Light snow falls in the Bolton Valley Village in the fading afternoon light as Ty and I finish up our ski tour today.
It was Winter Storm Bellamy that hit parts of the Midwest fairly hard yesterday to become TWC’s second named storm of the season, and then the system continued its eastward trek and started to affect our area by early this morning. Throughout the day it brought light snow to the area, and by the afternoon we’d picked up about an inch of accumulation in the valley. Coupled with the accumulations from the midweek system, I figured it would be worth a quick ski tour to see how the powder was building up in the higher elevations, so Ty and I headed up to Bolton Valley in the mid to late-afternoon.
We toured on the lower 2/3 of Wilderness and found a general 3 to 4 inches of powder coating the existing base in untracked areas. That seemed about what one might expect based on picking up a couple of inches from each of these past couple of systems, and conditions were actually a bit better than I’d expected because I was worried that the wind might have blown the snow around and left us with little powder to ski. Indeed the snow was fairly light and dry (my liquid analyses from the two storms averaged out to snow in roughly the 5% H2O range for liquid equivalent), so it was nowhere near enough for a full resurfacing, but it definitely offered up some nice turns on lower angle terrain. Most turns weren’t bottomless, but you’d get some here and there where the powder had settled in a bit deeper. This was certainly a case where denser snow would have made a huge difference in resurfacing, but there was only so much liquid equivalent with these past couple of systems in this area, so they could only do so much to cover the subsurface.
The next storm in the queue has been named Winter Storm Chan, and it looks like it could add a more substantial shot of snow to the slopes – Winter Storm Warnings and Winter Weather Advisories are going up throughout the area. So, on top of the snow that’s already fallen in the past few days, it definitely holds the potential to kick the conditions up another notch.
Snow guns blast away on the Bear Run route as Bolton Valley prepares some of its beginner terrain for upcoming days
As of this morning, the resorts of the Northern Greens from Jay Peak down through Stowe were reporting roughly a foot of new snow with the assistance of moisture coming off the Great Lakes, but south of that area, snow totals fell off rather quickly. Checking Bolton’s snow report, they weren’t reporting any new snow, so I wasn’t planning on making any turns, but Dylan and Colin were looking to get out for some runs with me and E, so we ended up heading out for a morning ski session.
It turns out that the resort did pick up at least a couple of inches of snow based on what we saw, but the accumulations varied a lot with the wind and perhaps their standard measurement spots didn’t hold onto any of the snow to a degree that they felt confident enough to report it. The resort is working on beefing up the manmade base on their main Bear Run beginner route on the lower mountain, so there was no beginner terrain in play today, and I think that helped to keep the number of visitors lower than it might have been. Conditions on their main Sherman’s Pass/Beech Seal route were decent, with some manmade snow of course, but some natural mixed in and a nice amount of loose snow that gave you something to carve on. The relatively low skier traffic kept the morning groomed surfaces lasting longer than they typically might, but by late morning the skier traffic was starting to pick up, and you could tell that the surfaces were getting a little firmer.
Bolton Valley has been putting up some impromptu mini terrain parks near the base these past couple of weekends with just a feature or two, and it seems like folks are having a lot of fun with that. They’re short enough that you can literally hike back up in 20 seconds and hit the features again. Dylan had fun with the one they have set up near the Mighty Mite and made a couple runs down the rails on our way out.
We’ve had a number of winter storms so far this November, and many evergreens in the higher elevations are already holding onto heavy accumulations of snow.
The clipper system that came through the area over the past couple of days was relatively weak, but in general agreement with the forecast, we still picked up close to 2 inches of new snow at our site down in the Winooski Valley. I was up in the Bolton Valley Village yesterday, where it was snowing at a decent clip, and as of their evening snow report, they indicated that they’d already picked up 3 inches of new snow. I’m not sure how much more they picked up overnight, but at the pace the snow was falling, it seemed like it was worth taking a tour to check things out.
Valley temperatures were marginal for parts of the event, and as I headed up the Bolton Valley Access Road this morning, there weren’t any substantial signs of new snow until I’d reached roughly 1,000’ of elevation. After a couple of tours from Timberline’s lower base elevation over the past several days, it was clear that the better play with this system would be to start my tour up at the Village. The cloud ceiling as I ascended was around 1,800’, and above that point, everything was socked in with dense clouds and lightly falling snow.
Light 1-2″ snow accumulations and huge snowbanks greeted me as I started my ski tour in the Bolton Valley Village this morning.
At ~2,000’ in the Bolton Valley Village, I found 1-2” of new snow accumulation. From my visit to the mountain on Saturday, I knew that temperatures above freezing had affected the snowpack, at least up to the 2,500’ elevation. So, the new snow from our small system certainly wasn’t going to resurface that snowpack, but I was curious about what was going on in the higher elevations.
The accumulations of new snow did increase the higher I went, but more importantly, at some point between 2,500’ and 3,000’ you reach a level where it’s clear that the temperatures haven’t gone above freezing in quite some time. The snow quality there is excellent aside from areas affected by the wind or some sort of skier of resort vehicular traffic.
I did my best to estimate the accumulations from this latest system at various elevations, but once you get up to the point where there’s no consolidated melt layer to mark the surface of the old snowpack, it becomes difficult. In any event, here are the estimates for accumulations I found from this event at various elevations in the Bolton Valley area:
All the snow from these November storms has really been accumulating on the trees, and in places where it hasn’t gone above freezing to melt some of it off, it’s a lot of weight on the evergreens. In fact, I saw several evergreen trees that had recently fallen onto the trail along the Wilderness Uphill Route. There’s also a layer of ice on the trees that accumulated from whenever we had some mixed precipitation earlier in the month, and that is definitely adding to the weight the trees are bearing. While I was up at the Wilderness Summit, I watched a small section of trees on Ricker Mountain just collapse from the weight of the accumulated snow and tear away a large chunk of soil as they tumbled down the slope. In any case, many of the evergreens in the higher elevations are absolutely caked with midwinter levels of snow.
Passing through the Lower Fanny Hill area during today’s ski tour
Checking out the new fingerpost and taking in the views today in the Bolton Valley Village
I was last out on the mountain for turns on Thursday, and the powder from our early week storm was holding up well. There had certainly been some consolidation of the snowpack, with sunny areas seeing the effects more than shaded areas, but the general consistency of the snow was dry, and there was no melt layer or melt crust.
A couple days have passed now, and we haven’t had much in terms of new snowfall. High temperatures in the mountain valleys have remained in the 30s F, but the lower elevations have definitely been above freezing, and the snow has seen some thaw-freeze cycles. I didn’t know how high the freezing line had gone and how the snow quality might have been affected in the mountains, but I figured I’d head up for a ski tour today and check it out.
I decided to tour at Timberline as I’d done on Thursday, which would give me a good point of comparison with respect to changes in the snow. From today’s tour I can say that the freezing line has definitely been above 1,500’ on the western slopes, and even above 2,000’. The snow hasn’t consolidated much more from where it was on Thursday, but the above-freezing temperatures have definitely degraded the quality of the snow. Even shaded areas have a melt layer in the top few inches of the snowpack, so you’re not dealing with fluffy, right-side-up powder skiing. Thankfully the humidity has been relatively low, so the melt layer has a spongey consistency instead of being a refrozen aggregate. I’d still recommend alpine fat skis with some decent rocker or a snowboard as the best riding tools. The powder is a bit upside down now with that melt layer on top and drier snow below, but shaded snow is still reasonably surfy if you’re on a nice big platform that can ride up in the higher areas of the snowpack. I was on my 115 mm Telemark boards, but I made only a few Telemark turns – I stuck with alpine turns for the most part because the more consolidated platform and tighter stance was a much better fit for those snow conditions. As long as you have the appropriate tools on your feet and stick to untracked areas of snow, you can get some decently surfy turns. Tracked or packed areas of snow aren’t offering up great turns right now – the snow there has consolidated enough that it’s just bumpy terrain and you’ll get tossed around for a much rougher ride. At least in those lower elevations, we’ll need a decent storm to get back to fluffy powder conditions.
One of the views today from Bolton Valley out toward the Adirondacks
Today was supposed to be fairly benign with respect to the weather, but in true Northern Greens form, as soon as I started gearing up at the Timberline Base, a snow squall moved in and pounded the area with heavy snow/graupel and reduced visibility for several minutes. It was nothing that resulted in substantial accumulations, but it was a definite reminder from Mother Nature that she’s there. In their early morning forecast discussion, the BTV NWS mentioned two areas of weather interest for today passing to our north and south, leaving us in “no man`s land” with no active weather, but in later updates they noted that there was going to be plentiful cloud cover across much of the region in the afternoon as an upper-level shortwave passed through and supported cold air advection and snow showers. We even picked up accumulating snow down at our place in the valley, so there was certainly some wintry weather out there, even during this relative snowfall lull.
but in the spirit of all the November snow we’re received, they started the lift-served season today. Lift Operations Manager Scott Beasley and President/CEO Lindsay DesLauriers made a fun social media post on Thursday to break the news to the community. They’re only running the Mid Mountain Chair and the Mighty Mite at this point, but since I was up at the mountain anyway and had to hit the main base to take care of some passholder stuff, I figured I’d stop in for a few lift-served turns. Conditions were fine, with a mix of manmade and natural snow, but with manmade snow in the mix, there were certainly some firmer areas. You can tell it was a bit of an impromptu opening since they hadn’t full groomed the Bear Run route, but that left some fun contours on the terrain and made it even more interesting. The highest elevation I reached today was up to Mid Mountain at 2,500’, but even at that elevation, you could see that the snow had been affected by the temperatures, so you really have to go higher than that to find pristine winter snow at this point. The resort was bustling though, so it’s great to see them get off to a great start. I heard that they expect to open the Vista Quad Chair for Friday, which is their original planned opening date.
Icicles hang off the Timberline Base lodge with some ski terrain visible in the background. While the lower elevations snowpack has consolidated some since our recent storm, the snow is still dry and the powder skiing is still quite good.
By midweek, our protracted period of snowfall was winding down here in the Northern Greens, and we finally began to get some views of the peaks. When the clouds broke away you could see that the mountains were absolutely plastered with snow – the snowpack depth at the Mt. Mansfield Stake topping out near 40 inches will attest to that. Also notable in the views was the very low snow line – it reached way down below 1,000’ into the valleys.
I hadn’t been out to the hill since Monday when the storm was still going strong, but I had enough time today to go on a ski tour for my workout. I was unsure if the lower elevations of Timberline were still going to be offering good powder turns, but when I parked and checked out the snow consistency, it seemed quite decent, so I decided to tour from there. The snow had definitely settled since Monday; depths at 1,500’ that were previously 15-20” on that outing were roughly 12” today. There hasn’t been any real melting of the snow, so that decrease in depth generally just represents settling of the snowpack, and all the liquid equivalent was still there to support skiing. Areas in direct sun showed greater effects of consolidation, but humidity levels have been low, so even the most affected areas still weren’t getting mushy.
Looking up from the Timberline Base Lodge at the snow in Doug’s Woods
The depth of the snowpack definitely increased with elevation, and up around 2,000 – 2,500’ the snow depths were in the 1 to 2 foot range. I didn’t get any higher than that, but above 3,000’ the depths should be fairly similar to the depths at the Mt. Mansfield Stake.
By this morning there had naturally been a lot of additional skier traffic compared to Monday, but there were still plenty of untracked lines available. The very best powder was in areas protected from the sun, but that’s a lot of terrain at this time of year when the sun angle is so low. The snow may consolidate a bit more by tomorrow with the next system coming into the area, but as of today, fat skis were still definitely the way to go. There were some areas of deep, unconsolidated snow that could really throw you for a loop. To that point, I hit one especially deep pocket that was 2 to 3 feet of bottomless fluff, and even on my 115 mm boards, everything just dropped away from below me and I wound up going head over heels into deep snow. It was a chore to extricate myself from that. In general though, the skiing just offered more sublime powder turns that would rank right up there with the best midwinter days.
An image of the snowy scene at Timberline this morning – with 1 to 2 feet of additional 6% H2O powder falling atop the existing base, the ski conditions are the best they’ve been all season.
It was a fairly busy day for me today, but I was able to swing by Bolton for a quick tour to check out the snow from the back side of our most recent storm. I was going to head up to the main base, which has been the way to go so far this season with its overall deeper snowpack, but I passed by Timberline and could see that the snow looked great even down to 1,500’, so I figured I’d save some time and tour there.
Right at base lodge level I was getting snow depth readings in the 15-20” range, and part of that is consolidated base, so I could tell that all the terrain there would be good to go. I have no idea what the snow depths are up above 3,000’, but with the snow depth at the Mt. Mansfield Stake sitting around 40”, it’s probably getting close to that mark in Bolton’s higher elevations as well.
One of the snowy views from near the Timberline base as our current system continues to deliver snow.
Anyway, Saturday offered up some great skiing, but today’s skiing was next level because of the new powder that fell. Up to this point in the season, I’d say my outing back on the 6th had offered the best quality turns, but it certainly takes a back seat to what I experienced today. My snow analyses from the back side of the system gave an average of 6.0% H2O, and it was set up perfectly with a right-side-up gradient atop the denser snow below. If I rated Saturday’s skiing as a 6 out of 10, then today was up around 9 out of 10. I guess a way to improve it would be to go with even deeper powder, but 1 to 2 feet of 6% powder with a density gradient beneath it is way up there in quality – the turns were just effortless, and you really couldn’t go wrong. Those are stellar ski conditions for any time of the season, but it’s especially notable for mid-November. As I was floating down through the champagne on the Twice as Nice trail, one thing that struck me was that many ski areas in the country might not even have a day all year with such primo conditions.
The back side of our most recent system put down some fantastic 6% H2O powder atop the existing base, and the turns today were simply effortless.
There was actually only one other car at Timberline for the entire time I was there. It was a father and son out for some touring, and the son had already had hockey practice that morning, so this was his next activity of the day. There’s nothing like getting in two sports before it’s even lunch time. The dad, Willie, saw me taking some pictures and when I confirmed who I was, he introduced himself as a fan of our website, so it was fun way to meet another couple of Bolton Valley regulars.
E and I got our for a ski tour at Stowe today. The weather was great, and with the Mt. Mansfield snowpack at nearly 30 inches and the base topped off with powder from multiple November storms, the skiing was superb as well!
In the New England Subforum at American Weather, Powderfreak has done a fantastic job of keeping everyone apprised of the snow conditions at Stowe, so for today’s ski tour, E and I decided to mix it up a bit and head to mighty Mt. Mansfield. On the approach to the resort, we found spotty snow cover in the valleys building to roughly 12-15” of snow at 1,640’ at the Midway Lodge. Today was a simply beautiful November day, with temperatures a bit below freezing, little to no wind, and some peeks of sun to keep it bright and create excellent views but not throw out so much sun that it substantially affected the quality of the snow.
Plenty of skiers and other winter enthusiasts were around at the resort as they took the opportunity to get out and enjoy the snow, but crowds certainly weren’t crazy – I didn’t see many cars in the Mansfield lot, and the Gondola parking lots certainly weren’t full. There was a good assortment of established skin tracks on the Gondola terrain, and there were typically double and triple tracks available. So it was very easy to ascend side-by-side and enjoy conversations, and you could conveniently pass people or let them pass you if need be.
As you approach Mt. Mansfield, you can see that the slopes are well covered thanks to all the recent November storms that have hit the Green Mountains.
Snow depth increased to over 20” as we ascended, and the snow was substantial enough that it provided both excellent base snow and surface powder for skiing. I’d say it was denser snow overall than what we had back from that storm on the 5th, but the powder skiing was still quite good. We found that the snow did get a touch denser below 2,000’, so you had to be on top of your turns a little more in those elevations as you finished the descent. Dylan was going to head to Bolton for a tour yesterday, but I suggested that he pop over to Mansfield instead, since Stowe isn’t open for the season yet and it’s an excellent time to get in some turns there. We were able to meet up with him and Ronan at the start of their tour, just as we were finishing ours. I passed along the info what we’d encountered with respect to snow conditions, and he said they had an excellent tour with some great turns that even brought them into the trees.
Our current winter storm has already unloaded over a foot of snow in the mountains, and it looks like this storm cycle will continue on through the end of the week.
Our current winter storm began affecting the area yesterday, and it’s been hitting us with a decent stream of moisture in the form of snow and some rain/snow in the lower elevations. We picked up less than an inch of additional snow overnight at our site in the Winooski Valley, and the total precipitation I’d recorded from the event was less than ¼” as of this morning’s CoCoRaHS submission. So, I had no idea that we’d been clobbered with snow in the higher elevations until I saw PF’s post of the accumulation at the Stowe snow cam. I immediately checked the Bolton Valley Base Area Webcam, and although I couldn’t get a good sense for how much snow had fallen there, the scene was solidly white, and in general if Stowe has done well with snowfall, then Bolton Valley has seen something similar.
It was another snowy November morning up in the Bolton Valley Village
Snow cover was getting patchy this morning in many of the lower valleys, with marginal temperatures and a wet snow/rain mix, and that’s the way things stood at the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road when I headed up. Snow depths really started to pick up above 1,000’ though, and I found 6-9” of snow at the Timberline Base at 1,500’. Up in the Village at 2,000’, snow depths were in the 10-14” range, and there was steady moderate to heavy snowfall.
I was able to tour up to the Wilderness Summit at ~3,150’, where I measured total snow depths in the 15-24” range. That’s not all from this current system of course, but with the existing snowpack below and this fresh snow on top, it’s set up some very nice skiing. Steep terrain is certainly in play with the amount of snow out there right now, and Bolton Outlaw was in really good shape. I was on mid-fats, since I wasn’t sure of how much snow there was going to be, but if I’d known just how much was out there, and how good the coverage was in general, I would have gone with fatter skis. At least on piste as of this morning, fat skis were the way to go. The powder out there isn’t quite as dry as what fell from the November 5th storm, but the quality is quite good, and it has a lot of substance to it. With underlying base in place and this new medium to high density snow on top of it, there is absolutely some great coverage out there.
Below is the total snow depth profile I observed this morning for various elevations in the Bolton Valley area. As usual, it’s getting harder to probe the full depth of the snow in the higher elevations where the snowpack is becoming more consolidated.
It should be interesting to see where the snowpack depth comes in with the next update from the Mt. Mansfield Stake. This system looks like it should continue to deliver snow right through the end of the week, with 8-14” of additional snow shown in the forecasts. And, temperatures are expected to cool a bit and bring snow levels back down to the lower valleys, so if the snow density drops it could set up some excellent right-side-up powder conditions.
A view from the bottom of the Bolton Valley Access Road this morning – our most recent November snowstorm was somewhat notable in that it brought substantial snow accumulations all the way down into the Champlain Valley.
I had time for a quick ski tour up at Bolton today, so I can pass along a bit of beta with regard to this latest storm and conditions. I’d seen that with the warm front end of this storm, the snow had melted out in the lower elevations of the mountain, so the depths that are there now in the roughly 2,000’-2,500’ range are only from this latest event. Seeing that Jay Peak webcam image that Powderfreak posted in the American Weather forum, I’d say Bolton got hit just a bit better – it’s probably similar to what Smuggler’s Notch picked up. Here’s the elevation-based snow depth profile I observed this morning in the Bolton Valley area:
Even in down in the valley this morning, the trees were coated with a healthy layer of snow.
You can see what a weird snow depth profile that is compared to the usual – the snow depth even in the Village at ~2,000’ is basically that same as it is at 340’ at the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road or at our house at ~500’. I only had time to tour up to ~2,700’ this morning, but the snow depths don’t really start to increase until you get above ~2,500’ into the elevations that have pre-existing snowpack, so it looks like the snow accumulations from the front end of this system were pretty consistent over quite a broad range of elevations.
In terms of the quality of the turns, today was more like the skiing from the Halloween/November 1st system vs. the much higher quality turns from the November 5th system. This snow was drier than the Halloween/November 1st system, so it skied better in that regard, but going with meadow skipping terrain was definitely the optimal choice for fun turns. The number of folks that I saw out touring today at the resort wasn’t outrageous – the top tier of Bolton’s Village parking area was ~1/3 full, but you could tell the ski touring activity was a bit livelier than the past couple of systems with the way the lower valleys got in some substantial accumulations.
With this latest snowstorm bringing substantial snow accumulations in the Champlain Valley, a decent number of people had drive up to Bolton Valley, eager to get in some early turns.
There was a bit of a crust in the snowpack due to some mixed precipitation that fell at some point during the event. Thankfully, it was an interior layer because new snow had fallen on top of it, so it didn’t derail the turns like it might have had it been a surface crust.
Our most recent winter storm dropped notably drier powder on top of the existing base of snowpack, so it made for great turns and the best powder skiing of the season so far!
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.
Today featured very wintry scenes in the Bolton Valley Village
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.
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.
Fresh November snow adorns a car protected by a car cover in one of the Bolton Valley Village parking lots.
