The clipper system affecting the area yesterday into today dropped another round of snow in the mountains and we even saw snow transiently accumulating in some of the lower valleys. This system was similar to the last one that affected the area on Friday into Saturday, but temperatures seemed to be a bit colder on the back side this time around. This morning when I checked the view on Bolton Valley’s Base Lodge Webcam, the accumulations appeared to be a bit more robust than last time around. Seeing that, I knew there would be plenty of snow for using skins right from the base, so I geared up for a ski tour and headed to the mountain.
While the snow line was still fairly high with this system, the local ~2,000’ peaks around us in the Winooski Valley were coated with white for their top ~300’ of vertical, so that suggested that the snow level had dipped just a bit lower than what we’d seen over the weekend. Heading up the Bolton Valley Access Road, I saw the first traces of snow around 1,200’ just like Saturday, but Timberline showed a decent covering down to its 1,500’ base, and up in the Village at 2,000’ I found 3-6” of snow, which was more than what had accumulated Saturday morning.
Temperatures were cooler today than they were on Saturday, and even at 2,000’ the temperatures were easily below freezing. The cooler temperatures meant that the powder was of much higher quality than what we had over the weekend, and with some base snow already in place, the quality of the powder skiing took a big leap forward from where it had been. Compared to what was available on Saturday, today was simply easy breezy midwinter-style powder skiing. All you had to do was lean in and carve.
When checking snow depths today, I couldn’t really differentiate the new snow from the old snow that was already present from the last system, but the updated elevation-based snow profile is below. In the list, the first depth values are what I found on Saturday, and the second depth values are what I observed today.
Nov 1 –> Nov 6
1,000’: 0” –> 0”
1,200: T” –> T
1,500’: T-1” –> 1”
2,000’: 1-4” –> 3-6”
2,500’: 4-6” –> 5-9”
2,800’: 7-11” –> 9-12”
3,150’: 7-11” –> 10-16”
With every one of these storms that passes through and drops snow, the potential increases for this to be the start of the winter snowpack. If we continue with typical November temperatures, I wouldn’t expect the higher elevation snow to melt too quickly, so we’ll just have to see if there are any warm spells or big rainy systems in the future that might be able to put a dent in the snowpack.
