Tag: Kids

Posted on

Stowe, VT 27MAR2011

Image of the Chin of Mt. Mansfield and the Stowe gondola
Looking back toward the Chin of Mt. Mansfield and the Stowe gondola from the Nosedive Glades

It was ski program day at Stowe today, and since Johannes and Helena are done with their programs at Bolton, Stephen and the kids tagged along with our group.  I had to drop off Ty at the Stowe Shaw’s to be picked up for a birthday party, but I eventually caught up with Claire, Stephen, and all the kids just as they were heading up the gondola for their first Mansfield run.

Off piste conditions were fantastic, since the upslope pattern was delivering well and Stowe had seen a foot and a half of snow since the Monday event.  I added some of the totals into my update at Americanwx.com, and it showed quite the north to south trend with Jay Peak cashing in nicely:

Jay Peak: 30” (359”)  Stowe: 18” (311”)  Bolton Valley: 14” (316”)  Killington: 4” (251”)

In one of our traverses we stumbled onto a gully in the Lower Goat woods that everyone skied – it had some really steep walls and reminded me of one of those Jackson Hole gullies.  To see the full text and pictures, head to the Stowe trip report from today.

Posted on

Bolton Valley, VT 26MAR2011

Image of Jay skiing in powder
Jay comes into view skiing some of the beautiful powder in the Villager Trees at Bolton Valley.

The upslope snow has been rolling in, and although we haven’t had a ton of snow from this event yet, snow surfaces are getting a nice freshening.  This morning down at the house we were on our way toward picking up a quick additional inch of snow to put us at 2.8 inches for this end of the week event, and 9 inches for the week.  Bolton was reporting 13 inches over that span, with the snow continuing to fall.  Today we were back up at the mountain again for an afternoon session with Stephen and his kids, and for the first half of the afternoon it was snowing at a good clip.  Everyone joined in for a run on Spell Binder, and using the knowledge about the aspects with best snow that the boys and I had learned yesterday, there were some really awesome bottomless turns available on the skier’s left.  Even with just a few inches of additional snow, the skiing took quite a jump up in quality.  We found the same snow setup on Tattle Tale, and all three boys had fun ripping up the powder in their own way.  We gave Johannes first tracks on one line, and he decided that a figure 11 was the way to go, while Ty and Dylan accented his line with some curves.  We’re starting to nickname Johannes “11”.  For the full text and all the pictures, click through to the Bolton Valley trip report from today.

Posted on

Stowe, VT 08MAR2011

An image of Dylan skiing in powder
Dylan glides through some powder from the recent storm in the Angel Food area at Vermont's Stowe Mountain Resort

Dylan and I headed off to Stowe today to make some more turns in the snow from our recent storm.  By this morning we’d picked up 25 inches of snow at the house, and some of the Vermont resorts had received more than 3 feet.  It was a sunny, blue sky day, and the first thing that grabbed our attention when we got to the mountain was the view of the powdery lower slopes of Spruce Peak.  While they were adorned with plenty of tracks, we could see that lots of fresh lines were left, so we had to check that out for our first run.  We eventually worked our way over to the Mt. Mansfield side of the resort as well, and we really worked ourselves hard in all the powder.  The snow was synoptic in density, and there was a little wind crust in exposed spots, but it was still oh so good.  Dylan did a nice job managing the tricky conditions, even though he doesn’t yet have any fat skis.  To read about all the details and see the images from the day, check out the full trip report from March 8th at Stowe.

Posted on

Bolton Valley, VT 07MAR2011

Image of Dylan getting a face shot in deep powder
Dylan taking a face shot in deep powder on Secret Solitude

We spent the morning around at the house playing in the snow and taking care of snow removal, and then we headed up to Bolton Valley at some point after 1:00 P.M. to check out the new powder and get in some storm day turns.  Bolton’s Vista Quad was on wind hold, but Timberline was running well and we spent the afternoon there.  I did several depth checks in the 1,500’ to 2,500’ elevation range and got measurement of 26 to 31 inches for the depth of the new snow.  There were some gusty winds at times, but Timberline is fairly protected and wind wasn’t bad except on the ridgelines.  The new powder was just medium-density snow at ~10% H2O, and I guess the only thing that might made it better would be if it had been topped off with a bit of our Champlain Powder™ fulff, but let’s just say that it was quite a day to be out there.  It was certainly not one to be missed, but in case you did, you can check out all the details and the powdery images in the full Bolton Valley trip report from today.

Posted on

Cochran’s Ski Area, VT 05MAR2011

Image of the trails at Cochran's ski area
Looking at some of Cochran's terrain from the base

We were around in Stowe for a bit today but in the afternoon we made our way over to Cochran’s Ski Area in Richmond to check out their 50th anniversary celebration.  They had 1961 throwback ticket pricing, so tickets were just 25¢ per person.  Everyone in the family went with their Telemark skis, and the boys had fun working on their turns.  Cochran’s is 9 miles down the Winooski Valley from our location, and the base elevation is fairly low.  At only 500 feet, it’s at the same elevation as our house.  Being down in the lower elevations, I’m not sure where temperatures were at in the high country today, but at Cochran’s and in the other lower elevation valleys they were in the 40s F.  We only skied on piste, but the snow was a good soft consistency, certainly somewhat spring-like, and it offered great carving.  To read the rest of the text and see all the pictures, go to the Cochran’s Ski Area report from today.

Posted on

Stowe, VT 27FEB2011

Image of Dylan skiing powder at Stowe
Dylan getting buried in powder in the trees around Freddie's Chute

We were up at Stowe today for our usual Sunday session, and since it’s the tail end of vacation week, many people were absent.  Our group had just Ty, Jack, and Dylan, but we also had Mike Cannon as one of the group’s coaches, and with his immense knowledge of Spruce and Mansfield he brought us to plenty of great shots.  Not too surprisingly, we found conditions to be much like Bolton’s, with untouched areas typically yielding between 12 to 18 inches of powder thanks to our recent storm.  We skied glade after glade with Mike, and the steepest and highest traffic areas are certainly down to the firm base leftover from those couple of warm days a bit over a week ago.  However, outside of those spots it was easy to find areas with either untracked or soft chowder.  To read the full text and see all the pictures, check out the full Stowe report from today.

Posted on

Bolton Valley, VT 26FEB2011

Image of Dylan skiing powder
Dylan blasting the powder in Doug's Solitude

After earning turns and skiing with Stephen and Johannes in the early morning, I headed back to the house for a bit after that session, picked up E and the boys, and we caught up with Stephen and Johannes later in the morning to hit the powder for the rest of the day.  We had some light snow and sunshowers in the later morning and early afternoon from yet another small weather system that was pushing through, and then more sunshine as the afternoon wore on.  We got into plenty of that famous Vermont fluff, and all the boys seemed to have a good time.  Click through to see all the picture and read the full report from today at Bolton.

Posted on

Bolton Valley, VT (Timberline) 26FEB2011

Image of Stephen skiing on Spell Binder
Stephen getting some earned turns on Spell Binder

I headed up for an early, pre lift-service session at Bolton this morning with Stephen and Johannes.  We ascended Twice as Nice and hit Spell Binder for first tracks.  On the headwall the snow was a little tricky due to some mid-storm skier traffic yesterday, as well as the wind that had picked up in the evening.

The skiing was still decent, even if not entirely bottomless on the headwall.  Once we were lower down and out of the wind, the snow quality took a big jump up and anything untracked was just what one would expect.  It wasn’t the lightest of the light in terms of Northern Vermont Champlain Powder™, but my analyses from yesterday indicated 5-6% H2O at our place down in the valley, and I’d say it easily skied like that as long as the wind hadn’t gotten to it.  Click through to read the full report from today.

Posted on

Bolton Valley, VT 25FEB2011

Image of Dylan skiing powder
Dylan blasting down Tattle Tale

It was back on Wednesday when our current winter storm started coming into focus, but at that point the snow totals were still somewhat in question.  However, by the yesterday/today timeframe it was looking like the local mountains could see a good foot of snow, so prospects for getting some powder on the slopes were promising.  It actually hadn’t even started snowing when I left the house this morning around 6:45 A.M., but by the time I left Burlington sometime after 11:00 A.M. they’d picked up about 4 inches, and here at the house I found 6.3 inches at noontime.  That meant that the snow was coming down at over an inch an hour in the valley, so up on the mountain they were likely getting blasted.

E and the boys didn’t have school, so around 1:00 P.M. once we were sure that the powder was building, we headed up to Bolton to get in some storm day skiing.   When we first arrived at Timberline, the snowfall was moderate and the flakes were fairly small, but flake size and snowfall intensity were picking up.  We started off with some Spell Binder, and the boys were clearly enjoying the powder with the enthusiastic comments coming out of them such as Ty’ “Beautiful Beauty”, and Dylan’s “That’s Talking Powder”; they were certainly original if not extremely descriptive.  I did my first depth check on the new snow about halfway down Spell Binder, where the tally was 11 inches.  For more pictures and the full story, click through to the full report from today at Bolton Valley.

Posted on

Bolton Valley Nordic & Backcountry, VT 21FEB2011

Image of Ty skinning on the Bryant Trail
Ty skins up the Bryant Trail and checks out the powder

Temperatures warmed up above freezing at all elevations in Northern Vermont at the end of last week, so we waited for the powder to build up over the long weekend before finally heading out this afternoon for turns.  We had three small systems that dropped snow over the holiday weekend; down at the house we picked up 3.7 inches of snow in the form of 0.21 inches of liquid, and Bolton was reporting 5 inches of snow in the higher elevations.  The new powder at the house had settled down to about 2 to 3 inches over the old base, so we knew there would be at least that much up on the mountain.  Temperatures wound up being colder than we thought, but the powder was nice – we found 3 to 4 inches of settled powder in the lower village portion of the network at around 2,000’, and up at the Bryant Cabin elevation (~2,700’) the depths of new snow were 4 to 5 inches.  It turned out to be plenty of fluff for the low and moderate angle pitches, so many nice powder turns were had, and it was also the first time that the boys had skinned all the way up to the cabin.  Dylan had some binding issues near the bottom of the run, so I had to help him through and he got quite a ride.  Read about the entire adventure in the full backcountry trip report from today.