On our drive to the mountain we noticed that there’s not actually a ton of snow down in the center of Stowe Village, but the snowpack builds as one heads up the mountain road, and it’s quite hearty once you get up to The Matterhorn around the 1,000’ elevation. The snow depths simply skyrocket after that, and Mansfield’s snowpack is quite impressive. This shouldn’t be too surprising with 52” at the Mt. Mansfield Stake, but it’s still great to get out there and experience it firsthand.
Today in our group we had many of the usual crew, like Jack, Dylan, Jonah, and Norris. Ken is still taking it easy due to his injury, so our new additions were Nolan and his kids Sophie and Evan. They fit right in with the group, so I suspect we’ll have a lot of fun whenever we’re together. After an initial run on Sunny Spruce, we quickly headed over to Mansfield to check out some steeper terrain. We skied the Bypass Chutes, as well as Goat and Starr from the top. While coverage isn’t yet perfect on those routes, it’s pretty darned good, and that says a lot if those steep pitches are reasonably covered. I was concerned about what the snow surfaces were going to be like with the cloudy conditions today, but the snow was beautifully soft at all elevations with temperatures in the 30s F. The Nosedive Glades were fantastic – and they’ve definitely done some additional clearing in there to enhance some of the lines. Overall, today was actually like being out there on one of those awesome soft days in April with the hefty snowpack. I’d say the main drawback on the hill today was the visibility, since we were in the clouds the whole time. In some elevation bands it was pea soup, but it was more reasonable than at many elevations.
Hanging out in the Octagon today while the crew re-hydrates
We’ve actually got a storm coming into the area tomorrow evening that should bolster the snow pack even more. The storm is expected to have some mixed precipitation with it, but plenty of liquid equivalent, so it should really be a good shot to add to the season’s base.
A wintry view of the Gondolier trail disappearing into clouds and snow at the end of a good ski day
The snow from long-duration Winter Storm Marcus continued overnight, and although it was just an inch or so down here at the house and a few inches up in the mountains, the snow had substantially higher density than the fluff we received yesterday. Both James and Tom heeded the call I put out earlier in the week with regard to skiing, so they would be joining us for the afternoon at Stowe. It was actually great that they were able to make it today, because Ken wasn’t going to be there and they could help with managing my ski group during the BJAMS ski program.
“…untracked lines were just ridiculously deep with two to three feet of powder just like we found yesterday at Bolton Valley.”
The guys arrive at our house well ahead of the planned 10:00 A.M. meet up, so we had some time to catch up while our family got our ski gear together. We were on the way to Stowe by about 10:30 A.M. or so, and there was steady snowfall, but it was light enough that well-traveled roads were generally showing blacktop. We had time for some lunch in the Great Room Grill with E and the boys, and Chris even showed up to hang out and have some food before he headed back down to Massachusetts.
“The snow just keeps piling on there, and the terrain has that feeling of skiing an alpine bowl in an area that keeps getting hit by repeated storm cycles.”
We went out for an early run before program time, and checked out the open terrain above Meadows. The snow just keeps piling on there, and the terrain has that feeling of skiing an alpine bowl in an area that keeps getting hit by repeated storm cycles. The powder has been somewhat cut up by skiers, so it’s nice to have a ski with some girth that can hold its own as the variations in the surface snow try to toss you around at speed. What a great warm-up run that was though; it gave us a good feeling for what we’d be able to find out there today.
The boys chat with the guys.
“I don’t know how he was able to fit all that stuff in his ski jacket, but I made me remember how much fun it is to have Bursey on board when it comes to food.”
Luc was sick, and Elizabeth was going to be joining our group, so it looked like it would be a total of seven students that James, Tom, and I had in our charge. We took one more run on the Meadows Chair while we waited for Jack to arrive, and then crossed over to Mansfield via the Over Easy. As we stood at the Gondola summit and I asked the kids where they wanted to go, “the Middle of Nowhere” was quickly heard from multiple voices. So, off we went toward Nosedive and into the trees. Conditions were great as one would expect, and with the three of us adults we were able to pretty easily keep tabs on the group. A technique I like to use is to watch for students that break away from the pack and take alternate lines, and then follow them. Wiley often does this during his runs as he searches out good lines and good powder, and I got to follow him through a nice section of terrain. We made more good use of the three coaches when we got to Nosedive and some of the group wanted to dive back into the trees and some wanted to stay on trail. I guided the off piste group through some of the trees on the skiers left of Nosedive, while James and Tom offered to take care of the on piste group as they continued to warm up. It was back into the trees again for some of us as we approached Liftline, and boy, untracked lines were just ridiculously deep with two to three feet of powder even down in some of the lowest elevations, just like we found yesterday at Bolton Valley.
We made our way to the Fourrunner Quad and by the time we got to the top some freezing fog was wreaking havoc with everyone’s goggles. Jonah asked if we could head into the Octagon to have a snack and take care of that visibility issue, so it was break time. Tom pulled out the trail mix, banana bread, and whatever else he had on board and we had a darned good feast. I don’t know how he was able to fit all that stuff in his ski jacket, but I made me remember how much fun it is to have Bursey on board when it comes to food. Everyone’s goggles had been thoroughly thawed and wiped by the time we headed back out into the weather.
The kids enjoying the good snow on Upper National today
I’d seen good coverage on Upper National, so we combined that with a run down Goat. Conditions are excellent, but not perfect as you can still find icy areas on the back of some moguls due to Stowe’s fairly heavy skier traffic. All the kids handled the steep terrain on that run very well though, and after that, it was obvious that Elizabeth could handle both the trees and steep terrain that our group often visits. It was my first time skiing Goat since the microburst took down all those trees along the left, and the damage is very impressive one you’re up close and personal with it. It’s probably going to take a while for that damage to regenerate. One of the best parts of the run was getting into the beautiful bump lines of Lower National. It gave us all a chance to work on pole timing with the kids, and those bump lines are just some much fun because the lower pitch of the trail keeps them tighter, smoother, and the snow quality so much better.
We finished off our runs on the Quad with a Nosedive Bypass down through the Nosedive Glades. Once down through the Bypass Chutes, Tom decided that he was getting a bit too tired to keep up at the kids pace, and told us to head on down and he’d catch up with us later. It’s been at least a couple of years since he’s skied the sort of stuff we were hitting today, so it’s not surprising that it felt like a challenging pace. He chose the perfect spot to stop for a rest though; he was just entering the glades with a quiet snow filtering down. I suggested he hang out for a while and soak in the scene while he rested, and later he told me that’s exactly what he did. As the end of the day approached and he was getting tired, he was able to head through the terrain at his own pace with stops as required, and it sounded like a good way to finish things off. As for the rest of the crew, James and I brought them once again through the bumps on Lower National to work on that type of skiing and help with the timing of their poles. James and I got to play follow-the-leader with Dylan through the bumps, and he showed impressive control as James really dropped his speed and massaged his way through the bump lines. James and I later talked about how much fun those bumps are and how the amount of effort needed to ski them is so minimal when you do it right.
“…fortunately he was just enjoying (although perhaps “enjoying” is too positive a word) a deep state of being tired at the end of the ski day.”
We returned back to the Spruce Peak Base to ensure we got everyone in on time, and most of the students did a couple more runs on Sunny Spruce before they called it a day. The last couple of runs featured some speed runs by the boys of course, but they love that stuff. Back in the base lodge, E told me that she had seen Tom crashed out in one of the chairs, and before she knew it was him she thought, “Boy, that guy looks tired!” It sounded like it was pretty funny when she found out it was actually Tom. She feared he’d gotten hurt, but fortunately he was just enjoying (although perhaps “enjoying” is too positive a word) a deep state of being tired at the end of the ski day. He might feel that tomorrow though, but hopefully we can get him to come out again for another coaching session.
You had to hunt a bit more today due to skier traffic and wind, but great powder is still out there.
When it comes to the Northern Greens, it can be hard to know when a snowstorm is complete. Just when you think an event is finally winding down, these mountains can cause it to fire back up and dump another foot of snow. In this case, that’s just what happened. After Tuesday’s great outing on Mt. Mansfield, I figured there wouldn’t be enough additional snow to lure me back out on the slopes too quickly, but I was wrong. While people anticipated a couple of additional inches to fall as the event finished up, a foot of additional snow was reported at Jay Peak, and another half foot at Stowe. There was already plenty of base in place, so after hearing first hand reports from some of our students at UVM about the great skiing brought about by the additional snow in the mountains, and seeing pictures like the one Powderfreak posted from Jay Peak, I heard the slopes calling again.
A view on the Liftline ascent
So I headed out to Stowe for another early morning session, and the temperature was definitely warmer this morning than what I encountered on Tuesday – it was even a bit above freezing in some of the mountain valleys, and around the freezing mark at the Midway Lot (~1,600’). The snow was still dry, but what was immediately evident was that the snow conditions aren’t as pristine now as they were a couple of days ago. The decrease in quality I saw was due to a combination of skier traffic and wind, and in those areas that were affected, the fresh fluff that fell yesterday was beaten down into something much denser. Since the snow had that wind crust in areas, it was a little harder to efficiently probe the snowpack depths on my ascent, but in general nothing has really melted over the past couple of days, and the snow depths with respect to elevation seemed fairly similar to the numbers provided in Tuesday’s report. I went with yet another ascent route today, and ascended the skin track up Midway that continued on to Liftline. This is the route that I had used last November, and it was a little frustrating at that point because I was using skins cut to Atomic RT-86s that were a bit too narrow for my AMPerages. I’ve got full-width skins now, so the issues from that day were resolved, but I was still slipping a bit up part of the Liftline skin track, and I’ve decided that it’s due to the fact that people have put in a skin track that’s just a little too steep. People should incorporate a few more switchbacks on the Liftline route to get a more reasonable grade on the ascent; it typically ends up being more efficient in the long run.
In any event, while I’d seen some decent, soft looking snow on Midway, Liftline was exposed and was riddled with wind crust. I watched a group of three guys descending the trail, and it was obvious from how little they were sinking into the snow that the wind crust was indeed substantial. One of the three appeared to be an excellent Telemark skier, and at one point he went head over heels dealing with the challenging snow. Seeing that spectacle, I decided to go for something more protected, and Goat came to mind. Some wind had still gotten in there, but it was far more protected than Liftline. I’m more leery about trails like Goat in the early season, since it holds a lot of interesting rocks, but as I probed along the skier’s left of the trail, I found a solid two feet of snow. That definitely looked sufficient for skiing the trail.
“The farther down I went on the trail, the more protected and fluffier the snow was…”
With still a little trickiness to the snow, and the narrow, bumpy, rough and tumble nature of Goat, I found myself making plenty of alpine turns at first. I’ve got to say, I’d love to have another pair of these AMPerages mounted alpine, because they were a heck of a lot of fun in that snow – they created such a stable platform. The farther down I went on the trail, the more protected and fluffier the snow was, and I finished off with some beautifully soft turns on Lower National, which had seen a lot less traffic than the bottom of Lower Nosedive. Coverage remains quite good, and I even passed through some woods on my traverse to Lower National that could easily have been skied. That’s certainly consistent with the snow depth at the Mt. Mansfield stake hovering close to that 24” mark.
It was definitely warming up when I left, and I felt a little stickiness in the snow in the very lowest elevations (last couple hundred feet), so I’d say the snow down there will lose some of its fluffiness. There’s still plenty of snow out there for those that want to make turns, but you just have to pick the lesser used areas now if you want untracked snow. It also may mean going a bit higher to get into the winter snow, depending on how high the freezing line crept upwards today.
Shawshank tells me that the lifts at Stowe will start running at an incredible 7:00 A.M for Sunday. OK, I’ll be there bright and early. Recording a possible record arrival, I get myself to the quad before 7:30 and find it humming right along with people returning from runs. After a warm-up attempt to get some freshies on Liftline/National, I ran into Andor & co. right in line. The rest of the morning consisted of Goat, Queebs, traverse, learn, Chin Clip, Goat?, Starr, Starr or something like that. I found myself happily buried more than once. At lunch we met up with Shawshank, ate some food and went back at it. Shawshank reported a multitude of freshies on hayride earlier in the day, so awaaaaaaaaaay we go. In my head and body I’m thinkin’ “Gawd I’m tired, a couple more runs should do it for me, I mean 7 something A.M was a long time ago.” Whoops look what we found, more fresh woods. Any thoughts of leaving were gone as we plowed our way through virtually untracked freshies on “Oh Shit”, “Major Jones”, and others. By connecting everything right, we had found top to bottom fresh woods off the quad “Who could leave?” The stake near “Oh shit” read 3 feet, 6 inches of snow and I whole heartedly believe it. When it finally became too dangerous to ski anymore, we called it. Through the magic of powder, I had managed to reel in over 30,000 vertical without ever realizing it. Now that’s a drug.
OK, back to reality. There was a harsh wind blowing up top, 0 degrees air temp + wind = -38 degree w.c. The wind was also blowing some of the snow off the trails and exposing the ice underneath (more reason to stay off-trail). Lines were a bit long in the noonish hours, even the gondola had a line. I don’t know about the big streambed, but a lot of little ones are still visibly flowing, maybe from all the insulating snow. More poachers getting nabbed on lower lift line, Lookout wasn’t open (100%?) and the Tollhouse lift wasn’t running.
(A friend of mine ended up there on his first day of snowboarding, apparently crossing no ropes, and had to get a ride back. The guy who gave him the ride said “Yeah, that’s been happening a lot today” ?What’s up with that?)
But I’m certainly not complaining.
Next weekend I’m skiing in NH “yikes” and I’ll send in one of those “out of state” reports
Today in our group we had many of the usual crew, like Jack, Dylan, Jonah, and Norris. Ken is still taking it easy due to his injury, so our new additions were Nolan and his kids Sophie and Evan. They fit right in with the group, so I suspect we’ll have a lot of fun whenever we’re together. After an initial run on Sunny Spruce, we quickly headed over to Mansfield to check out some steeper terrain. We skied the Bypass Chutes, as well as Goat and Starr from the top. While coverage isn’t yet perfect on those routes, it’s pretty darned good, and that says a lot if those steep pitches are reasonably covered. I was concerned about what the snow surfaces were going to be like with the cloudy conditions today, but the snow was beautifully soft at all elevations with temperatures in the 30s F. The Nosedive Glades were fantastic – and they’ve definitely done some additional clearing in there to enhance some of the lines. Overall, today was actually like being out there on one of those awesome soft days in April with the hefty snowpack. I’d say the main drawback on the hill today was the visibility, since we were in the clouds the whole time. In some elevation bands it was pea soup, but it was more reasonable than at many elevations.
