Tag: Image

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Bolton Valley, VT 31DEC2010

An image of Dave and the boys laying on the snow
Dave and the boys relaxing in the warm sun

Today our friend Dave came up from Boston for a skiing visit, arriving in the late morning with his dogs.  Like yesterday, we headed up to the mountain around midday, and the found that the trend of moderating temperatures had continued as suggested by the forecasts; we’d seen high temperatures in the low 30s F yesterday, and today’s temperatures topped out around 40 F.  The weather was again often sunny, but not quite as brilliantly sunny as yesterday had been.

We’d never left the Timberline area during yesterday’s outing, but I’d received an email from Stephen that evening telling me that the mountain had fired up the Wilderness Lift.  We decided that we’d head over for our first lift-served Wilderness turns of the season, and Dave and I rode up Timberline with one of the ski patrol who said that getting in our turns over there as soon as possible was a good idea.  With the temperatures remaining warm through Saturday/Sunday, she said that they might need to shut the lift back down by the weekend.  We stopped in at the main base so I could grab a ticket for Dave, and while I was in the lodge, he and the boys dropped down on the snow and enjoyed the sun and warm temperatures.  To see all the pictures and text, head to the full Bolton Valley report from today.

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Bolton Valley, VT 30DEC2010

An image of Jay skiing the glades
Jay enjoys some deep snow in Bolton Valley's glades today.

After Tuesday’s great outing with the boys, the whole family headed out for more turns today.  The skies had been somewhat gray on yesterday, but the sun was back today and consistent with the forecast trends, the temperatures were climbing to the low 30s F.

There hadn’t been any new snow, so we didn’t find ourselves out to the slopes until midday, but the Timberline area still seemed to be following the trends I’ve seen over the week and most visitors were presumably over at the main mountain.  We kicked things off on Spell Binder, and the most obvious change in on piste conditions from Tuesday was that the powder and chowder had been replaced by packed powder.  I found that there was still powder to be had if I went very tight to the edge of the trail, but it had to be helmet-scraping tight.

We then headed off to the trees for a bit to get in some powder skiing – E had gone with alpine skis for the day so that we could explore some steeper lines and see how they were faring.  Our first test was the steep terrain dropping into the KP glades, which revealed that tight evergreens at around the 2,000’ elevation had still not seen enough snow to support much traffic or aggressive skiing.  The evergreens had not allowed enough snow to fall to the forest floor, but the mixed evergreen/hardwood glades below were in prime form and yielding great untracked turns.  To check out the rest of the details and see all the pictures from today, head to the full December 30th, 2010 trip report from Bolton Valley.

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Bolton Valley, VT 28DEC2010

An image of Ty skiing in the Wood's Hole Glades at Bolton Valley
Ty tackling some steep terrain in the Wood's Hole Glades

After finding excellent snow conditions at Timberline near the end of the Nor’easter yesterday afternoon, it looked like lift-served skiing was going to be fantastic on today.  E was a little under the weather and wanted to get some things done around the house, so it was going to be a ski day for the boys.

We got up to Timberline around 10:15 A.M., and conditions were looking good.  The temperature was 20 F, skies were clear, and the wind had abated.  The Bolton Valley website had indicated a planned Timberline opening of sometime in the 9:00 A.M. – 10:00 A.M. range, and I’m not sure what time they’d finally started loading, but there was hardly anyone there when we arrived.  After experiencing lift queues at Vista on Thursday and Friday, it was very nice to have Timberline open again.

We kicked things off with a run down Spell Binder to get the boys warmed up, and Ty was really enamored with the snow and pitch on the headwall.  He’s definitely been waiting for the season to get going so additional steeper terrain could open, and he was really hootin’ and hollerin’ on that run and exclaiming how “awesome” it was.  It wasn’t untracked, but as usual the skier’s right held lots of chowder, with plenty of deep loose snow and a really nice subsurface.  Both boys had fun making their sloughs, or “avalanches” as they call them, slide down the slope.  Below the headwall, there was still ample fresh snow along the skier’s right to provide lots of powder turns.  I generally found 12-18 inches of powder along there depending on how far I got towards the trees, and although it wasn’t Champlain Powder™, it was at least medium weight fluff protected from the wind and it skied really well.  While I worked the powder, the boys were generally in and out of there often playing in the chowder and taking lots of jumps off the remnants of the water bars.  To see all the pictures and read the rest of the story, click through to the report from Bolton Valley today.

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Bolton Valley, VT 27DEC2010

An image of ski tracks on Timberline Run at Bolton Valley
Laying down some tracks this afternoon in the fresh snow on Bolton Valley's Timberline Run

It turns out that Northern Vermont wasn’t really the jackpot for this Nor’easter, but we did get into some of the snowfall.  As of 6:00 A.M. this morning we’d picked up 1.1 inches of snow down at the house that came in at a fairly synoptic storm-style 9.1% H2O, and up above us at Bolton Valley they reported 3 inches of new snow in the higher elevations.  Even down in the valley it continued to snow however, and the flake size increased as we moved farther into the storm.  By noon we’d picked up another inch of snow, and the density was down to 5.0% H2O.

Temperatures in the low double digits F and plenty of wind outside didn’t have me jumping out the door to hit the hill, but with the way it continued to snow at the house, I figured it had to be doing even better in the higher elevations.  Bolton was reporting that everything but their surface lift was on wind hold, but I decided to head up to Timberline to make some turns.  I’d missed the chance to check it out on Sunday when it was planned to open, so this would be a good chance to see how it was skiing.

I arrived up the Timberline base (1,500’) to a temperature of 9 F, and decent winds in probably the 20 to 30 MPH range.  There were a couple of other cars in the upper lot that belonged to folks doing the same thing I was, but the whole scene was one of a desolate winter storm.  Another fellow had headed up just a few minutes before me, so I followed his skin track… or at least I think I did because even in that short time it was starting to disappear in places due to the wind and falling snow.  I ascended the usual Twice as Nice route, and was surprised at how nice the snow was.  I was wondering if everything was going to be scoured down to something hard, but that wasn’t the case – there’s a really good base of natural snow, and an even in spots where the new snow had been blown away, the underlying surface was either packed powder or some sort of Styrofoam material.  In actuality though, it was only isolated spots that were even down to that surface, most of the new powder was still there.  Since the wind was from the north instead of the west, that was probably a better setup for the generally west-facing Timberline terrain.  I checked the depth on my ascent and generally found between 3 and 7 inches of new snow, so the mountain had definitely picked up more snow since their morning report.

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Bolton Valley, VT 24DEC2010

An image of a snow-covered slope at Bolton
A quiet scene with untracked powder at Bolton Valley's Wilderness area

The boys opened up some early Christmas presents today, so there was no way I was getting them up to the hill, but I was able to join up with Stephen and his kids for some turns.  In the past we’ve had some great Bolton outings on Christmas Eve, with some nice natural snow terrain available and the mountain almost to ourselves.  However, due to the sizeable amount of visitors we’d seen yesterday, we were wondering what today would bring.  Would more people have the day off, or would that be counteracted by more holiday obligations?  Well, the visitors were back in a big way, apparently even bigger than what we’d seen yesterday.  On the way up to the main base, I stopped in for a look at Timberline, and it looked quite ready for the planned Sunday opening.

Conditions were very similar to yesterday, and a bit of wind had actually reset some of the powder to provide repeat fresh tracks.  The wind also put down some wind crust, but it was pretty weak and didn’t change the snow too much.  The weather and snow were both great, but with the lines and afternoon holiday obligations were all left around noontime.  On the way down the road I saw that two Timberline lots were being used for additional parking, so business was certainly good.  To check out all the pictures with the text, head to the complete Bolton Valley report from today.

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Bolton Valley, VT 23DEC2010

An image of Erica skiing powder
Erica checks out the latest round of powder at Bolton Valley today.

We contemplated heading to Smuggler’s Notch today to use some free vouchers, but opted for Bolton Valley instead when they won out with snow accumulations.  Bolton reported 7 inches of new snow, and based on my analyses from the house, it was in the 8-9% H2O range for density.  This meant that the powder wasn’t as fluffy as what we skied over the past couple of weekends, but it definitely put down some substance in the snowpack.  We picked up more than a third of an inch of liquid equivalent in our snow down at the house, so Bolton probably had twice that amount.

We joined up with Stephen, Helena, and Johannes and hit our usual favorite areas for powder.  With the composition of the group we didn’t spend too much time in the trees, but occasional jaunts I’d make into the woods revealed that there was awesome tree skiing to be had.  Since many places were already skiing pretty well over the weekend, the bolus of new denser snow definitely bumped it up another notch.  Overall the snow was awesome as usual, and the sides of the lesser used trails were holding enough powder that heading into the trees wasn’t really necessary to get great turns.  To see all the pictures and get the rest of the details, head to the full report from Bolton Valley today.

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Bolton Valley, VT 19DEC2010

Ski tracks in powder
Glorious powder was found on Spell Binder up at Bolton Valley today.

We had a busy day of holiday-related activities planned today, so I headed out early to earn some powder turns up at Bolton Valley before things got going.  Although I’d been hearing great things about the snow at Timberline, and I’d driven by and seen the tracks there a number of times, I decided it was finally time to check out just what all the fuss was about.  Indeed, as I found out, the quality of the powder there is in fact worthy of a fuss.  To see all the powdery details and images, go to the full Bolton Valley trip report from today.

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Stowe, VT 12DEC2010

E and I headed out to Stowe yesterday for the school program training session, wondering what we were going to experience in terms of weather.  Happily, the first flakes appeared just after we arrived at around 8:00 A.M., the snowfall quickly ramped up in intensity, and then it dumped hard all morning and into the afternoon to make for great riding conditions.

Image of Stan Biasini providing snowboarding instruction
Stan Biasini fills us in on how teach novice snowboarders at Stowe, Vermont.

This year we both decided to go with the snowboard training session, since out of necessity E seems to spend most of her time boarding instead of skiing, and it would supply me with some additional tools to serve as an alternate snowboarding coach when needed.  We joined up with Stan Biasini’s group, since he would be advising everyone on how to work with the students that were early in their snowboard progression.  We started out with techniques for the “never evers” at the Magic Carpet, then stepped it up to Inspiration, followed by the Alpine Double, and finally the Sunny Spruce Quad.  We got a raft of good teaching techniques, and Stan made ample time to ensure that everyone got plenty of their own instruction as well.  I learned that Stowe no longer requires leashes for snowboards, and that the slope of the Inspiration trail is an impressively consistent 8% grade for teaching.  Continue reading the text and see all the pictures by going to the full trip report from Stowe today.

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Bolton Valley, VT 11DEC2010

Image of Jay Telemark skiing in new snow
Jay enjoys some Telemark turns today in the new snow.

It had been more than a week, but last week’s virtually endless upslope snowfall finally came to a stop yesterday.  However, another small system passed through the area last night.  It wasn’t supposed to deliver much, but when I looked outside around 11:00 P.M. last night, we were getting a pounding of one-inch diameter flakes at the house.  By this morning we’d actually picked up a couple of inches and the mountains in the Bolton–Stowe section of the Greens had received up to four inches, so we were in for another good coating of powder for the day’s skiing activities.

The morning’s outdoor adventures got started right on the ascent of the Bolton Valley access road.  Once we got up to the big steep S-curve pitch at around 1,200’, we could see that traffic was stopped.  It turned out that a couple of cars were struggling with the ascent.  The road didn’t seem that bad from our perspective, but I later heard some comments suggesting that it wasn’t prepared as well as usual.  In any event, the benefits of 4WD/AWD were obvious, not just for getting up the slick road, but having the ability to start right back up and get going from a dead stop on a steep slope.  I met Stephen right in the parking lot as he was getting out of his car, and we made plans to meet up later.

While I was parking the car, the boys had warmed up on the Mighty Mite, and then I brought E and the boys right over to Wilderness based on my experiences from the previous day.  I knew that the fresh snow and moderate pitch over there would be great for E to work on here Telemark turns off the groomed.  In places that had seen some traffic, we found about 4 inches of new, but there were still spots that hadn’t been touched on Friday and had a good foot of powder.  To check out the rest of the story and see the pictures, click through to the full report from today at Bolton Valley.

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Bolton Valley, VT 10DEC2010

An image of ski tracks in powder
Some nice powder turns were made at Bolton Valley this morning.

This morning I headed up to Bolton to catch some opening day turns and check out the four feet of new snow they’d picked up over the week.  On the way up I could see that Timberline was just loaded with tracks from all the folks that had been earning turns there.  We’d had our coldest temperatures of the season this morning, and although it was still somewhere in the single digits when I arrived at the mountain, the wind was calm and it turned out to be very comfortable.

They had the usual early season options going, but also some natural snow terrain such as the lower part of Wilderness.  I saw that VT 200 was open at the top, but it still looked somewhat bony.  I found that Wilderness and the routes over there were the places to be though, one could get some nice steeper turns in about a foot or so of powder in the junction areas of Swing, Lower Crossover, and Work Road, and then down on the Wilderness lift line it was mellow powder cruising.  To check out the rest of the details and see all the pictures from the day, head to the full Bolton Valley Trip Report from today.