Bolton Valley has finally fired up snowmaking at the base of the Timberline area, so Timberline’s slopes will likely be opening to lift-served skier traffic soon.
Our recent long-duration system finished up on Friday, and the next winter system moved into the area today, so Mother Nature continues to deliver snow and enhance the conditions on the slopes. E and I headed up to Bolton Valley this morning to check out the conditions with some lift-served skiing, and there’s no doubt that the word is out about the conditions. It was midmorning when we arrived at the resort, and people were already parking at the third tier of Timberline and being shuttled up to the main base. The good news is that they resort has fired up the snow guns on Timberline, so they’ll probably be opening that area to lift-served skiing soon.
Erica enjoying some powder today in the Snow Hole area
After the run of relatively cold, windy (and thankfully snowy) weather we’ve had for the first third of January, today was extremely comfortable with temperatures around 20 F, no wind, and light snow falling. So, everyone we saw at the resort seemed to be excited about that. The resort had received another few inches of snow as the previous system wrapped up, and conditions on the slopes were very similar to what I experienced on Wednesday and Thursday with a touch of improvement thanks to the additional snow and more grooming. The scoured areas were still thin on snow, but grooming had definitely help equalize and soften the conditions there a bit. Natural snow areas out of the wind continue to offer fantastic snow – and when that snow is groomed it skis beautifully; you’re not hitting anything under the packed powder. Off piste, there is a lot of powder as one would expect. We were finding depths of around 20 inches, which is similar to what I’ve been finding this week. In general, areas with that sort of deep powder are skiing fine, but it’s not outstanding powder skiing. The powder is of roughly medium-density, but its density is generally equivalent throughout its depth, so you can sink in pretty far and get a bit bogged down on lower-angle terrain. It’s not upside-down powder, but it just doesn’t ski as well as it would with a really nice right-side-up arrangement. Some areas did offer a better powder experience though. They have finally opened up more of the Snowflake terrain, and we found about a foot of powder over places that had either been groomed or had more settled snow underneath, and those spots offered some very pleasant powder skiing today.
Areas protected from the wind continue to offer great powder turns as our second long-duration winter storm this month dops more snow in the local mountains.
I had time to head up to Bolton Valley for another ski tour this morning, and the weather was very much like what we’d had in the mountains for the past few days: temperatures in the single digits F with a lot of wind. Thankfully, yesterday appeared to be the coldest of the days this week, and the temperatures this morning were about 5 to 10 degrees F warmer.
Yesterday I’d done a bit of lift-served skiing after my tour, but today I decided to make my tour a bit longer instead of sitting on the lifts. On my ascent I topped out around 2,900’ on Wilderness, and I figured I’d gone high enough to get a good sampling of the snow at various elevations.
With a few more inches of snow each day, the conditions on the slopes have just continued to improve aside from those areas exposed to the wind where scouring has been incessant. Exposed areas just continued to be scoured, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those exposed spots had less snow than they did before this system began. Protected areas had simply fantastic snow though. Like yesterday, I typically measured 20 inches or more of powder in protected areas today, and the subsurface snow is a distant memory there. I also measured depths as great as 35 inches in some non-drifted spots, where it seemed like I was just pushing down into the older layers in the snowpack without even hitting any firm layer to differentiate the snows from these recent couple of systems. That’s a good sign about the overall quality of the snowpack though if you can’t even find a subsurface layer until you head down 35 inches into the snow.
Throughout the Village, snow has been accumulating in various ways on all sorts of surfaces due to the continued wind and snow from our ongoing long-duration winter storm.
With the end of this most recent long-duration system, it looks like we could be moving into a pattern featuring some Clipper systems. The first one is coming into the area tomorrow, with another expected for Monday into Tuesday.
Peering down Vermont 200 this morning, it was clear that its protection from the winds was allowing some nice snow accumulations to settle in for some great soft conditions.
I’d hoped to head up to the mountain for some turns yesterday afternoon to see how accumulations were settling in from our current system, but it was a bit close to sunset after I finished the work I wanted to get done. I wasn’t too worried about it though, since this is another long-duration system, and the snow accumulations are slowly building up. I did manage to get out for some turns this morning on my way into Burlington, so I can report on that outing. In the weekly forecast, today had the coldest temperatures of any day, with valleys in the single digits F. So, in that respect, this wasn’t my preference for days to get on the skis, but it’s been snowing, and it worked out.
In most respects, the weather up at the mountain was sort of status quo for what we’ve had over the past several days – at the Village elevations it was still in the single digits F. In this case, the temperature was barely in the positive category, but it can definitely get far worse in January. A big current factor in comfort on the slopes though is the wind – those winds are still howling out there with this system. With that in mind, I started the morning with an ascent via the Wilderness Uphill Route to get my body up to temperature, and that worked well. Then I was warm enough to take a trip up the Vista Quad and make another run.
As the snow continues to fall, the persistent northwest upslope winds are forming drifts all across the resort in exposed areas.
The snow report from Bolton Valley was indicating 6 inches for their 48-hour total/storm total as of this morning, which doesn’t seem like much, but this system has brough decent moisture with it. The flakes have been small in many areas because of poor dendritic growth. Combine that with those winds blowing it around and packing it together, and measuring accumulations in the mountains has been tough. For example, I’ve recorded almost a foot of snow from this system down at my house in the valley, not because we actually got more liquid equivalent than the higher elevations, but because we’re sheltered from the high winds, and the dendrites can actually stack up with loft and not get smashed and compacted. In any event, we’ve recorded about a half inch of liquid equivalent from this storm so far at the house, so the mountains have probably picked up somewhere between a half inch and an inch of liquid. In areas protected from the wind, such as by the Miso Toh Kome hut, there are some snow stacks that give you a nice sense of how much has fallen with this event in unscoured areas, and the stacks looked like they were about 10 inches deep.
In terms of the ski conditions, with a lot of its terrain facing west, those usual exposed areas at Bolton without snowmaking are scoured down to just a couple of crusty inches. Areas out of the wind have lots of great medium-weight powder though. Measurements I took in protected, non-drifted areas in the 2,000’ to 2,500’ elevation range revealed up to 20 inches of powder, so where it’s not blown away, even the lower elevations of the main mountain are really starting to accumulate quite a stack of surface snow atop the base. I skied Lower Turnpike on my touring run at Wilderness, and being protected from the wind, it had great snow wall-to-wall, with some spots having a foot of powder, and others just a few inches of powder if they had seen grooming and/or skier traffic. With the cold temperatures, the snow was a bit slow, but not so slow that I had trouble maintain speed even in those deeper areas of powder. Off the top of Vista, I stayed away from Spillway and Hard Luck, which are much more exposed and get scoured, and chose Vermont 200, which is much more protected. It had just a couple of small, scoured spots, but beyond that it was a playground of 1 to 3 feet of nearly untouched powder depending on whether or not you were blasting through a drift.
Traffic at the resort was fairly light this morning, with some trails having just a few tracks as the snow from our current windy storm system just continues to bury the mountains.
Although we’re not currently getting tons of champagne powder turns from this system with its prodigious winds, I did notice one great thing that this current system is doing. Aside from some nice resurfacing outside of the exposed areas, the winds are really filling in any of those deeper water bars in the lower elevations that just hadn’t managed to get there yet. I really noticed it on Lower Turnpike – there are those certain water bars in lower elevations where you have had to direct yourself to an optimal spot along the width of the trail because it’s got the smoothest transition for crossing. That issue has largely disappeared now with this meaty snow being driven into the hollows of the water bars by those winds.
Snowdrifts were certainly on the menu during today’s ski tour. Howling winds from the upslope portion of our current storm cycle have pounded the Northern Greens and whipped up the snow into formations 5 to 6-feet deep as my buried ski pole can attest.
Our anticipated long-duration storm system began in the area yesterday with some light snow accumulations for the mountains and valleys, but snowfall really picked up overnight, so I decided to head up to Bolton today for some turns. As of this morning, Bolton Valley was reporting 7 inches of new snow from the storm, and snowfall has continued today. Their reported storm total seemed like a good amount for some ski touring, so that was my plan if I was heading up to the mountain alone. Dylan didn’t work until the afternoon, so he was planning to head up for a morning lift-served session with his fried Parker, and E had the day off due to school closures from the storm and she was thinking of going as well. Those plans fell through though – the winds were so strong that the Vista Quad Chair was on wind hold before it ever opened, and even the Mid Mountain Chair quickly went on wind hold in the morning. The only chairlift running by mid-morning was the Snowflake Chair, and with most of the Snowflake terrain not open, we generally felt that it wasn’t worth heading up for such minimal terrain. That brought me back to my original plan of ski touring on Wilderness.
Down at our place in the valley we’d picked up 4 to 5 inches of snow from the storm at that point, but the contrast in accumulations was stark as I dropped down into Bolton Flats on my way to the mountain – the snow accumulation there looked like an inch at most. Accumulations were the same at the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road at 340’, and I had to get above 1,000’ before I really started seeing accumulations of at least a few inches. Up in the Village parking areas, it was impossible to find a sheltered spot to get a reliable measurement of accumulations at 2,000’, so I had to wait until I got into the relative shelter of the Wilderness Uphill Route to really check the snow depth. Once one the ascent though, I checked the snow depth along the sheltered edge of Wilderness numerous times, and the measurements were all between 8 and 9 inches, with one measurement of 7 inches. At 2,500’ I was measuring 9 to 10 inches of accumulation, and I never got any reliable measurements higher than that, even up above 3,000’. I stress “reliable” because the winds had wreaked havoc on the snow in many areas. Some spots were scoured down to the old base, and some places had 5-foot drifts. Up at the Wilderness Summit at 3,150’ the winds were absolutely howling – they had to be in the 50 to 60 MPH range at times. Finding a sheltered spot to pack up my skins was a huge challenge. Thankfully, temperatures were in the 20s F, so there wasn’t frigid cold to go with those winds. Photographs of gentled-settled powder snow were difficult to come by today, but if you wanted to get images of drifts… they were everywhere.
Oh those drifts out there today! Even down at the Village elevations, the wind had sculpted the new snow into all kinds of formations and covered objects in many different ways.
Here’s the snow accumulations profile I saw as of midday in the Bolton Valley area for this ongoing storm:
The skiing turned out to be excellent though. As long as you avoid any wind-scoured areas, there’s been a really decent resurfacing from this storm so far. We’ve picked up ¾” if liquid equivalent from the storm at our site down in the valley, and the mountains should have had at least that much, so an inch of new liquid equivalent up there seems very reasonable based on what I experienced today. The new snow our there certainly wasn’t fluff; with all the wind, it was actually feeling like typical 10% H2O synoptic snow, and out of the wind, the new snow was substantial enough to even resurface black diamond pitches. So, while it wasn’t sublime champagne powder, it was decent medium-weight powder, and it was much more what the slopes needed with respect to resurfacing.
We didn’t get too much accumulation (about an additional half inch) during the day today here at our house along the spine because as forecast, the Froude Numbers went well above 1.0, but they may have come back down a bit because we’re getting some decent accumulation this evening with these more recent bands of moisture pushing through.
Erica on Sprig O’ Pine as we enjoy some of Bolton’s great Christmas Eve ski conditions thanks to 8 inches of snow from our most recent Alberta Clipper system
As of their early morning snow report, Bolton Valley had received 8 inches of accumulation from the clipper that began affecting the area yesterday evening, so I headed up for some morning turns with my wife and our younger son. We’re not fully into the holiday week yet, so visitation at the resort was still fairly modest – around the time of the opening of the early lifts, folks were parking in the second and third tiers of the main Village parking areas.
I’d say we found about 8 inches of new snow at most elevations, so that’s right on track with the snow report. The powder was dry, midweight snow – my snow analyses for the storm up to that point came in at 7 to 8 % H2O. Total liquid equivalent from the system stands at 0.42 inches at our site in the valley, so that’s very much in line with the forecasts, and the mountain was probably somewhere in the range of a ½ inch of liquid equivalent. While not enough for a massive resurfacing, it did a decent job of resetting the surfaces atop subsurfaces that are already of decent quality from the past couple of systems.
After a couple days of below average temperatures, we’ve warmed back up into the 20s F now, and with light snow falling and no wind, the weather was fantastic out on the slopes today. We started off with a run on the Vista Quad, and Alta Vista had nice powder and chowder available – it was enough to be bottomless in untouched areas on moderate slope angles. Our timing was perfect for catching the opening of the Wilderness Lift, so we did a couple runs there, then finished off with more runs off Vista and Snowflake. The resort even hit Spillway hard with snowmaking and it’s good to go – my wife and I didn’t ski it, but my son and his friend did and said it was fine for manmade snow.
Conditions on the slopes are certainly good, but the natural snow trails could still use more cover, and the resort will need that to expand terrain into areas where they aren’t making snow. They haven’t yet opened Timberline, most of the Snowflake area, or the Cobrass area, so there’s a lot of terrain still to be made available.
A view from near the Bolton Valley Snowflake Lift summit station amidst today’s snowfall
It was a cold one out there today; indeed, it was really a good day to just enjoy lots of indoor activities. But we did just have another storm push through the region, and the conditions on the slopes are good and keep getting better, so I still wanted to get out to see what the new snow was like and get some exercise.
Bolton’s Wilderness Chair was set to open at 10:00 A.M. again, and with the cold temperatures I definitely wanted to warm up with some touring. So, I decided to go with a session like the one on Thursday, which I kicked off with some touring before moving to lift-served turns. When I arrived midmorning in the Bolton Valley Village, it was 7 F according to the car thermometer, and single digits F is definitely midwinter cold. There wasn’t much for wind in the parking area at that moment, so I was encouraged by that while gearing up.
Catching sight of an old Snow Hole trail sign covered with snow along the Wilderness Uphill Route during today’s ski tour ascent
Ascending via the Wilderness Uphill Route was quite comfortable, since it’s well out of any wind, and I was generating plenty of heat. I stopped my tour at 2,500’, enjoyed a run through the powder along the edges of Lower Turnpike, and then hopped on the Wilderness Chair for a ride. My body was warmed up for the touring and Telemark turns, and the wind was happily at my back while I was on the lift, but I could tell it was pretty brutal up there at the Wilderness Summit above 3,000’. The calm conditions from below were gone, and the biting winds along the ridgelines made their presence known. After that trip, I didn’t have much interest in heading up to check out the Vista Summit, so I just stayed low and enjoyed a run off the Snowflake Chair. The warm-up touring definitely helped me stay comfortably warm for a couple of lift rides at least before I headed home.
Powder depths have obviously been bolstered by this most recent system, and conditions are good, but certainly nothing stratospheric for the Northern Greens. One factor in that assessment is that this latest storm was nice, but the snow was quite dry, and it was less of a resurfacing than the previous storm. We picked up about 0.20” of liquid equivalent from this system compared to 0.40” of liquid equivalent from the previous one, so scale those up a bit according for Bolton’s elevation and it gives you a sense for their contributions to resurfacing. The resort is opening more terrain all the time, but lift-served natural snow terrain could still use another solid resurfacing storm with an inch or two of liquid equivalent to take care of the tougher areas. Overall, the natural snow terrain that’s open is quite skiable with good coverage and quality surfaces, and there’s a decent, consolidated base above 2,000’, but you still need to pick and choose your lines somewhat in those spots exposed to wind that get scoured.
The resort was indicating 3-6” of new snow in their early morning report, and I can’t separate out accumulations from this storm specifically, but the changes in surface snow depths between Thursday and today give a sense of the contributions from this most recent event at various elevations. Thursday’s surface snow depths are on the left, and the approximate depths I observed today are on the right in bold:
So, there’s a lot of nice, fairly deep powder above 2,000’, and it’s right-side-up and skiing great thanks to this latest storm’s snow being dry. My observations from down at the house have been giving me snow densities in the 2 to 6% H2O range throughout this latest storm, so indeed it’s some quality powder. The back side of this system has actually been aided by some direct lake-effect off Lake Champlain. The bands were mostly oriented to affect the Champlain Valley earlier in the morning, but as midday approached, the bands shifted such that they were more directly hitting the mountains. That definitely helped keep it extra snowy throughout the day and boost accumulations.
Enjoying some of the snowy trees in the Wilderness glades on my ski tour this morning at Bolton Valley
Tomorrow is supposed to be even a bit colder than today, so if I head out it will just be for a tour vs. riding any lifts. After the warming and consolidation earlier this week, it looks like Timberline is probably getting in shape to support some good touring and powder skiing again, so I may stay low and tour there if a ski session comes together. We’ll see how much additional snow the resort is reporting in the morning, but since we were getting hit at our place by those lake effect bands right into the evening today, Bolton should have been getting even more of that snow. The models suggest we’ve got another couple of clippers affecting the area over the next few days, with warmer temperatures as well, so that’s looking nice moving into the holiday week.
The mountains made out great from our most recent system and offered some nice powder for those getting out to the slopes.
Per the discussion in the NNE Winter Thread at American Weather Forums last night, our most recent winter storm system started up yesterday afternoon. Snow levels were up above 1,000’ to start, but they gradually came down in elevation, and the valleys were reporting a mix of rain and snow in the evening. By 7:00 P.M. we started getting initial slushy accumulations on elevated surfaces down here at the 500-foot elevation, and it took a bit more time for the temperatures to drop below freezing, but within a couple of hours they’d fallen enough that the accumulations really started to take hold. Although we only had an inch or two of snow accumulation in total here at our site, we picked up 0.40 inches of liquid equivalent from the system, so the snow for the local mountains probably had at least a half inch of liquid in it. That’s definitely enough to get into the realm of a modest resurfacing.
When I saw Bolton Valley’s initial early morning report of 3 to 4 inches of snow, I decided that mid-fats were the practical play for today’s skis. Dylan had the day off from work, and I’d planned to get him up if the morning snowfall numbers were substantial enough, but 3-4” was modest enough that I decided to let him sleep in and I headed up by myself to sample what the storm had brought us. Heading up the Bolton Valley Access Road, the elevation dependence of the snowfall was stark: I had ascended above 1,000’ before there was really more than a trace of new accumulation in that area. And even after that, accumulations were slow to increase; it wasn’t until I hit the Bolton Valley Village at 2,000’ that I really felt the accumulation were substantial enough that they were going to make a big impact on the skiing.
I did find 3 to 4 inches of new snow at 2,000’ when I did some checks around the Village, so that was encouraging – if the main base had that much new accumulation at that point, it was likely going to be more in the higher elevations. The Wilderness Double Chair was scheduled to start running at 10:00 A.M., so my plan was to kick off the day’s ski session with some touring before Wilderness lift access was available. I ascended up to ~2,700’ to one of my usual transition points by the time lift-service was underway, so my initial descent was from there. My descent was via a combination of Cougar and Lower Turnpike, and the powder turns were excellent. On low-angle terrain, the new snow was substantial enough that it easily provided 100% bottomless powder turns, and on medium-angle terrain I’d say it was in the range of ~80% bottomless turns. The new snow was medium weight powder in probably the 8% H2O range, and just dry enough that you could keep moving fine on even low-angle terrain.
When I’d descended to the base of the Wilderness Chair it was one wind hold, and they suspected it would be about 30 minutes before it would be back up, so I checked out the other lift offerings. The Snowflake Chair provided some great turns with a few inches of powder over a groomed base on Sprig O’ Pine, and off the Mid Mountain Chair, Beech Seal had excellent natural accumulations that had resurfaced even the manmade snow on the skier’s left to a good degree. Off the Vista Quad Chair, Sherman’s Pass is finally open, so I used it to make my way back over toward the Wilderness terrain, which delivered great natural snow turns as usual. Riding the Vista Quad, I found that the winds were howling above 3,000’, and temperatures were dropping well into the 20s F. It was getting bitter up there.
In terms of snowfall and accumulations, there was at least light to moderate snowfall during my entire ski session, and it was pounding 1-2”/hour snowfall for a while just as I was starting the initial ascent of my ski tour. With continued snowfall and rates like that, it wasn’t surprising that accumulations had jumped up a bit from the initial morning report. Here’s the approximate snow accumulations profile I found from this event as of about midday when I was leaving the mountain:
Heavy snowfall in the 1 to 2-inch per hour range hit the resort today just as I was beginning my ski tour to kick off the day’s ski session.
It was really windy up at the Vista Summit, and I couldn’t get access to the usual protected spots I like to use to gauge depth, so what I’ve put down is my best estimate. Overall though, isolating depths for the snow from this most recent storm was relatively easy because we had some warmth earlier this week that consolidated the top of the snowpack. Like with the last storm though, it’s not a rock-hard subsurface – it’s a spongy interface and the new snow has bonded well to it, so that’s great for the skiing. For the elevations below 1,500’, those depths reported above are actually more than what was there when I initially ascended the access road in the morning, because the heavy snowfall during the morning had added accumulations there that hadn’t been present earlier. I was surprised that the base of Timberline at 1,500’ only had an inch or two of new snow, so even being where the precipitation fell as all snow wasn’t quite enough to get solid accumulations that would dramatically affect the resurfacing of the slopes; you really needed another 500 feet or so to get into the best stuff.
The continued snowfall today was definitely having an effect though, as evidenced by some of the midday updates to the Bolton Valley Snow Report:
10:30am Update: How’s about a couple of rope drops? Glades, Swing, Fanny and more have joined the ranks since we opened this morning, and the snow is still coming down.
12:15pm Update: The ropes keep dropping – we’re adding Bolton Outlaw, Peggy Dow’s, Cougar, Old Turnpike, and Lower crossover to the mix!
This storm was a great way to kick the conditions up some notches as we head toward Christmas, and with a couple more clippers on the way in the coming days plus cold temperatures for the foreseeable future, it looks like conditions will be improving throughout the coming week.
Snow curling off the roof of the Inn at Bolton Valley after many rounds of snow have hit the resort in the past week
It’s that time of year, and Bolton Valley started their lift-served ski season yesterday, so I headed up this afternoon for a few runs off the lifts to check out the conditions and get some exercise. It’s becoming a bit hard to keep track of the snow that’s falling because it’s nearly continuous with all these bread-and-butter systems passing through the area, but the resort is reporting 14 inches of new snow in the past 48 hours.
They have a very interesting assortment of lifts and trails available right now that is atypical of what they usually have going at the start of the season. The Snowflake Chair isn’t running, and Sherman’s Pass isn’t open, and those are often early season staples. Instead, the Wilderness Chair is running, and they appear to have the entirety of the Wilderness terrain open on natural snow. With neither Sherman’s Pass nor Bear Run open, there’s no beginner terrain currently being served off the Vista Quad or the Mid Mountain Chair, so the only beginner terrain is off the Mighty Mite. On top of that, the only way down from the Vista Summit is Hard Luck, which is a steep black diamond run. It is indeed a very unusual collection of early season terrain.
I decided to sample all the lifts that were available during my session, and I started with a Beech Seal run off the Mid Mountain Chair. The skier’s left side had manmade snow, and the skier’s right was natural snow, and the quality of the ski surfaces was of course night and day. The right side was a little thin in a few spots, but the snow quality was excellent since it’s entirely natural snow that has never undergone a thaw-freeze cycle. I next headed to the Vista Quad, and conditions on Hard Luck were disastrous. Coverage was fantastic, but being all manmade snow, very steep, and the only way down from Vista such that it got all the skier traffic, the quality of the snow was horrible. I’m sure racers would love it, but that’s about it. I watched multiple people try to turn and simply kick out, fall, and begin to slide down the slope because there’s just nothing to hold onto with your skis. Thankfully, about halfway down you can cut over to the Show Off trail, which is currently all natural snow. The coverage is a little thin in spots, but easily manageable and all the snow there was excellent packed powder.
Every time I pop up to the mountain there’s another plentiful round of snow covering everything thanks to the series of winter storms we’ve been seeing over the past week.
There was lots of snowmaking going on with temperatures in the 20s F, so I’m sure they’ll be opening more of the traditional early season terrain soon.
Ty getting in some early season backcountry turns during today’s ski tour at Bolton Valley
Ty was off from work today, so the two of us decided to head up to Bolton Valley for some turns. With the generally unconsolidated snowpack, it was a bit tough to tell how much new snow fell from this most recent Clipper system, but based on the resort’s snow report, it seemed like they picked up a few inches, similar to what we received down here in the valley.
With tomorrow being their opening day, there was a lot of activity on the mountain today as they made final preparations for opening. At the base, one of the patrollers asked if we could stay off Wilderness for touring and instead head over to the Nordic and backcountry network, so we were happy to oblige. Although there’s no snowmaking on Wilderness, there snowpack is substantial enough that they could open the area for lift-served skiing if they wanted to. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were doing some grooming and prep work/obstacle marking over there today, so I suspect they wanted to minimize skier traffic as much as they could.
I wouldn’t normally have defaulted to touring on the Nordic and backcountry Network at this stage of the early snowpack, since the Wilderness trails are just a safer bet for quality turns; they have been mowed and have a more substantiated base due to some skier traffic packing it down. But since I’ve been out on Wilderness for a few ski tours now this season, getting out onto the nearby backcountry terrain gave me a nice opportunity to compare the quality of the turns in both places. Although we made our ascent on the Nordic and backcountry Network terrain, we were actually touring in the area over near Snow Hole and made most of our descent on the edge of the on piste Wilderness terrain. That allowed us to directly experience the skiing in both areas today.
Views of the recent accumulating snows in the Bolton Valley Village during today’s ski tour. We’ve had round after round of snow from a series of modest systems coming through the area, and they look to continue for days to come.
For overall skiing and powder turns, the experience was unquestionably better on piste at Wilderness. It’s not an issue of overall snow depth on the backcountry terrain; snowpack depths were closing in on 20 inches when I was out for my ski tour on Tuesday, and that was before the Clipper and the cold front brought a lot more snow to the area over the past couple of days. The depth of the snowpack has gone up substantially at this point – as of today the depth at the Mt. Mansfield stake is at 30 inches. What’s needed off piste to really improve the quality of the skiing is some consolidation. There is some base snow in the snowpack below the fluff, and it’s a decent base for on piste turns, it’s just not enough to sufficiently cover the contours of your typical off-piste terrain yet. Although a storm with above-freezing temperatures isn’t going to be great for snow quality, it would help in that consolidation. Alternatively, a nice dense snowfall storm would also help, and of course that would be much better for snow surfaces in general. It would temporarily ruin the current dry powder and might give us a bit of an upside-down snowpack, but it would really help set things up long term. The only other alternative would be to continue to get the type of dry snow we’re getting and wait a while for settling over time as the lower layers get compressed. This just takes a lot longer and requires a lot of snow, going the route of a continental/Colorado type snowpack.
From our experience touring today, it’s not that the off-piste skiing is horrible, it’s just that you need to stick to places that have seen a bit of skier traffic, or you know are well manicured with minimal hazards underfoot.
The views of the snow were gorgeous in the Bolton Valley Village today; we’ve been getting hit with rounds and rounds of continued light snow as impulses come into the area and help push along moisture streaming over from the Great Lakes.
I hadn’t been up to the mountain since Saturday, so I was eager to get out for a ski tour when I had time today. There’s been no specific synoptic storms in the area, but the snow has been piling up the thanks to the continuous feed of moisture off the Great Lakes and the upper-level low pressure to our north. Seeing the snowpack depth at the Mt. Mansfield stake quickly jump up to near 20 inches is a strong sign that it’s been snowing around here. Having that closed upper low over Hudson Bay with broad upper level troughing is a great setup when you have a 4,000’ wall of mountains sitting downwind of a moisture source like the Great Lakes.
The snowpack depth at the Mt. Mansfield Stake has been shooting right up above average over the past few days thanks to the continuous parade of smaller weather impulses affecting the area as well as the moisture pushing into the area from the Great Lakes.Up at the snowy Wilderness Summit above 3,000′ on today’s ski tour
Even without data from the Mt. Mansfield stake to go on, I know it’s been snowing because we’ve recently had several inches of new snow down at our place in the valley, so the snow is hitting all elevations with the current temperature regime. Indeed, I found that snow depths were up substantially at all elevations during today’s ski tour. I toured again using the Wilderness Uphill Route, so I was able to check snowpack depths from the valley on up and compare them to what I’d last seen on Saturday. The updated snow depths are below, with Saturday’s depths listed first, then today’s depths following in bold. The depths I found up at 3,000’ and above are certainly consistent with what is being reported for the snowpack depths at the Mt. Mansfield stake.
Concomitant with the increasing depths, the quality of the powder skiing even jumped another notch relative to the already great conditions we experienced on Saturday. In fact, even though the surface snowpack is excellent right-side-up powder that is beautifully dry, it’s getting deep enough that it’s starting to be a bit too much for the lowest angle slopes if you’re in fully untracked snow. I’d brought my 115 mm fat skis for today’s tour because they had already been a good choice on Saturday, but I was glad to have them for planing more efficiently on the lowest angle slopes today.
Along with all the natural snow they are picking up, the resort in blowing lots of snow as well in anticipation of opening in a few days.
Indeed, it was snowing today during my tour akin to what’s been happening for the past several days, but today’s snowfall was lighter and less consistent than what I experience on Friday or Saturday. Our next Clipper system is now coming into the area though, so snowfall should pick up with that. We’re under a Winter Weather Advisory here along the spine of the Northern Greens, and the latest BTV NWS Event Total Snowfall map currently has some areas of 8-12” and 12-18” shading.
