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.
Erica is done with her first ski tour of the season and is happy to have had great powder conditions for the outing.
I told E about how good the skiing was yesterday, so she was interested in getting out and the two of us headed up to Bolton Valley today for another tour. Thanks to the ongoing lake-effect snow from Lake Ontario, surfaces have been getting some nice freshening. Since my report detailing the snow conditions during yesterday’s tour, we’ve had another inch or two of additional snow down at the house in the valley, so I’m sure Bolton has had at least that much as well. It was really dumping when I left yesterday afternoon, so that period alone should have contributed some nice accumulations.
Between settling and the additional snow that’s been falling, snow depths seemed to be just about where they were yesterday, so just refer to the detailed snow depth profile I provided in that post for approximate snow depths that were out there today. Temperatures were in the mid-20s F out on the mountain early this afternoon, so it was just a bit cooler than yesterday, and consistent with that, the snow was a bit drier. Whereas yesterday I estimated the upper layers of powder in the snowpack to be in the 8% H2O range, today I’d say we were hitting powder that was more in the 6 to 8% H2O range. E is notorious for getting out on the snow one day too late when conditions aren’t as good as the day before, but that wasn’t the case this time. While there were a few more tracks out there today than what I found yesterday, the dry air and drier snow falling kicked the quality of the powder up a notch. The existing base snow, the continued settling of the lower layers of surface snow, and new rounds of dry snow coming in have set up some beautiful right-side-up powder. The drier nature of the powder was evident in the way it was even easier to ski lower-angle slopes; I’d brought fat skis to help in that regard, but my wife was on mid-fats, and she had no issues maintaining speed on even the mellowest pitches. So once again, essentially any mowed terrain from roughly single black diamond pitch down to gentle slopes was in play for great powder turns today.
A view along our ski tour in Bolton’s Wilderness area today – we had beautiful temperatures, no wind, and fantastic powder for Erica’s inaugural tour of the season.
In terms of the ongoing snowfall, today was much like yesterday with continued light snowfall of varying intensity throughout our tour, and it was steadier when we were finishing up our descent, but not nearly as heavy as when I was leaving yesterday. The direction of the more intense incoming moisture from Lake Ontario seemed to be a bit more to our north today, but it sounds like the Jay Peak area has been doing well from that setup.
I wasn’t initial sure what to expect from the Thanksgiving snowstorm at Bolton Valley, but with a solid shot of new powder over the existing base snow, there were excellent soft turns out there today.
With the Thanksgiving winter storm wrapping up overnight, today was clearly a day to get out for some skiing, but I wasn’t initially sure where I was going to go. The storm seemed to be more potent further south based on observations that I’d seen, as well as images from mountain cameras like the Okemo snow stake webcam and the Sugarbush snow stake webcam – they both showed about a foot of new snow at elevation. We’d been watching Bolton Valley’s webcams throughout the storm, and the resort was certainly getting some decent accumulations, but Bolton doesn’t have a specific snow stake webcam and it was a bit difficult to get a feel for just how much they’d received from the wider views. This morning, I perused a variety of mountain webcams from around the state, and in the end, there didn’t seem to be all that much difference in practical base area accumulations and coverage between what I was seeing at Bolton and the various resorts father south. I also checked on how much liquid equivalent was in the new snow, since that has such a big impact the quality of the skiing, and while the VermontCoCoRaHS numbers seemed to be around an inch of liquid to our south, we’d picked up over 0.6 inches of liquid in the snow that fell at our house in the Winooski Valley, so I’d expect Bolton Valley to have picked up at least that much. With some base snow already in place at Bolton, that felt like plenty of snow for some good touring and turns.
A view of some of the growing storm accumulations in the Bolton Valley Village today
Overall, the decision ended up being relatively easy, and I headed up to Bolton around midday. Down at the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road at 340’, new snow accumulations were just spotty, with areas of grass visible, but by the time I hit the Village at 2,000’, I found 6 to 8 inches of fresh snow, so the skiing prospects were looking good. I ascended by the Wilderness Uphill Route, and the skin track was nicely set. I probed snow depths throughout the tour, and by the time I hit the Wilderness Summit at roughly 3,150’, depths were in the 12 to 14-inch range. Above 2,000’ there was already existing snowpack in place, so the higher-elevation snow depths I measured on today’s tour weren’t necessarily all from this most recent storm, but here’s the detailed snow depth profile from today:
Some accumulations of snow up near the Wilderness Summit during today’s ski tour
Although the precipitation from this storm was 100% snow even at our site at 500’ in the valley, temperatures were around freezing down low, so the accumulations were quite dense. That wasn’t the case up on the mountain though – the snow was considerable drier, and the powder was of good quality. It was clearly sub-10% H2O powder, and if I had to guess it was probably in the 8% H2O range above 2,000’. I’d brough mid-fat skis today since I was initially unsure of how deep the powder was going to be and how good the overall coverage would be, but one could easily go with fatter skis if they wanted. With some existing dense base snow in place, even black diamond terrain was easily in play today. You’ll still want to be on mowed, on-trail terrain though – I suspect that venturing onto anything with too many obstacles would find you hitting things below the base. And the trees are still not ready yet – the base isn’t deep enough to cover the typical obstacles in the woods. Today’s powder turns were great though, and the snow was dry enough that even low-angle terrain was fun. Fat skis could help there for a bit more planing and speed if you’re on the fence about what width to shoot for.
One of the views of the early season accumulations from along the slopes during today’s tour
Thanks to our upwind friend Lake Ontario, snow was falling the entire time I was out touring. For most of the tour the snowfall was of varying light intensity depending on whether a larger pulse of lake moisture was hitting the spine or not, but it jumped up to borderline heavy snowfall when I was leaving a bit before 2:00 P.M. There was a good shot of moisture hitting the mountain at that point and the top half of the Bolton Valley Access Road had taken on enough accumulation that people were really taking their time on the descent. With the lake effect snow event taking place right now, we’ve had about another inch of new snow down here in the valley, so I suspect they’ve had at least another couple of inches up at the resort. And there’s more moisture pushing into the area this evening based on the radar, so there should be some additional freshening of the powder surfaces for tomorrow.
Ty launches into some fresh powder off a jump in the Moose Glen area.
With the off piste conditions being so much better than what’s available on the trails right now, Ty and I had plans to take a ski tour up to Stowe View today and hit some of the Moose Glen terrain at Bolton Valley. I was just up there a couple of weeks ago, and there are many acres of high elevation glades that I’d expect to have fantastic snow with the way the spine has recently been getting round after round of heavy snowfall.
It was dumping huge flakes at the house when we left this morning, and 1”/hr. snows in the valley turned to 1-2”/hr. snows as we ascended the Bolton Valley Access Road. The snow was falling so hard and fast that the access road was absolutely covered. Even down by the Catamount Trail parking area before the big S-curve below Timberline, vehicles were already lined up due to some cars not being able to get enough traction on the grade. I’m not sure where they were in the plowing cycle for the road because there wasn’t a plow around that we saw, but with the rate the snow was falling, it almost wouldn’t have mattered. Cars were turning around to descend, and some were evening having to back down in the downhill lane because they couldn’t turn around. Descending cars were moving at an absolute crawl to avoid sliding, and some still struggled with sliding just due to the crown of the road. After about 15 minutes we made it up to the base of the S-curve and started the ascent there, and I saw that a line of cars were stopped about halfway down from the top of the grade. That’s one of the steepest parts of the access road, and you don’t want to have to restart there from a dead stop if you can help it.
Traffic was at a total standstill on the steep parts of the Bolton Valley Access Road this morning due to heavy snowfall that made the road too slick for most vehicles.
I could see that the whole situation was going to be trouble, and there was no immediate sign of the next plow, so we made the split second decision to turn around and simply park at the Catamount Trail parking area about 100 yards below us. We were going to be ski touring anyway, so we figured we’d just start our tour from there instead. It does add a couple of extra miles to the route, but we had the time, and it was far better than sitting in traffic and risking an accident on the road. And as bad as the driving was at that point, the snow simply continued to pound down and make the road worse. While gearing up for our tour at the car, we met another couple of guys who had decided on the same plan. They weren’t too familiar with the resort, but I assured them that the Nordic and Backcountry Trail Network connected right up to the Nordic Center and Village, and from that point they could head wherever they wanted on the network.
Heavy snowfall envelopes us near the start of today’s ski tour as we pass a cabin near the parking area for the Catamount Trail.
The ascent to the Village was beautiful along the Nordic trails, and the very heavy snowfall was with us for the first mile or so before it tapered down at least a bit. I’d actually never skied that full connection before, so it was great to be able to experience the route. We didn’t need to stop in at the Nordic Center, so we simply cut right up to the Bryant Trail along with a couple of women who were out on a similar tour. From there, it was just the usual route on up to Stowe View with some water and snack breaks. Ty hadn’t had any breakfast, so with the extra distance, he quickly made use of the snack he’d brought, and I dove heavily into the reserves in my pack to get him additional calories. It was about 4.5 miles and over 2,000’ vertical up to Stowe View by that route, so that’s roughly double the vertical and triple the distance relative to a typical tour to that area starting in the Village. That increase definitely required more calories.
Ty slices through another powder turn as we make our way through the Branches glade area of Bolton’s Nordic and Backcountry Network during part of today’s ski tour.
We skied various parts of the Moose Glen glade areas as planned, and the powder was simply fantastic. Even down at 1,200’ there was a solid 12” of settled powder, and up around 3,000’ it was typically in the 17-18” range. It was champagne light, so it actually worked well on a variety of different slope angles. As long as you had first tracks, even steeper terrain was in play for bottomless turns. We had a long, long run, with glade after glade of powder, down through areas like White Rabbit and Branches, and eventually we reached the Village where we could take a quick break and plan our next move.
We were on contact with Dylan, who had parked at Timberline and we decided that instead of heading back to the car via the Nordic and Backcountry Network, we’d complete our tour using the alpine trails. We got a lift assist off the Vista Quad, and made our way from Cobrass to Maria’s where there were still plenty of untracked lines to ski. Lower Tattle Tale was also still really good along the edges where we found untracked snow.
Another round of very heavy snowfall was pounding the resort today as we were finishing up our ski tour near the Timberline Base area – Mother Nature has really been on a roll with the snowfall in the Northern Greens over the past couple of days.
We found Dylan at the Timberline Base Lodge and caught up over some El Gato burritos. We’d planned to ski down to our car at the Catamount Trail parking area if necessary, but we just caught a ride with Dylan and it made for pleasant finish to a tour that was almost 10 miles in total and brought us literally from one end of the resort to the other using the Nordic, backcountry, and alpine trail networks. It was a great way to make use of all the recent snows and great powder conditions that have developed.
The map of today’s ski tour on the Bolton Valley Nordic and Backcountry Network with GPS tracking data on a Google Earth map
A couple of skiers trudge up toward the Vista Quad amidst the very heavy snowfall delivered by our most recent Alberta Clipper system.
The clipper that began affecting the area yesterday evening was definitely potent – by the time I headed up to the mountain early this morning, we’d already picked up 7 inches of new snow at the house. I couldn’t really get a sense for accumulations heading up the Bolton Valley Access Road, but up in the Bolton Valley Village elevations around 2000’ I was measuring 8 inches of new snow. That was definitely a transient number though, because it was snowing at a rate of at least an inch per hour. Visibility was so low in the heavy snowfall that you could only see a distance of about a dozen chairs on the Mid Mountain Lift – beyond that the lift simply disappeared.
A snowcat returning to the operations area as I set off on my morning ski tour from the based of Wilderness
I started off my session with a quick tour up to about 2,500’ using the Wilderness Uphill Route. Powder depths didn’t seem to increase drastically with elevation, as I measured about 9 inches at the 2,500’ level. Being a weekday morning, it was very quiet and I don’t recall seeing another soul until a lone rider appeared as he descended the Wilderness Liftline off in the distance. The Vista Quad had started loading, and the appearance of the rider meant that people were starting their first descents. It was a good sign that it was time for me to descend as well. I descended on Lower Turnpike, which hadn’t seen much skier traffic, so there were plenty of fresh turns to be had. I’d brought my 115 mm fat skis, and they were definitely the right tool for the terrain, keeping me surfing at a nice pace on the lower angle slopes. My analyses from down at the house indicated that we’d picked up about a third of an inch of liquid at that point, and assuming something similar for the mountain, that meant the powder was somewhere in the 3 to 4% H2O range. It offered little resistance with respect to slowing my descent, and fat skis were more than enough to keep the turns bottomless.
A view of the Miso Kome hut as I return from my morning ski tour and the heavy snowfall continued to hit the resortStephen and Johannes head up through the snowfall to meet me at the base of the Vista Quad
After my descent I caught up on texting with my colleague Stephen about getting together for some turns. He and his son were just finishing suiting up in the lodge and they met up with me near the base of the main mountain lifts a few minutes later. We rode the Vista Quad and hit Alta Vista followed by Fanny Hill. The subsurface out there is really firm due to the extended period we recently went through without much snowfall. Aside from the areas of powder along the trail edges, Alta Vista was really firm. Fanny Hill was much better – after the initial steep chute area, the rest of the trail was out of the wind and had seen little skier traffic. It had a mid-angle pitch that skied perfectly for bottomless turns in the available powder. I couldn’t stay too long at the mountain, but from what I was able to sample, that mid-angle terrain was great. You really wanted to be getting fresh tracks though for quality turns – there just wasn’t enough liquid equivalent down at that point to really hold up to multiple skiers before you’d be contacting the base. A third of an inch of liquid can’t go too far in that regard, but thankfully it was midweek, so there were plenty of opportunities for untracked snow.
After a consistent run of storm cycles throughout January, we’re in a relatively slow period of snowfall right now. We haven’t had a substantial storm in several days, and it looks like it will be at least a few more until our next one, so this is likely our best immediate window of fresh snow. With that in mind, it seemed like a good day to get our for some turns, so I headed up to Bolton Valley for some touring on the backcountry network.
Rime adorns the top of an evergreen, which was a frequent sight throughout my ski tour today.
Starting from the Village at around 2,000’, I skinned up past Bryant Cabin to roughly 2,800’ on Heavenly Highway. The new snow depths were very much as advertised, with 2 to 3 inches of powder throughout that entire elevation range. There really wasn’t much increase in the snowfall totals at those elevations where I was touring, but the totals definitely started to tail off below 2,000’. I can’t say exactly how much fell at 1,500’, but it was noticeably less, and once you got below 1,000’ there was no new snow. At some point in the past several days there’s also been some riming in the mountains; you can see the rime on the trees at various elevations throughout the resort.
With the available snow I stuck to low-angle glades for as much of my descent as possible, and as noted, the new powder had some substance to it so the turns would up being quite decent. On mid-fats I was probably getting 25-50% bottomless turns on terrain with the appropriate pitch. And even when touching down, the turns were still feeling very good because the subsurface has some pliability – it’s certainly dense, but nothing like the sheet of ice that would result from a big rainstorm followed by a refreeze. The base snow is soft enough that you can punch down into the snowpack if you’re not on a floatation device like skis or snowshoes, and I saw numerous signs of this happening where snowboarders or hikers were traversing areas in boots.
Thanks to our recent clipper system, there was enough new powder to make for great skiing on many of the lower angle glades and similar terrain areas of the Bolton valley Nordic and Backcountry Network
For the last part of my tour on the backcountry network I worked my way along Gardiner’s Lane and made good use of the low-angle terrain there. In many areas I was able to explore lines that you often can’t hit because the powder is too deep to sustain good momentum, but they were great today, so I experienced a lot of new sections of the network that I often breeze past.
A copy of Bolton Valley’s Nordic & Backcountry trail map which lists the trails and many of the official glades
I connected onto the alpine trails at Lower Turnpike for the last part of my tour, and let’s just say, if you didn’t get out for lift-served turns around here today, you’re really not missing anything. Lower Turnpike typically maintains some of the highest quality snow on the alpine trails because of relatively low skier traffic, modest pitch, and good protection from the wind. Even there, the surface was firm unless I was able to get into the untracked powder off to the sides, and if the snow is firm on Lower Turnpike you know it’s going to be very rough elsewhere. I don’t actually have to imagine what the conditions were like on the main trails though, because some friends sent us video of their son snowboarding today, and the sound of his board on the snow was excruciating. That’s probably going to be a common situation until the next substantial storm comes into the area or it gets very warm, so we’ll be looking for Mother Nature to get another good winter storm system through here as soon as possible.
A Google Earth map overlaid with GPS tracking data from today’s ski tour on the Bolton Valley Nordic and Backcountry Network
This morning’s ski session was a mix of a little ski touring followed by some lift-served Wilderness turns, and the conditions in the frontcountry and sidecountry I explored are simply fantastic.
By observations time early this morning, the backside snows of Winter Storm Heather had departed and skies here at the house were partly cloudy. The clear skies didn’t really seem to jive with the imminent snow I saw in the forecast, but sure enough, clouds soon began to roll in, and within an hour, flakes were flying.
I decided to get in a quick morning session up at the mountain, and the snowfall continued to intensify as I ascended the Bolton Valley Access Road. Up in the Village there was steady snowfall, and while it wasn’t the pounding 1-2”/hour snowfall of yesterday, visibility dropped substantially and it felt like we were right back in the meat of the storm. It looks like today’s snow was rolling in from the lake effect snow event off to the west, so we thank our big friend Lake Ontario for that.
Winter Storm Heather recently finished up, but today we were right back into the snows thanks to some extra moisture from our good friend Lake Ontario.
Wilderness was the hot ticket for skiing today, since the Wilderness Double Chair doesn’t run on Mondays and Tuesdays, and this was the first chance for lift-served access to all the recent snowfall from Winter Storm Heather. I decided to start off with a short workout ski tour using the Wilderness Uphill Route, then stuck around for a bit of lift-served skiing after that.
It’s getting a bit tougher to discern how much powder came specifically from Winter Storm Heather, since it’s just blending in with the layers below it as the subsurface is buried deeper and deeper, but the approximate powder depths I found today were as follows:
2,000’: 6-8”
2,500’: 8-10”
3,000’: 10-12”
There was definitely a bump in powder depths even compared to what we skied yesterday thanks to the additional overnight snow and the new snow that was falling. One obvious clue that depths had increased was the fact that the snow was now getting a bit too deep for low-angle terrain. Moderate angle and steeper terrain are now providing the best powder turns. I had a feeling we’d be getting to that point today, and indeed while I’d been on mid-fats for the past few days, today I bumped up to the fat skis and that was the correct call as long as you were skiing untracked snow.
Bolton Valley is indicating that they’ve picked up roughly 60 inches of snow since the start of the year, which is very solid snowfall total for the first half of the month. Heck, 60 inches of snow is respectable even for a full month’s total at many resorts.
We’re only halfway through the month, but Bolton Valley has already recorded 60 inches of snow this January, and Mother Nature seems to just want to keep the snow falling at every opportunity.
Winter Storm Heather blasted into the are this morning, with up to 8 inches of new snow already down by midafternoon to set up some great powder skiing at Bolton Valley
It wasn’t even snowing this morning when Ty and I headed off to Burlington for an early appointment, so we knew we’d be giving Mother Nature some time to get rolling and freshen up the slopes. The snow from Winter Storm Heather started up a couple hours later, and by midafternoon we decided to head up to Bolton Valley for some turns.
We were happy to see that the Timberline Quad was running, so were able to park and start our session right there. Snow was simply pouring down at that point, and my initial measurements revealed storm totals of 4-5” at 2,500’ and 6-8” at 3,000’.
Thanks to the arrival of Winter Storm Heather, snow was simply pouring down out of the ski at 1 to 2 inches per hour when we arrived at the Timberline Base today, and it just kept going like that all through the afternoon and into the evening.The tree skiing was excellent today with constant refills of fresh powder thanks to heavy snowfall from Winter Storm Heather.
The snow was light and dry (my past couple of liquid analyses from down here in the valley averaged right around 4% H2O), so it was very high quality powder. With such cold smoke snow, you weren’t getting bottomless turns on steep terrain, but you could on low and moderate angle terrain, and the turns were great even if you were contacting the subsurface.
It was pounding 1-2”/hour snow the entire time we were on the mountain, so one could easily tack on another couple inches or so to the storm totals by closing time, and it even kept snowing into the evening.
