your skis were simply going to hold in the soft snow and all you had to do was let them carve. There still was a spot or two with hard snow out there, and they would definitely catch you off guard when you were so used to just blithely cruising the slopes.

Back at Spruce Peak, Ken, Luke, and I did one more run on the Sunny Spruce Quad, but the boys kept lapping it until it shut down. In the lodge it sounded like we’d timed our break at the Octagon quite well, because it had rained pretty hard and soaked some folks during that period. This latest infusion of liquid into the snowpack is going to create a bomber base as temperatures cool down overnight, but surfaces are clearly going to be hard until we get enough snow for a resurfacing. We’ve got some snow chances this week however, so that should get things going in that direction.

December 13, 2015December 14, 2015

Stowe, VT 13DEC2015

an image showing one of Stowe's new buildings under construction and the the ice rink added to the Spruce Peak Base Area

An image showing low clouds with mountains sticking out as viewed from Mt. Mansfield and Stowe Ski Resort in Vermont — Low clouds produced some stellar views on Mt. Mansfield today

Today’s first run on Stowe’s Perry Merrill had our training group thinking of old adages such as “Life’s too short to ski bad snow.”, or perhaps “Any day at work is better than the worst days of skiing.” Yesterday featured very spring-like temperatures, and this morning’s cold weather and undercast left the snow on Mansfield locked up like one of those ice blocks on the cooling unit of a mini fridge. All of us questioned why anyone would pay for such conditions, but people were out there, and along with race training groups and other school ski program training groups such as ours it made for an incredibly crowded trail. What we had was essentially a perfect combination of dangerous snow and tons of skiers in the same place; it’s exactly where you wouldn’t want to be. We were all amazed when about 100 vertical feet above the Midway Lodge, the snow suddenly softened into something reasonable. Everyone exchanged thoughts of joy as they were actually able to carve turns; apparently we’d hit the freezing line.

Fortunately our instructor Steve knew that there was no point in going back up the Gondola, and instead led us over to Spruce Peak. The sunny slopes of lower Spruce were soft and good to go, and all of us were more than happy to stay over there and work through the progression of techniques for beginning skiers. As the low clouds broke away and the sun hit in the second half of the morning, it became a beautiful day to be out on the slopes. Spruce softened up to as high as we were skiing, which was up to the top of the Meadows Quad. I suspect that even the Mansfield side softened up, but I’m not sure how high that went since we never headed back over there until we hit the Midway Lodge on our way out.

In any event, good snow and comfortable temperatures made for a great annual training day over at Spruce Peak, and if we hadn’t had other things to do in the afternoon, it definitely would have been worth staying for some additional runs. The new construction at the base is certainly coming along, and the outdoor ice rink is already in place. It looks like that area is going to be a great core to the Spruce Peak Village when everything’s complete.

One highlight from this morning was the fantastic view of the mountains above the low clouds, which we’ve apparently been experiencing a lot in the past few weeks with the fairly benign weather pattern. It does look like storms are going to pick up in the second half of the month, but we’ll have to see how much cold air they have to work with in terms of creating snow.

November 15, 2015November 16, 2015

Stowe, VT 15NOV2015

An image of a snowy tree along the North Slope trail at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont

An image of melted snow pouring off the roof of the Mansfield Base Lodge at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — Warming up after yesterday’s new snow

I wasn’t able to head out to the slopes back in October when we had our first notable storm of the 2015-2016 winter season, but the storm affecting the area this weekend looked like it was going to be a bit bigger in the Northern Greens, so I was hoping to find a way to get out to the snow. With this storm, snow started falling in the mountains on Friday afternoon as the temperatures came down, and by Saturday morning the freezing level had dropped all the way to the valley floors and we woke up with a coating of white on the ground at the house. It continued to snow at our place all morning, and with temperatures staying cold, it would have been a great day to head to the mountains and make some turns in the fresh powder. Unfortunately, I was still under the effects of a cold that had come on at the end of the week, and I was in no condition to head out into the cold and snow.

This morning though, I was feeling notably better, and it seemed like a trip to the snow would be in order. Assessing what I’d seen for coverage on the Bolton Valley Web Cam at 2,100’, and comparing the pictures that Powderfreak posted yesterday from ~2,500’ on Mansfield, it looked like Stowe had picked up the better accumulations, so I set my sights there. Around midday I was ready to head out. I knew that the snow wasn’t going to be dry in the lower elevations, because temperatures were already well up into the 40s F, but even if the snow turned out to be sticky, I’d still get a nice hike out of the deal.

The first traces of snow along the Mountain Road appeared in the 900’ – 1,000’ elevation range just below The Matterhorn, and up at the Mansfield Base Lodge there was about an inch of patchy wet snow. A quick survey of the area had shown me that North Slope had some of the best-looking coverage, and apparently, that was because the resort had actually made some snow there. I threw my skis on my pack, unsure of whether or not I’d be skinning, and headed up the stairs to the base of the lifts. I just happened to run into Claire and Luc, who were up because Luc was anxious to get in some turns on the available snow. We hiked together at various stages, and since she was hiking back down, Claire stopped at the Crossover elevation while I switched over to skins, and Luc and I continued up to the top of the next pitch of North Slope around 2,400’. There were actually a fair number of people out and about for the “day after” the storm, but I guess it wasn’t too surprising with the nice warm temperatures.

An image of a snowboarder jumping at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — One of many folks out enjoying the day at Stowe

Luc headed down before me to catch up with Claire, and when I finally started my descent, I found out that the snow conditions were quite good. I’d been worried about the warm weather making a mess of the snow, but the combination of natural and manmade snow, along with some skier traffic, turned a good portion of the route into dense, spring-like snow that skied very well. I hit Tele turns where the snow was good, stuck in some alpine turns where conditions were more variable, and had quite a good ride for a quick outing. We’ve got a warmer week coming up, with highs in the mountains generally in the 40s F, but it looks like we might have more cold and snow as we head toward the weekend and Thanksgiving week, so we’ll see what chances that period brings for additional turns. For now though, I’d say there’s enough snow on North Slope to last through some warm days for people interested in earning some turns this week.

May 9, 2015May 12, 2015

Stowe, VT 09MAY2015

An image of Erica Telemark skiing on the Nosedive trail at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont in May

An image of Jay Telemark skiing on the Nosedive trail at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont in May — There’s still plenty of great snow at Stowe for anyone that wants to earn some turns.

Between almost daily soccer coaching, practices, and games now stacked on top of the usual routine, the spring schedule for E and the boys has been pretty crazy, but fortunately I was able to get them to sneak in a trip to the slopes today. I saw great pictures of the coverage on Nosedive from Powderfreak’s report on Wednesday, so we knew it was a good bet for spring turns and headed off to Stowe in the mid-morning. We’d been hoping Joe would be able to join us, but he ultimately decided it was just going to be a little too much to manage the hike and still have enough left in the tank for dancing tonight at the BJAMS Bash.

We parked in the Midway Lot and had to walk about 50-100 yards over to the start of the snow on Lower Nosedive. You could definitely see the effects of the past couple days’ summer-like temperatures, because bare areas were making substantial intrusions into parts of the trail. The snow coverage is still fairly continuous though, with just one actual break of about 20 feet about halfway up. We topped out a bit shy of the 3,000’ mark, which was about as far as E and the boys wanted to push themselves with more soccer games tomorrow. In terms of the skiing, the snow quality was fine, with nothing overly mushy despite the temperatures. We’d all brought ski pants, but E and the boys were pretty gutsy and skied just in their shorts. I’ve been there before, and especially since I was Telemark skiing I decided to stick with full ski pants and knee pads. E was skiing Tele as well, but she didn’t care – she and the boys all felt that the cooling of the snow and breeze was worth it, and fortunately there were no notable falls to contend with.

An image of Erica Telemark skiing at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont in May on some of the remaining snow — Nosedive is still just about continuous, but areas are starting to melt out.

There were several groups of skiers around that we encountered on either the ascent or descent, and it was quite the fun atmosphere. We tested out playing Pandora on one of the cell phones on the ascent and that worked out well – Dylan made an Imagine Dragons station that had me grooving my way up the mountain at a really quick pace.

On the way out we took a peek at some of the other routes on the mountain that had substantial snow, and the best alternative to Nosedive looked like it was that North Slope area above the terrain park. Temperatures look to cool down somewhat as we head into next week, so that should slow the melting process a bit. These warm days have been great, but they’re causing the snow to disappear quickly!

May 7, 2015May 8, 2015

Bolton Valley, VT 07MAY2015

An image looking westward toward the Adirondack Mountains and Lake Shamplain from Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont

An image from the Web Cam at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont in early May — A snapshot from the Bolton Valley Web Cam today – the patches of snow on the bottom half of the mountain got me interested enough to see what the higher elevations held.

Our protracted stretch of pleasantly warm and sunny weather has continued this week, and it’s allowed the ground to dry to the point that on Tuesday, I headed out for a mountain bike ride to sample some of local terrain by the house and into town. Indeed even some of the typically wettest terrain down by the Winooski was dry enough for riding, so things are ready on that front, but after seeing Powderfreak’s ski report from yesterday at Stowe, it reminded me that I should probably get back out on the slopes while the snow is available. I can still see bright areas of white snow on the slopes of Bolton Valley from my office in Burlington, but from that distance it’s hard to know exactly how continuous the coverage is. I popped up the image from the Bolton Valley Web Cam and could see that there were only patches of coverage on Beech Seal on the bottom half of the mountain, but it looked as if the snow at the bottom of Bear Run might be stretching upward for some substantial coverage.

I headed up to the resort with plans to at least get in a hike, since the areas without snow already looked pretty dry. I saw the first signs of snow along the Bolton Valley Access Road at the base of Timberline at 1,500’, and it was clearly leftovers of manmade snow. Up in the Village it was very quiet, and I’d thought about getting a sandwich from the Deli, but it was closed. This is probably one of the quietest times of the year, so I guess that shouldn’t be too surprising. I took a quick walk up to the slopes and could see that Spillway had some large areas of snow, and it was enough to suggest that I should throw my skis on my pack and bring them along.

An image showing the remaining snow on the Spillway trail at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont in early May — The snow on the lower parts of Spillway ended up being rather patchy, so I headed toward Sherman’s Pass

The visible snow near the base that appeared to head up to Bear Run was the start of a reasonably long section that went about halfway up the trail, and from there to Mid Mountain the coverage was a lot more fractured or nonexistent. Above Mid Mountain I began to hike toward Spillway, since I’d seen the snow up there, but once I saw far more substantial coverage on Sherman’s Pass, I switched my route in that direction. I stopped my ascent at around 2,600’ near the top of the steeper Sherman’s Pass terrain above Mid Mountain, since there was another gap in coverage at that point.

For the descent, I found that the snow definitely had some sun cups and dirty areas, but there were a variety of areas with decent turns, and the coverage there basically brought me down to Mid Mountain before I took off my skis to connect to the lower half of Bear Run. That bottom part of Bear Run offered the longest stretch of continuous snow, and it carried me to within about 50 yards of the base lodge. With Bolton’s western exposure and more limited snowmaking than some of the larger resorts, May turns are often spotty, and this year was fairly typical in that regard. Based on what I saw, today’s turns were likely my last of the season at Bolton Valley, so that’s probably it until the fall. There’s a ton of snow left at Stowe and some of the other resorts around, so hopefully I can get out to some of those spots for more turns this month.

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