Kids Archives - Page 8 of 34

March 3, 2019March 3, 2019

Stowe, VT 03MAR2019

An image of the Over Easy Gondola from the Mansfield Parking Lot at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont

An image of the macaroni and cheese from the Great Room Grill at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — Ahhh that mac and cheese from the Great Room Grill. Dylan finally got to have it at lunch today after missing his chance when last week’s ski session was cut a bit short.

Today was our weekly BJAMS ski day at Stowe, but before our program in the afternoon, we got together with our friend Weston, who I know from back in graduate school. Weston had to head back to Connecticut by midday to stay ahead of incoming Winter Storm Scott, but we got to ski a couple of early runs with him off the Fourrunner Quad. We haven’t had much new snow this week, so conditions were fairly firm and unpleasant in general, but we did find a few areas with decent groomed snow on Sunrise and T-Line.

After Weston departed, we took an early lunch in the Great Room Grill, and Dylan got to have the mac-n-cheese that he unfortunately missed out on a week ago when Ty got injured and our afternoon got cut short. It was good, and very hearty – enough so that he had to store half of it in a takeaway box for later.

“He said his legs were definitely cooked, but that’s an excellent way to be after a good ski session.”

Dylan wasn’t part of my group today, but after our morning session on alpine skis, he switched to Telemark skiing for his afternoon session. E and I warned him that it can be quite a workout on Stowe’s long trails, but he said he’d just alpine as needed if he had to rest his legs. I find that still requires a lot more work than regular alpine skis, but it sounds like he made it work. He said his legs were definitely cooked, but that’s an excellent way to be after a good ski session.

My ski group for the afternoon included Sienna and her mom Jessica, and Adrian. E’s student didn’t show up, so she was with us as well. We had some great runs off the Meadows Quad, and everyone was doing so well that they all moved up to a run off Sunny Spruce. That was a huge step up for everyone, and I pointed out to Jessica that what she skied today would be even easier and far more fun on better conditions. She’s eagerly awaiting a powder day to see what the skiing will be like, so hopefully she’ll get a chance at one of those soon!

An image of an ice sculpture in the Spruce Peak Village at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — It’s that time of year again – checking out one of the ice sculptures in the Spruce Peak Village today

February 24, 2019February 25, 2019

Stowe, VT 24FEB2019

Ty and Dylan lying down on the snow with their snowboards on at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont

An image of the Gondola buidling with snow falling at Stowe Mountian Ski Resort in Vermont — We had been worried about the potential for mixed precipitation today with ongoing Winter Storm Quiana, so we were happy to find it snowing when we arrived at Stowe for our BJAMS ski program today.

With Winter Storm Quiana brining the potential for mixed precipitation into the area today, we were a bit concerned about conditions for this afternoon’s BJAMS ski program at Stowe. Fortunately, we arrived at the resort around midday to find it snowing, and the overall conditions looked pretty sweet with the trails being topped off with some new dense snow. Ty and Dylan took an early run on Sunny Spruce, and came back with very positive comments about the conditions.

Today was a snowboarding day for me, and since it was the start of school vacation week, our number of participants in the program was lower than usual. My snowboard group was small to begin with, but when all was said and done it ended up being just me, Ty, and Dylan left. That was actually pretty convenient, so the three of us were excited for a fairly casual afternoon of riding.

We took an initial run off the Meadows Chair, and indeed the snow was quite good as the boys had said. The groomed slopes had plentiful packed powder, as well as some new loose snow on top from the snow that’s been falling today. We were a little worried about the winds, but we took a run on the Gondola and had some great turns on Switchback. Off piste we found plenty of deep snow, although it was pretty dense with a thick layer a few inches down in some spots.

An image of Ty and Dylan on snowboards along the edge of the Switchback trail at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — Ty and Dylan pause along the edge of the Switchback trail today as we enjoy an afternoon on the snowboards.

We headed back to Spruce Peak for another run, and it turned out to be quite eventful. We were coming down from Sunny Spruce where West Run joins into East Run, and Ty caught the front edge of his snowboard and went down pretty hard. He hurt his shoulder bad enough that he took a ride down to first aid in a ski patrol sled, and after an X-ray at Copley Hospital we discovered that he’d broken his clavicle. It was a fairly gentle slope where it happened, but it was one of those cases where the collision was just right to cause the injury. Ty will certainly have a few weeks of healing to go through, but at least he’s got a positive attitude about it!

February 23, 2019February 24, 2019

Bolton Valley, VT 23FEB2019

An image of Dylan Telemark skiing in powder on Maria's at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont

An image of a ski pole in the snowpack at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Dylan and I were very impressed when we tried to check on the depth of the new powder from this week. We couldn’t quite a good measurement because the new snow simply blended in with old, but we were impressed with the fact that we could stick our poles into the snowpack right up to the handle and beyond. The Bolton Valley snowpack is deep!

This week wasn’t especially snowy, but we had at least some modest accumulations, with Bolton Valley reporting 9 inches during the period. Overall ski conditions have been quite good as of late though, so we expected there to be plenty of good powder skiing in the usual stashes with just these recent rounds of snow.

E and Ty were both a bit under the weather, but Dylan and I headed up to the mountain with our Tele skis for a good session of powder turns and exploration. Temperatures were really nice, well into the upper 20s F for our midmorning arrival at Timberline.

D and I put together what was essentially a truncated version of the great session that the family had last Saturday. We hit the whole breadth of the mountain, traveling all the way from the bottom of Timberline over to the top of Wilderness, and back again. We hit powdery favorites like White Rabbit, Snow Hole, The Crack, and Maria’s. Dylan was skiing really well on his Telemark skis, and it was fun to watch him developing the wherewithal to throw in alpine turns among his Tele turns whenever he’d be in a tight space that called for it.

An image of Dylan Telemark skiing in powder at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont. — Dylan enjoys surfing some of that powder out there today in the trees at Bolton Valley.

We caught some really nice powder turns, and it was hard to say exactly how much of the surface snow was new, but it was certainly several inches. We had fun checking snow depths around the 3,000’ mark, and you could simply push your pole down into the snow right up to the handle… and then keep going deeper if you wanted to. While the powder today wasn’t quite as fresh as what we experienced last weekend, it’s all just great skiing at this point.

February 16, 2019February 17, 2019

Bolton Valley, VT 16FEB2019

An image of Ty skiing powder with Dylan and Erica looking on in the KP Glades area at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont

An image of Dylan skiing powder in the Villager Trees area of Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont — Dylan in the Villager Trees floating through some of the 25 inches Bolton picked up over the last three days.

In the past 72 hours Mother Nature has dropped 25 inches of snow on Bolton Valley, and with the first part of that accumulation coming in quite dense, it’s been a great resurfacing of the slopes. The bulk of the snow came from Winter Storm Maya during the early part of the week, and the last few inches came from a slightly warmer storm that hit the area yesterday. That system brought freezing levels above the base elevations of the local resorts, so we were eager to see how that played out with respect to the quality of the snow surfaces.

“In the past 72 hours Mother Nature has dropped 25 inches of snow on Bolton Valley, and with the first part of that accumulation coming in quite dense, it’s been a great resurfacing of the slopes.”

We got to Timberline not long after the opening of the Timberline Quad, and encountered some briefly heavy snowfall that ended up sticking around in lighter intensity much of the morning to add a bit of freshening to the slopes. Temperatures were forecast to be in the mid-20s F, but it certainly felt a bit colder than that with the snowfall and some wind. We kicked off the day with an initial top-to-bottom run on Timberline to get a sense for how high the freezing line had gone yesterday, and the effects were definitely a gradient with respect to elevation. There was no obvious sharp line to note, but above 2,000 the effects seemed to be fairly minimal. Even below that elevation though, the mountain has seen several additional inches of accumulation, so there actually was great powder skiing all the way down to 1,500’. The areas that created the most trouble in our experience were where grooming had kicked up some chunks of dense snow to create an irregular subsurface.

An image of big flakes of snwo falling at the Timberline base area at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont — Some fairly heavy snowfall greeting us this morning as we arrive at Timberline

We headed over to the main mountain to take advantage of the additional elevation and catch some lunch after a bit more skiing. We had a great run on White Rabbit and Snow Hole, and indeed the depths of powder and quality of the subsurface just kept getting better and better the higher you went. We relaxed with a good lunch at the James Moore Tavern, and seemed to get in there just before it started getting busy.

An image of Erica deep in the powder skiing the KP Glades area of Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont — E blasting away some of the powder as she drops a steep pitch in the KP Glades

After lunch we headed up The Crack, found a lot of nice powder in Maria’s, then worked our way back to Timberline. We were still finding a lot of powder even at that point in the day, so we hung around for some additional Timberline runs, catching things like the Tattle Tale headwall, that was looking very steep and appealing to Dylan, and then some fun and games in the KP Glades where everyone seemed to get themselves covered in powder through various crashes or others purposely lacing them with the white stuff.

It is technically a holiday weekend, and while the resort was bustling, lift queues were almost nonexistent since the entire resort is open and everyone is well spread out. We even got word from Stowe that while the free days on our passes were certainly working there, the resort was really busy due to the holiday, so people should be prepared for that. Overall though, it’s just great that the resorts are getting such excellent conditions for a big holiday weekend and upcoming vacation week.

February 3, 2019February 4, 2019

Stowe, VT 03FEB2019

An image of participants grouping up for our weekly BJAMS ski program at the base of Spruce Peak at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont

Today was a chance for Ty and I to have the session we’d expected last week and work with Harrison during our BJAMS ski program day. Harrison has had some ski time, but we started right off from scratch at the magic carpet. The afternoon began with skis off as we worked with Harrison in his ski boots, showing him angulation, walking around, and getting him familiar with some of the positions his feet would be in. From there it was skis on and we used the magic carpet slope to have him work on engaging and disengaging his edges with side slipping.

With those first exercises under his belt, Harrison decided that a break was in order, so we headed to the Great Room Grill where he ordered up some mac and cheese that he loved. It really seemed to hit the spot because when we headed back to the Magic Carpet after the break, he began to work on his wedging and wedge stops with great success. When we felt he was comfortable enough to make smooth stops, we said that he could move on to the Adventure Triple and the Inspiration Slope, which had him very excited. We spent the rest of the afternoon there, and Harrison worked on speed control using his wedge, and finally began to get the idea of how to even turn in his wedge. He’s ready to really take off at his next session, providing it’s not too long before he gets back out there.

One of the things that really help Harrison progress today was the excellent soft, surface conditions. There weren’t any signs of scratchiness of Inspiration, and we even had some snowfall at times during the afternoon to freshen things up. Eventually a bit of mixed precipitation appeared at the very end of the day, so we’ll have to see how that affects the surface conditions.

February 2, 2019June 24, 2019

Brandon Gap, VT 02FEB2019

An image showing Erica, Ivan, Dy;an, and Ty skiing powder in one of the great backcountry glades created by the Rochester/Randolph Area Sport Trail Alliance at Brandon Gap in Vermont

An image of Ivan jumping in powder snow at RASTA's Brandon Gap backcountry recreation area in Vermont. — Ivan blasts through some of the powder we found today on our ski outing at RASTA’s Brandon Gap backcountry recreation area.

Today the family headed to Brandon Gap for some backcountry skiing. Dylan’s friend Ivan is visiting, and he joined us as well for his very first backcountry skiing experience. He doesn’t actually have any backcountry ski gear, but we were able to set him up with some Alpine Trekkers and a pair of Erica’s older skins that fit his skis almost perfectly. We also had the advantage of nicely warming temperatures today, so we waited until the afternoon, and arrived at the Bear Brook Bowl Access and Trailhead on Vermont Route 73 to cloudy skies and temperatures around 20 F.

There are multiple trail pods at Brandon Gap, but for this tour I chose to stick with the same No Name Backcountry Area that I’d visited last March. It’s an efficient touring area that heads right up from the parking lot with almost zero approach, and I didn’t expect we’d have too many curves thrown at us since I had a good idea of the lay of the land.

An image of Ivan and Dylan looking at the map at one of the trailheads at RASTA's Brandon Gap Backcountry Recreation Area in Vermont — Dylan and Ivan check out the map as we begin our ski tour at RASTA’s Brandon Gap Backcountry Recreation Area this afternoon.

“The powder we found was beautifully light and dry, and generally 12 to 24 inches in depth, with the highest reading I obtained at 26 inches.”

The skin track was well established as usual, and in this case it was almost a bit too well packed because there was some occasional slipping on the steeper pitches. We quickly found that all you had to do was slide a bit to the left or right into the untracked snow and you’d find sufficient purchase. Ivan had to get used to using the Alpine Trekkers, but by the end of the ascent he was really getting it down. There had been about a dozen other vehicles in the parking area, but we only saw one other group out in the No Name pod.

For our descent we headed far to the skier’s left, father than I’d traversed on my previous visit, and we got to ski one of the leftmost glades that had perhaps three or four previous tracks. The terrain is generally in the 2,000’ to 3,000’ elevation range or so, and the snowpack is quite prodigious. It was too deep for me to easily estimate based on any pole measurements, but there really aren’t any deficiencies and everything you could possibly want to be covered certainly is. The powder we found was beautifully light and dry, and generally 12 to 24 inches in depth, with the highest reading I obtained at 26 inches. The composition of the subsurface was pretty inconsequential because you just weren’t having to get anywhere near it, but from what we could tell it didn’t seem overly crusty. Temperatures stayed very comfortable, and the skies were just cloudy until about midafternoon when it started to snow in association the new small system that’s coming into the area.

An image of Erica and Dylan helping Ivan out of the powder snow during a ski tour at the Brandon Gap Backcountry Recreation Area in Vermont — Erica and Dylan have fun chaining up to try to help Ivan out of the powder today at Brandon Gap.

We stopped off in the Mad River Valley for some Mad Taco on the way home, and business appeared to be booming based on how packed it was. I’m sure resorts throughout the state were loaded with visitors today thanks to the great conditions and moderate temperatures.

January 27, 2019January 28, 2019

Stowe – Spruce Peak & Smuggler’s Notch Sidecountry, VT 27JAN2019

An image showing very heavy snowfall in the Mansfield parking lot at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont

An image of the Sunny Spruce Quad at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — Snowfall was the name of the game today at Stowe, with the flakes intensifying throughout the afternoon and freshening up the slopes on every run.

While the snowy weather at Stowe today was just what we’d all expected, the makeup of my ski day turned out to be dramatically different. I was scheduled to work on the Magic Carpet with Harrison this afternoon, but he ended up being a bit under the weather and we were informed that he wouldn’t be coming to the BJAMS ski program. Ty was supposed to be working with another group, but two out of the four student there didn’t show, and one of the remaining students was the son of the chaperone, so they were all set without Ty. When all was said and done, and we’d waited for any late arrivals, Erica said that Ty and I should just head off and ski together.

Wind holds were rampant today, with the Fourrunner Quad, the Gondola, and the Sensation Quad down at a minimum. Winds actually weren’t bad at all down low, but the Sunny Spruce had quite a lift queue with so many other lifts on hold. After a warm up run on the Meadows Quad, Ty and I decided to wait in the Sunny Spruce queue once, then go adventuring and take an exorbitantly long run to avoid dealing with any lift lines.

“As we finished up and headed back toward our car in the Mansfield Parking Lot, snowfall was in the 1 to 2 inch per hour range and slowed traffic leaving the resort, but it sure was impressive and will no doubt be freshening the slopes even further.”

Since we had all afternoon, my plan was to explore the lines that dive off toward the notch from the top of Sunny Spruce. I’d seen the obvious lines many times before, but I’d never take my group down there without some reconnaissance first. With just Ty and I, today was the perfect day to get that done. The route starts off steeply, with some obvious trimmed lines through mixed evergreens and hardwoods. The pitch then moderates a bit, and you get into hardwoods where natural lines abound everywhere. The new powder was only about 6 inches deep, so Ty and I sought out some of the shallower lines, but there are countless steep lines in there that would support powder of any depth.

An image of the Barnes Camp building near Stowe Mountain Ski Resort in Vermont — Catching a view of the Barnes Camp area as we return from our adventures in Smuggler’s Notch

We generally kept to skier’s left, shallowing out our lines and knowing that we had to head that way eventually. There were several sets of tracks in there, so it was clearly a traveled area, but I was bit surprised as we approached the bottom and saw a river instead of Route 108. It turns out that we were on the near side of the valley away from the road, but we were easily able to cross the frozen river, then hook up with the boardwalks coming from near Barnes Camp, and get back to the resort. We headed to the Midway Lodge for a break and a snack, and with the wind holds the Lodge was nearly deserted.

A Google Earth map tracing a ski tour from Spruce Peak at Stowe Mountain Resort down into the Smuggler's Notch sidecountry in Vermont — A map of today’s ski tour from Spruce Peak down into the Smuggler’s Notch sidecountry along the West Branch of the Little River and back to Barnes Camp

We finished off the day with a few more runs on Spruce Peak, and any lift queues had essentially evaporated by that point. The snowfall continued to intensify though, and the skiing just kept improving every run. As we finished up and headed back toward our car in the Mansfield Parking Lot, snowfall was in the 1 to 2 inch per hour range and slowed traffic leaving the resort, but it sure was impressive and will no doubt be freshening the slopes even further.

January 20, 2019January 21, 2019

Bolton Valley, VT 20JAN2019

An image of Ty skiing the Lost Girlz area at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont

An image of Erica spraying powder as she skis in fresh snow from Winter Storm Harper at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont — E throws up some powder today during our Timberline adventures in the snows of Winter Storm Harper

The current weather system affecting our area has been named Winter Storm Harper, and its snowfall began around here yesterday afternoon. There was a long lead up of light snow into the evening, but overnight it finally started to unload snowfall at roughly an inch per hour. The snowfall density hovered around a fairly standard 10% H2O because the flakes were quite small and temperatures were in the single digits F, but those small flakes still managed to accumulate at quite a pace throughout the morning.

Temperatures were only expected to stay in the single digits F today, so I had initially planned on heading for some backcountry skiing to stay warm, but once we saw that there was zero wind and all of Bolton Valley’s lifts were running, our plans shifted to riding the lifts. We headed up to Timberline around midday and found continued snowfall that was robust enough to challenge both the road and parking lot plows to keep up with it.

“…with the storm cycles we’ve had recently it’s just been resurfacing after resurfacing. So, you can certainly go fast and big on the slopes, and that’s just what the boys had fun doing today on the steep and deep terrain.”

We started off with a quick run on Spell Binder to get warmed up, and the depth of the powder seemed to range from 15 to 25 inches. I’d say the low end values would represent what had come from this storm, with the deeper areas including snows from previous storm cycles. Anything in that range of depths was more than enough to keep you floating though, since it was fairly hearty mid weight powder.

An image of Dylan skiing powder snow in the KP Glades are of Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont — Dylan plowing through lots of untracked powder today out in the KP glades

That introduction on Spell Binder set the tenor for the day though, and it less us know that both the depths of the powder, and the degree of resurfacing called for steep terrain and plenty of it. With that in mind we spent the afternoon visiting a ton of powder-filled, steeply-sloped favorites like Lost Girlz, Thundergoat Pass, KP Glades, Sure Shot Trees, Doug’s Solitude, etc. Off piste coverage is excellent, and with the storm cycles we’ve had recently it’s just been resurfacing after resurfacing. So, you can certainly go fast and big on the slopes, and that’s just what the boys had fun doing today on the steep and deep terrain.

An image of Dylan jumping on his skis in the Thundergoat Pass area at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Dylan catching some air on Thundergoat Pass today as we focused on the steep and deep terrain thanks to our recent storm cycles

We took a mid-session break in the Timberline Base Lodge to have some food and pop in some hand/boot warmers, and seats were just about filled, but we were able to get a table within a minute or two. Food options are fairly minimal now from what we saw, but there were fries and chicken fingers for hot items. I’m sure it’s hard for the resort to manage the availability of food services at the Timberline Base Lodge because of the variability in its opening schedule, but we’d certainly be ordering more food if they had more available. We’d love to go back to the South of Solitude days as well!

An image of Ty skiing powder snow in the trees at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Ty slicing up the powder in the trees today

Overall all though, it was simply fantastic to get the whole family out for a lift-served Timberline powder day, and I think this was our first one of those this season. As usual, Ty was very impressed with how the lot was quite full of vehicles, but people seemed to be nonexistent on the slopes. I guess the message is that they were well spread out. E was cold and didn’t come out for our last run, but it was a big hit with the boys, especially Dylan. We hit Doug’s Solitude to Adam’s Solitude, and he jumps off big ledges, lots of untracked powder, and a chance for Dylan to ride his favorite return track to the base with all its whoops, jumps, walls, and endless halfpipe nature.

January 13, 2019January 15, 2019

Bolton Valley Nordic & Backcountry, VT 13JAN2019

An image of people ski touring on the Pond Loop trail near sunset with some of Bolton Valley Resort's alpine trails in the background

An image of Erica skiing the Cup Runneth Over glade on the backcountry network at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont — Erica enjoying some beautiful powder on Cup Runneth Over today at Bolton Valley

Today’s temperatures were a few degrees warmer than yesterday’s, but earning turns in the backcountry still seemed like good way to fight off the chill. E and the boys were up for some skiing today, so with yesterday’s trip to Holden’s Hollow serving as reconnaissance, I set up what I hoped would be a fun ski tour for them.

The temperature was right around 10 F in the Village when we arrived in the midafternoon, and with afternoon sun and no wind it was actually quite comfortable as we headed up the Bryant Trail to begin the tour. It wasn’t long before we came to the top of Cup Runneth Over, and everyone was surprised that I had them taking off their skins for our first descent. The descent there was excellent, with about a foot of powder over a soft base. I was very impressed to find that even the steep final section of the glade was in excellent shape. E was really enjoying the quality of the snow, but also the peace and quiet of the trees and all the unique formations that the fluffy snow had built upon the vegetation.

An image showing a formation in the powder snow that looks like a snail on the backcountry network at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — One of the snow formations Erica saw out in the backcountry today that looked like a snail coming up out of the snow.

“I was worried that they would be a bit steep for E and the boys on their Telemark gear, but the powder was deep and soft enough that they had no problems with the turns.”

Once we finished our descent down to the pump house, we put out skins back on and began our ascent on Telemark. This was a slightly different route than what I’d taken yesterday, but Telemark looked like a nice option to ascend to the top of the Holden’s Hollow Glades and I was interested in exploring that route. It turns out that Telemark takes a nice mellow grade as it wraps around the ridge with Holden’s Hollow. On the trip around we discovered that there are also more glades on the back side of Holden’s Hollow. They looked quite inviting, but we didn’t quite have time to incorporate those into our tour this time.

An image of Erica and Ty ski touring on the Telemark trail on the backcountry network at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Erica and Ty make their way up the Telemark trail under the cover of beautiful snowy branches.

“E said that overall she had a really great time because the quality of the snow was just so good.”

We stopped on the ridge at the top our ascent for some hot chocolate, then headed down through the Holden’s Hollow Glades. I was worried that they would be a bit steep for E and the boys on their Telemark gear, but the powder was deep and soft enough that they had no problems with the turns. In the lower sections of the glade, Dylan said he wished it was even steeper to accommodate the amount of powder that was there. E said that overall she had a really great time because the quality of the snow was just so good. We’re often out on the backcountry network when the powder is more marginal and not quite enough to hold up on the lift served terrain, but this time everyone was getting top notch midwinter powder and loving it.

An image showing a Google Earth map with GPS tracking data of a ski tour on the Nordic and Backcountry Network at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont — A map including GPS Tracking data from today’s ski tour on the Bolton Valley Nordic & Backcountry Network overlayed onto Google Earth

January 9, 2019January 10, 2019

Bolton Valley, VT 09JAN2018

An iamge of Ty skiing powder in the Bonus Woods at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont

An image of Ty skiing powder in the trees at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Today’s trip to Bolton Valley revealed some nice accumulations of dense powder in the trees.

A long, strung out winter storm system has been affecting our area for the past couple of days. It started out with some snow from a warm front overnight into yesterday morning, then there was a bit of a lull, and today the main part of the storm came through. Ty was off from school today due to the storm, and I decided to work at home, so we had a chance to head up to the mountain in the afternoon for a few turns.

The first part of this storm had some mixed precipitation, so we were really in no rush to jump out on the slopes early, instead deciding to let some of the new snow build up during the day. Today’s snow here at the house was quite dense, coming in in the 10-13% H2O range based on my analyses, so while it wasn’t going to be the ultimate in fluffy powder, it certainly had the potential to further resurface the slopes.

“I did some depth checks in the trees and frequently found surface snow depths of 12 to 15 inches.”

While working today, I watched the Bolton Valley Live Webcam, and saw that the Vista Quad stopped running at some point around midday. I figured it was on wind hold, but Mid Mountain and Snowflake were still running, so we still headed up for a few lower mountain runs. The wind was certainly whipping around up there, but most of the lower mountain areas were reasonably sheltered, and the trees were especially nice because it seemed like a lot of snow had settled in there. I did some depth checks in the trees and frequently found surface snow depths of 12 to 15 inches. I’m sure some of that is from a previous storm or two, but as their afternoon report, the resort was indicating 7 inches of snow and overall there have been some healthy, dense accumulations from these past couple events. Indeed we found the new snow on the mountain to be dense as my analyses had suggested, but boy did it constitute a resurfacing of the slopes. If you were on the new snow there was no touching the subsurface, and you typically sunk into the powder just a few inches anyway because of the density.

As of about 9:30 P.M. this evening, the flakes falling have become much larger down here at the house, so the snow is getting fluffier. This drier snow on top of the dense stuff from earlier today is just what we like – the perfect right-side-up deposition for those powder turns.

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