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July 1, 2013May 27, 2014

2012-2013 Ski Season Summary

An image of ski tracks in powder on the Spell Binder trail at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — A succession of storms led to fantastic ski conditions during the holidays for 2012-2013.

Our recently completed 2012-2013 Waterbury Winter Weather Summary, focused on how the snowfall and other aspects of winter transpired down at our house in the Winooski Valley, and now this report will focus on the skiing and snow in the higher elevations.

Snowfall: Compared to the snowfall-deficient 2011-2012 Ski Season, the 2012-2013 Ski Season was certainly a step up, but it was still generally below average for snowfall in the mountains of Northern Vermont. It was Bolton Valley that seemed to fare the worst of the northern resorts along the spine of the Green Mountains, perhaps due to their west slope location and this season’s dearth of upslope snow; they reported just 78.5% of their average snowfall. Heading northward, Stowe and Smugg’s fared a bit better at around 85% of average, and Jay Peak reported roughly average snowfall. Down at our house in the Winooski Valley, snowfall was 88.6% of average, so not too shabby by most accounts, but a bit below the mean like some of the local mountains. These past two seasons have actually been the first pair delivering back-to-back below average snowfall in our area since we started keeping track in 2006. Those numbers can be seen in both our Waterbury Winter Weather Summary Table, and the table of Bolton Valley annual snowfall below; this past season’s snowfall is highlighted in blue:

A table showing the average and seasonal snowfall at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont from 2006 to 2013. — Low snowfall last winter meant back to back seasons with below average snowfall at Bolton Valley.

One item of note this season was the lack of big storms targeting Northern New England – two of the largest storms to hit the Northeast dropped the bulk of their payloads south of Vermont while exiting stage right toward the Atlantic. The first of those, nicknamed “Nemo”, hit in the second week of February, and pounded Southern New England with up to 40 inches of snow. The Green Mountains were on the northern fringe of that storm, but still wound up with 1 to 1.5 feet of snow up and down the spine. The other storm of note was during the March 5^th – 8^th period, and it dropped another 30 inches on some Southern New England locations, but nothing way up north. There were some periods of snowfall to highlight up in Northern Vermont however. The second half of December alone dropped almost 50” of snow down at our house, significantly more in the mountains, and produced some fantastic skiing for the holidays and into early January. Another period of note was the second half of March into April. Cold temperatures in the latter part of the season helped preserve wintry conditions on the slopes, and we received some decent snowfall as well – the largest storm for the season in my valley records hit the area near the end of March, with 21.3” of snow down at the house, and multiple feet for the mountains. The mountain snowpack finally responded during that late season stretch as well, and that’s detailed a bit more in the snowpack section below. Snowfall continued right into mid April, and the season was capped off with almost two feet of fresh snow on Mt. Mansfield for Memorial Day weekend. That was a sweet way to end the powder skiing for the season.

Snowpack: Aside from the spikes associated with a couple of early season storms, the mountain snowpack was below average going into mid December. That changed quickly though, with the onset of all that new snow during the second half of the month. The above average snowpack achieved during the holidays didn’t actually stay that way during January’s warmth and lack of storms. After consolidation, the snowpack generally trundled along at or below average through February’s continuation of relatively low snowfall. From mid February to mid March, the snowpack sat there essentially stagnant for an entire month; to wit, on February 21^st, the snowpack was at 65”, and roughly a month later on March 18^th, it was still at 65”, without any notable consolidation of more than a few inches. The late season stretch from mid March to mid April represented a nice rebound for the mountains however, with some quick gains from the big Northern New England March storm getting it above average, and the snow depth staying at least modestly above during the period.

A graph of the 2012-2013 snowpack depth and long term average at the stake on Mt. Mansfield in Vermont — Two periods stood out this past season for above average snowfall: The holiday period and mid-March through the end of April.

Tree Skiing: One metric used as a rough guide for the start of off piste skiing in the Northern Green Mountains is the point at which the snow depth reaches 24” at the Mt. Mansfield stake. For those unfamiliar with how this metric was established, it’s described in some detail in the 2011-2012 ski season summary. With the incorporation of this season’s data, the mean date remains at December 12^th ± 19 days, with an average depth at the stake of 25.9 ± 2.7 inches. After the very slow start in 2011-2012, in which the 24” depth wasn’t attained until January 3^rd (more than a standard deviation later than the mean), this past season was notably earlier. The plot below shows the date at which 24” was obtained for each season since 1954, with 2011-2012 shown in red, and 2012-2013 shown in green:

A dot plot showing the date of attaining a snow depth of 24 inches at the stake on Mt. Mansfield in Vermont — Each star marks the date of attaining a snow depth of 24 inches at the Mt. Mansfield stake, covering all years since 1954. Although still a bit later than average, reaching a depth of 24 inches at the stake this past season (green star – Dec 22) occurred much earlier than the previous season (red star – Jan 3). The mean date for attaining a depth of 24″ is marked by the large vertical bar in the center of the plot, and the smaller bars indicate the range of one standard deviation above and below that mean.

This past season, the date (December 22^nd, Depth=28”, Green Star) was still later than average due in part to the slow first half of December, but unlike last season it was well within the 1 S.D. bars (thin vertical black lines). Note that the 24” mark is being used as an indicator of when the first forays into appropriate off piste/tree skiing terrain typically start in the Central and Northern Greens. In terms of empirical tree skiing observations, personal experience again lends some support to the use of 24” mark this season, as we began venturing into the trees the very next day on December 23^rd at Bolton Valley. It should be noted though, that while the 24” mark was attained on December 22^nd this season, the 40” mark was attained the very next day on December 23^rd. The 40-inch rule (i.e. reaching a depth of 40” at the stake), is used as an indicator of when most off piste/tree skiing around here is ready to go. Although I haven’t looked into the data, this season has got to represent one of the quickest ascents from 24” to 40” – it’s interesting to note however that after rising to 42” of depth on December 23^rd and 24^th, the snowpack settled back to 36” for a couple of days before rebounding to 45” on the 27^th.

Snow Quality: As an monitor of snow quality for the season, the chronological list of our ski outings has once again been compiled, with those days in which we were skiing powder indicated by a P, and those days in which powder skiing wasn’t available indicated by an X. The availability of powder suggests a fairly high level of snow quality, and the absence of powder generally indicates that temperatures rose above freezing at all elevations. Each listing below represents a link to the full report where images and more information from the outing can be obtained. Outings with an X may still be providing decent skiing such as wet snow, corn, etc. (or else skiing was typically avoided) but aside from the spring period, there’s going to be a price to pay in terms of snow quality associated with these episodes when temperatures eventually cool back down. The pattern of snow conditions in the Northern Green Mountains was fairly typical this past winter, with those days lacking powder skiing showing up in three distinct periods: 1) the early season with its usual temperature fluctuations, up through mid December before the weather pattern changed and the cold weather stabilized, 2) a thaw period in mid January, and 3) the period starting in mid March where spring weather began to make inroads. However, with the way the weather patterns this past spring continued to provide cool temperatures and snowfall, powder skiing generally dominated until mid April. Having analyzed the skiing in this way for the past three seasons, a surprising level of consistency is noted, with an overall average of close to four out of five days providing powder, despite notable differences in the demeanor of these recent ski seasons. The 2010-2011 season, which was above average in snowfall, provided powder on 78% of outings, the 2011-2012 season, which was well below average in many ways, revealed the same 78%, and most recently the 2012-2013 season, which was slightly below average in this area, produced a very similar 77% of outings with powder. The percentages don’t take into account differences in the number of outings each season, but with all three seasons falling into the range of 50 to 60 ski outings, differences in the sample sizes aren’t huge. The list of categorized ski outings with links to their full reports follows below:

The detailed month-by-month synopsis of the season is next:

October: It wasn’t an especially snowy October to kick off the season; we had five rounds of snow in the mountains, and the third one even dropped accumulations to the lowest mountain valleys, but none of the storms were huge dumps, and we had just a tenth of an inch of snowfall down at the house for the month. October’s first snowstorm started up on the 7^th, with snowfall being reported at the top of the Mt. Mansfield Toll Road in the afternoon, and by the next morning Powderfreak sent along his picture of 4” of accumulation at the top of the Stowe Gondola. I also got a shot of Mt. Mansfield later in the day with its first accumulation of the season. It didn’t seem like quite enough snow to tempt me out to ski, but the FIS boys hit the snow and provided a thorough report of the turns. The second storm delivered some accumulation on the 11^th, with a snow line up around the 3,000’ level and less than an inch of snow found up on Mt. Mansfield. The third storm was the one that finally touched the lower valleys with some minimal accumulations, but in terms of mountain accumulations, I don’t think it was anything more than junkboarding material. The 4^th (on the 14^th of the month) and 5^th (on the 16^th of the month) storms of October also appeared to be pretty minimal and generally flew under the radar in terms of discussion. So while it wasn’t a great October for natural snow skiing (with nothing like the back-to-back larger storms at the end of October during the previous season), some folks made some turns and there were several smaller rounds of snow to keep the peaks white.

November: Snowfall for the month of November turned out to be a bit below average down at our location in the valley, but we did have five storms that delivered accumulations all the way to the valley floor. It was a decent month for snowfall in the mountains, with Stowe reporting 35” in November. That’s not outrageous by any means, but it was a noticeable increase from the previous November. It was actually the first month with below average temperatures in Burlington in 20 months, and the corresponding mountain temperatures allowed Stowe to make a tremendous amount of snow. The rounds of November snows produced some modest powder that got me out early in the month on the 4^th, and mid month on the 15^th, but the best skiing was right at the month’s end. A storm overnight on the 29^th dropped a foot of fresh fluff on the Northern Greens and then cleared out for some great turns by dawn patrol time. That new snow on top of previous rounds of accumulation delivered some fantastic bottomless powder skiing that held up even on steep terrain like Stowe’s National trail.

December: The great powder conditions from the end of November storm carried right over into the beginning of December, with some excellent skiing on the 1^st of the month. That was really the highlight of the first half of December however, as snow was hard to come by through the 16^th; we had just 2.2” of snow at the house during that period. It was as if a switch was flipped for the second half of the month though, with winter roaring back in to deliver almost 50” of snow for us in the valley. Some of the more significant storms during that stretch were on the 21^st, with up to 20” of accumulation, the 26^th, with over two feet, and the 29^th, with another foot plus thrown in for good measure, so naturally the skiing during the holiday period was blissfully powdery. Even on days between the more substantial storms, a new half foot of snow could pop up. It was just day after day after day of powder, with even a little night added to the mix. The only detractor from that stretch was that the snowpack wasn’t initially up to the depths to allow people to enjoy that powder on all terrain. The natural base depths did make some quick and significant gains during the period though, with the 24” threshold depth at the Mt. Mansfield Stake being attained on the 22^nd, and the 40” mark reached on the following day as described above in the section on tree skiing. Our first notable forays into the off piste were on the 23^rd at Bolton Valley, which wasn’t surprising with almost all of Stowe’s terrain getting opened by that point. The off piste was quickly going… off, and things just went up from there. That storm on the 26^th had a somewhat uncommon east wind, which filled in the Bolton Valley headwall areas for some fantastic coverage. Despite the relative scarcity of snowfall in the first half of the month, by the end of December, Stowe was at a respectable 102” of snow on the season.

January: December’s snows and excellent ski conditions continued into the beginning of January, with four modest storms hitting the Northern Greens during the first week. In the higher elevations, the largest of those storms came in on January 4^th and affected the northernmost resorts hardest, with a foot at Jay Peak. Even with somewhat lower totals at resorts to the south, the skiing remained quite good because of all the powder that had been building up over the previous three weeks – we found over a foot of powder lurking in the trees at Bolton Valley on the 5^th. More snow came in that night to produce a nice day at Stowe on the 6^th, and after the final snowfall event in the series, the snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield Stake stood at 51 inches on the 7^th. The stormy stretch ended after that, and warm temperatures brought spring-like ski conditions until mid month. Fortunately, the base depths that had built up over the previous three weeks meant that there was a lot of good, soft skiing. Winter was back by mid month, with small systems that brought a return to some powder conditions. The fourth week of January featured arctic cold, which unfortunately meant little snowfall, but at least the temperatures preserved the powder. Finally at the end of the month we got a modest half foot storm to bring back some fresh powder, but January as a whole was quite low on snowfall – down at the house it was by far the least snowy January in my weather records.

February: The month of February rolled in with a tempered return to the type of dry, arctic pattern that we’d encountered in that fourth week of January, but fortunately there was at least a bit more moisture and temperatures weren’t quite as cold. There wasn’t much new snow for the first weekend of the month, but at least the skiing was decent. Of the three storms that came in that following midweek, the second one brought from a half foot to nearly a foot of powder at some of the Northern Vermont resorts, so the skiing improved. Just in time for the next weekend, the “Nemo” storm hit the Northeast, and while it was largely a miss for Northern Vermont relative to areas to the south that got up to 40” of snow, the mountains still picked up more than a foot of powder to provide some excellent turns. Nemo was followed by a storm named “Orko”, which came in at the beginning of the following week with 1 to 1.5 feet for some of the local resorts. Beyond that storm, mid February was fairly dry, but powder conditions persisted, and on the 19^th a more sizeable storm hit the area with snow totals of 1 to 2 feet plus for the Northern Vermont resorts. The month finished off with a few more storms, with a half foot storm and a 1 to 1.5-foot storm being the more notable ones. Although the month as a whole was actually rather lean on snowfall (only an inch from being the least snowy February in my records at the house), as it typical, the consistent availability of powder rolled right on into March as seen in the categorized list of ski outings above.

March: The first half of March wasn’t especially snowy, with just one notable storm in the ½ to 1-foot range for the mountains; the big storm that affected southern parts of New England with up to 30 inches of snow in the March 5^th-8^th period was literally a non-event in Northern New England. Of course even with some warmer temperatures in the second week, decent powder remained in the higher elevations, and soft snow made for fun turns on piste. Around mid month though, the skiing started to get even better as the snowfall picked back up with back to back modest storms and 72-hour snow totals topping out around 16 inches on the 16^th. Thanks to the ability of the Central and Northern Greens to reel in snow, conditions moved well beyond the dust on crust that many areas to the south were likely encountering. That was the start of an excellent stretch of winter that was second only to the snowy December period, with our largest valley storm of the season arriving on March 19^th and delivering 7-day snow totals of 2 to 4 feet in the mountains. At Stowe they were calling it “Powder Week” and the deep turns just kept on coming. The increase in mountain snowpack during the period was notable in that it finally moved solidly above average and stayed there Simply put, even lift-served powder skiing was endemic on piste during that second half of March until a brief warm-up during the last couple of days of the month.

April: Despite the somewhat slow increases in the snowpack during the heart of the winter, the gains made during the latter half of March meant that the snowpack was at least modestly above average heading into April, and it quickly reached a peak of 87 inches at the Mt. Mansfield Stake when the first storm of the month dropped a foot of snow at Stowe on April 2^nd. I was up at Bolton Valley that day for a ski tour, and I got to witness some impressive snowfall rates as the storm crashed into the higher elevations. The alpine terrain above tree line on Mt. Mansfield was in good shape, consistently providing excellent outings during that first part of the month. Cool temperatures with additional snow meant that the snowpack stayed at an above average level right through the month, and another storm on the 12^th saw Ty and I enjoying close to a foot of dense powder out in the Bypass Chutes at Stowe on the 13^th. The skiing gradually transitioned to full on spring conditions after that weekend as the active pattern waned, and an impressively long stretch of clear weather moved in and stuck around well into May.

May: For most of May, there wasn’t much to talk about in terms of new powder, especially with the extended period of incredibly clear weather that carried over from the end of April and lasted a fortnight, finally ending on the 10^th of the month. There was some mighty fine spring skiing right through that period with all the sun and warm weather, even if it did cause the snowpack to decrease a bit faster than it otherwise might have. The tranquil period of warm weather allowed the Mt. Washington Auto Road to open on the 10^th of the month as well (definitely on the early side), but since unsettled weather had just returned at that point, we didn’t get to make our spring pilgrimage to the snowfields until the 18^th. To really cap the month off well, Northern New England and the Adirondacks were rewarded with a Nor’easter over Memorial Day Weekend, which delivered roughly 3 feet of powder to Whiteface and nearly 2 feet to Mt. Mansfield. Excellent powder turns were made while the valleys were almost fully leafed out for the spring. We didn’t actually head out for any June turns beyond that, but the skiing over Memorial Day Weekend had been so good that it hardly mattered – it was just a few short months until the snows of fall would be returning.

So what about the overall feel for the quality of the ski season in Northern Vermont? Well, much like the snowfall numbers suggest, it feels like it came in a bit below average, even if not horribly so. The mountain snowpack (as gauged by what was seen at the stake on Mt. Mansfield) had its ups and downs, and on balance it probably gets rated in a similar manner to what the slightly subpar snowfall would suggest. Being frequent Bolton Valley skiers and living down below the mountain in the Winooski Valley, our perspective might be skewed a bit downward with the resort receiving just 78.5% of their average snowfall. Having the north miss out somewhat on a couple of big regional storms, while watching a horrid valley snowpack (see the 2012-2013 Winter Weather Summary for details) that kept ski routes to the lower valley bottoms essentially off the table, certainly didn’t win the season any extra points. It seems that 2012-2013 ultimately sits in the lower half of ski seasons and won’t be remembered as anything epic, but it also appeared to hold onto a decent level of powder availability (77%) based on our experiences, and that means there was still a pretty decent amount of good skiing. The fact that even the poor 2011-2012 Ski Season was able to hold onto a powder percentage in that range is also reassuring in that regard, suggesting that there is indeed a certainly level of reliability that can be expected in these seasons where snowfall/snowpack is below average.

May 26, 2013April 23, 2015

Stowe, VT 26MAY2013

An image of ski tracks in powder on the Perry Merrill trail at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont during a spring storm on Memorial Day Weekend — Visiting Mt. Mansfield for some glorious Memorial Day Weekend powder today

For the past several days, the meteorologists and weather enthusiasts in the New England Regional Forum at American Weather have been talking about a late-season snowstorm with the potential to unload on the northern parts of New York and New England. Around mid month, a thread discussing the Memorial Day Weekend weather was started, and even at that point there was a suggestion that the weather could be cool. However, by Thursday, just a couple of days before the weekend, it was obvious that a late-season snowstorm was developing, and the discussion began to focus on just how much snow the Northern Greens were going to get. I hadn’t been following the weather too closely, but when I stopped in to check the board and found out about the impending snowstorm in the local mountains, my interest was definitely piqued. We spent last weekend skiing in spring snow on Mt. Washington, and it began to look like this weekend would bring winter skiing on Mt. Mansfield.

“…you didn’t have to
worry about hitting
anything underneath
and you could just let
it rip.”

Saturday arrived with a nor’easter developing just like the weather models had suggested. For folks that had outdoor, warm-weather plans for the big holiday weekend, you almost couldn’t find a nastier combination of weather. Temperatures were in the 40s F, and there was plenty of wind and rain. We wondered if we were going to have to turn the heat back on in the house. Reports began to come in about the snow in the mountains, and by mid afternoon, Whiteface was already reporting that they had received 18” of new snow. As the afternoon wore on, even valley temperatures fell down well into the 30s F in many places in New England, and fairly low elevation spots began to report snow mixing in with the rain. Although we weren’t getting any snow down to the low elevations in our area, we lost power from about 8:30 P.M. to 9:30 P.M. for some reason, so we headed off to bed early and decided to see how things were going in the morning.

An image of ski trails and a status sign for Route 108 through Smuggler's Notch in Vermont indicating that the notch road was closed due to snow over Memorial Day Weekend — Snow closed down the road through Smuggler’s Notch today.

I made my morning CoCoRaHS observations at 6:00 A.M., and after checking back in on the weather board and looking at some of the mountain web cams, I decided to head to Mt. Mansfield for a ski tour. I couldn’t tell quite how low the snow line had gotten, but it was still below freezing in the higher elevations, and the precipitation had continued through the night. There was a good chance that a nice shot of snow had accumulated on Mt. Mansfield. I didn’t try convincing E or the boys to try to join me, since they were all still in bed, so I got into my ski clothes, let E know that I was on my way, and loaded up the car with my gear. I don’t typically find the ski gear vying for space with the baseball stuff in the back of the car, but it definitely was today. I headed off to the mountain around 7:30 A.M. or so, and temperatures throughout the mountain valleys in the Waterbury–Stowe area were in the lower 40s F on my drive. The precipitation was generally light rain until roughly the point where the electronic sign indicates the status of Route 108 through Smuggler’s Notch, and not long after that, the rain became much heavier. The sign, by the way, read “NOTCH ROAD CLOSED… DUE TO SNOW”. The road through the notch tops out near 2,200’, so clearly the snow was accumulating at that elevation on paved surfaces. The temperature remained in the lower 40s F until that final rise above The Matterhorn to Stowe Mountain Resort, where they dropped into the upper 30s F.

“You could do laps
up there from 2,500’
to 3,600’ and think
it was midwinter.”

I parked at the Midway Lodge (~1,600’), where the temperature was in the mid to upper 30s F, and the precipitation was generally snow, but certainly some rain as well, and the snow that was falling was of course incredibly wet. It was pretty nasty at that point, with 25 MPH winds and driven wet snow/rain. The snow wasn’t quite accumulating there, but it was close, and you could see the accumulations just a few hundred feet up the trails. The weather was nasty enough that I left my lens hood on my camera in its protective orientation, even when it went back in my pack. I rarely feel the need to do that, and typically flip it back around for storage, but that speaks to just how wet and windy that snow was to make me take that extra step to minimize the amount of precipitation getting on the lens filter.

An image of the 2,100' snow line on the Nosedive trail at Stowe Mountain Ski Resort in Vermont during the Memorial Day Weekend Storm of 2013 — Snow line in sight on Nosedive at 2,100′

In the Midway parking lot there were a few dozen vehicles belonging to skiers, and most of the people were heading up Gondolier, but my initial ascent was via Nosedive; it’s often a good bet for decent snow coverage and preservation in these early and late-season storms. Also, based on what I saw in the report from AdventureSkier.com last Sunday, it looked like there would be some decent base snow left in case the new snow depths were marginal. The first traces of snow accumulation on the ascent were at 1,800’, by 2,100’ there was generally complete coverage of the trail, and by ~2,200’ the depth was a couple of inches and it was consistent enough that I switched from hiking to skinning. Even with those couple inches of snow, I was beginning to experience some occasional slipping as I hiked, so it was nice to get the skis off the pack and on the snow where the skins had beautiful traction. There was a faint skin track from an earlier ascender, but it was intermixed with some of the descent tracks of skiers and a bit hard to follow. I met up with another guy that was making the Nosedive ascent, and we chatted a bit about skiing as we made our way up the mountain. He was just hiking in his boots with his skis on his back, which seemed like a bit more work as the snow got deeper and deeper, but it didn’t appear to slow him down too much. Listed below are the snow depths I found on the ascent of Nosedive with respect to elevation:

1,600’: 0”
1,800’: Trace
2,100’: 1”
2,200’: 2”
2,500’: 4”
2,600’: 5”
3,000’: 8”
3,300’: 10” – 12”-15”

We stopped our ascent at 3,300’ because as we approached the switchbacks at the top of the trail we got some beta from a couple of skiers coming down Nosedive – they indicated that everything above that elevation in the switchbacks was scoured and really not worth it, and indeed that was obvious once we got to the landing below that final switchback at 3,300’. I’m going to call the average snow depth there 10” to be on the conservative side, but there were plenty of areas with 12”-15” of snow; there was just variability due to the effects of wind deposition. I stuck my measurement pole right in the snow in the center of that landing, and found 15” of snow depth. The guy that had ascended with me headed up just a bit higher to catch some turns along a drift of snow, so I pulled out the camera and got some action shots as he made his way down.

An image of a skier on the Nosedive trial at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont during a Memorial Day Weekend snowstorm — I didn’t get his name, but he had quite a blast ripping up the powder on Nosedive today.

Before beginning my descent, I downed a packet of GU Energy Gel to see if it would provide that extra boost of energy to my legs to permit proficient and aggressive Telemark turns. I’ve noticed that after fairly long and/or quick ascents, my legs are often still recovering, and not to the stage where they can handle a lot of rigorous Telemark skiing right away. Alpine turns are typically no problem, since they’re easier and more stable to begin with, and after decades of alpine skiing, my muscles have the memory to really let them do it efficiently. But those Telemark turns take a lot more work, and it seemed like a little extra boost of quick energy would get me where I needed to be. So, I took a cue from the boys, who like to have a GU when they’re starting to fade while we’re biking or skiing – the Vanilla Bean flavor is a favorite among all of us. I usually don’t find that I need to worry about having enough energy on outings with the boys along; the pace is so slow that E and I usually don’t get drained. The boys certainly push themselves though, often needing some sort of recharge due to their smaller energy reserves, and when that’s the case, it’s GU to the rescue. On bigger, faster paced outings by myself though, I also feel the drain, and today I wanted to give a recuperative GU shot a try. I had the GU just a few minutes before my descent, and it absolutely worked. It helped give my legs that quick energy that they craved, and they had no trouble making Telemark turns. It was great having maximum powder to drive the legs, and while there’s no way to know exactly how my legs would have performed without the shot of GU, it was certainly my hero for today. I can still remember when I first learned about those energy gels back in the early 2,000s when Scott and Troy and their Dirtworld.com mountain biking team would use them. They’d strap them to their handlebars and down one on each lap to keep their energy up. With the way it performed today, I think a shot of GU before each earned descent is going to become part of the routine.

“There were plenty of
untracked lines to ski,
and it was dense, wall-
to-wall snow…”

As for the snow conditions, indeed there was some leftover base snow on Nosedive, and that offered up great turns, but the new snow itself was extremely dense (probably 12-14% H2O or so) and as long as there was enough of it, there was no need for previous base because it kept you off of anything below. I caught some beautiful bottomless powder on the skier’s left below the switchbacks, and then a lot more on the skier’s right along the edge of the trail. The Telemark turns were definitely flowing, and despite the fact that it was dense snow that could easily have been challenging to ski, it wasn’t. I immediately thought back to that storm last year on April 10^th. Mt. Mansfield picked up more than two feet of dense snow that covered everything, but it was quite a challenge to ski on the Teles. Sometimes you would punch through the snow too far, perhaps with one ski, making lateral balance tough, and fore-aft balance was also extremely challenging. It’s possible that there was snow of varying densities in that storm, with some less dense snow underneath the topmost layer. That’s “upside down” snow, which is typically more challenging to ski. It was after that storm that I really decided that I wanted some fat, rockered Telemark skis for powder, and eventually got the Black Diamond AMPerages. I can only wonder how they would have performed in that storm – they would have been nice today, but being unsure of the snow depths I went with my older Atomic RT-86 midfats, and there were no issues. Really, the most challenging aspect of today’s skiing was negotiating areas of thinner snow as you dropped in elevation. I was actually quite impressed with the quality of some of the powder skiing on Nosedive today, but little did I know it wasn’t even going to hold a candle to what was in store over at the Gondola.

An image showing a ski measurement pole indicating 22" of snow at the Cliff House at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont on Memorial Day Weekend — 22″ of new snow up at the Cliff House today

I had no time limits, and plenty of energy left in the tank with the shortened ascent, so I skied down to the junction of Nosedive and Cliff Trail, and continued my tour by skinning up Cliff Trail. Within a few moments of starting my ascent, it was obvious that snow depths were substantially greater on Cliff Trail than they were on Nosedive at equivalent elevations. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was heading toward the Gondola, or because Cliff Trail offers better protection from the wind, but coverage was deep, wall-to-wall. Unlike what I’d seen on most of Nosedive, there were no signs of whatever lay beneath the snow. It wasn’t an illusion either; the depth at 3,000’ on Cliff Trail was 11”, vs. the 8” on Nosedive. The snow just continued to increase as I ascended toward the Gondola, there was 12”+ by the junction with Perry Merrill at 3,400’, and 12” – 15” easily up at the Cliff House. That’s on the conservative side for what you could find up there, and in general the snow depth was somewhat deceptive because you didn’t sink much into the dense snow. But right in the middle of Perry Merrill just beyond the Cliff House I measured 22” of new snow in flat terrain with no drifting. The usual measurement off the top of the picnic tables was deceptive as well – there was about a half foot of snow on the tables, but you could tell that the snow was much deeper because the table’s seats were just about buried. I measured in the open space between the tables and got a depth of 18”, so presumably the tops of the tables didn’t accumulate the snow well due to wind, melting, or some other effect. Here’s the summary of the depths I found on the Gondola side ascending via Cliff Trail:

3,000’: 11”
3,400’: 12”-15”
3,600’: 12”-15” – 18”-22”

“…at times it was dense
enough that you’d be
smearing turns right
on the surface.”

I had another GU and got ready for my descent. Even that first steep pitch of Perry Merrill had great coverage comprised of that dense snow. Typically you’d sink in a few to several inches, but at times it was dense enough that you’d be smearing turns right on the surface. It took a moment to adapt when that was happening, but somehow the variability in the turns didn’t seem to disrupt the flow of the skiing – it was just really fun. I almost headed back down Cliff Trail since the coverage was so complete, but there were already a couple of tracks on it, and it’s fairly narrow, so I opted to check out Perry Merrill instead. I was hoping it would live up to the coverage I’d seen on Cliff Trail, and indeed it was just as good, if not even a bit better. There were plenty of untracked lines to ski, and it was dense, wall-to-wall snow, all the way down to 2,500’. You could do laps up there from 2,500’ to 3,600’ and think it was midwinter. The snow certainly wasn’t fluffy Vermont Champlain Powder™, it was dense Sierra Cement, but it wasn’t wet or sticky. It made for plenty of base and just skied really well – it was right near the top on quality that I’ve experienced relative to many similar early and late-season dense-snow events. Sinking into the snow only a few inches or so was inconsequential compared to the fact that you didn’t have to worry about hitting anything underneath and you could just let it rip.

An image looking down at the base area of Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont from a snowy Perry Merrill trail down toward a snowless base area during a Memorial Day Weekend snowstorm — The view from white to wet

I stopped my descent at around 2,300’, as the snow was down to about 4” and it was getting notably wetter. You could probably go down to around 2,100’ easily if you had your rock skis. I hiked down the last 700’ back to the Midway Lodge, and the last vestiges of snow disappeared right around 1,800’ just like I’d seen over on Nosedive. The precipitation was snow down to just a couple hundred feet above the base, and back down at the lodge it was mostly rain with some snow mixed in at times. There were some really good bursts of snow on my descent, even in the lower elevations. The temperature had increased a few degrees to ~40 F at the base, but it was midday at that point, so that was still quite impressive.

Overall, I was really excited about how my equipment and supplies performed on this tour. My Gore-Tex did its job in keeping me dry, despite the driving rain and snow. My skins held like glue even in the wet snow, and hiking both up and down in my Telemark boots was a joy. I remembered to put them in walk mode for the walking sections (and put them back in ski mode for the descents) and it was almost like being in my hiking boots. And then there was the GU. It really quickened my recovery for the descents, and I’m going to be keeping that on the tour menu going forward. The boys won’t be able to borrow GU from me as easily though when they need it. While the GU certainly did its thing, I’m sure my stop off at Dunkin Donuts to fuel up before the tour also helped. I was feeling so great when I got home at midday, that I was ready to go for another round of skiing if E and the boys wanted to. It was still nasty and rainy outside, and not really conducive to doing too much else, but we had some fantastic winter powder skiing sitting up there in the high country. I couldn’t convince them to go though, so they unfortunately missed out this time. We did get some quality time indoors though, which I’m guessing a lot of families were doing this weekend. Ty, Dylan and I had a great round of “The Settlers of Catan” while E did a bit of shopping. It was quite a storm though, with Whiteface and other areas of the high peaks really cleaning up and putting out some amazing pictures.

An image of snow-capped Mt. Mansfield in Vermont from the west after a Memorial Day snowstorm — …and this is what you get for Memorial Day

Monday update: The clouds cleared out today to produce crystal blue skies, and naturally that revealed some amazing vistas of the spring foliage and snow-capped peaks everywhere. Mt. Mansfield and Camel’s Hump were topped with white, shimmering in the strong sun of late May, and the high peaks of the Adirondacks were brilliant. We traveled around from Waterbury to Vergennes to Cambridge doing various activities, so we took in numerous vantages of the Greens and Adirondacks. It turned out to be a spectacular Northern New England Day for the holiday, almost as if Mother Nature was trying to strike as sharp a contrast as possible against the recently departed storm.

May 18, 2013May 23, 2013

Mt. Washington, NH 18MAY2013

An image of Erica skiing the eastern snowfields on Mt. Washington — Mt. Washington delivering the goods today

Using the Auto Road to gain access to Mt. Washington’s East Snowfields is a convenient way to get to some fantastic spring skiing, but a number of factors need to align for an optimal outing to come together. First, the road has to open. One never knows exactly when that’s going to happen, since it depends on how much snow has to be removed, how fast it’s melting, how much road maintenance needs to be done, how often bad weather delays work, etc. Then, even once the road is open, weather can still play a factor. Although some folks might be inclined to head up into the alpine regardless of the forecast, I think most folks would agree that a calm, warm, clear spring day (or at least as close as you can get to that ideal) is the way to go. Those types of days can be rare on Mt. Washington, but they certainly happen, and they typically occur more frequently the farther one gets into late spring. While time might be on your side with regard to weather, it’s generally not on your side when it comes to snowpack. With each passing day of warmth, the snowpack melts a little more, and ski options diminish. Unlike when you get an iceland camper rental over there, the snow isn’t lasting quite so long these days over here. And, even if the stars align to create that perfect combination of access, weather and snowpack on the mountain, there’s everything else in life that has the potential to get in the way of letting you jump at the opportunity. Once in a while, things just don’t come together before the snow melts, but somehow, even with all those obstacles, we usually manage to get over to New Hampshire for some spring camping and skiing with the boys, and this year was no exception.

“We had the snowfield
to ourselves the entire
afternoon…”

For two weeks from the end of April through to the second week of May, we saw an incredible stretch of clear, warm spring weather with absolutely no measurable precipitation at our house in Waterbury. This period produced some great spring skiing, but the warmth and sun also accelerated the snowmelt to a rate that was a bit faster than usual. This period was great in terms of progress on clearing snow from the Mt. Washington Auto Road however, and it was open to the summit as of last weekend. The weather was unsettled for that first weekend though, so we opted to head down to the South Shore area and visit Erica’s mom for Mother’s Day, and keep our eyes peeled for a good weather window. After a couple more days of unsettled weather, the clear regime returned this week, and prospects for an Auto Road trip were looking excellent. This morning, the forecast called for decent weather with temperatures in the 40s F, and the morning shot from the Ravines Cam revealed crystal clear skies. It also showed that the east side ski options below the Mt. Washington summit are still quite plentiful, with many additional snowfields available along with the main one.

An image of the Presidential Range in New Hampshire from the west — Presidential view

We were on our way to the mountain by mid morning, and views from the west side were already encouraging as we approached the Presidentials. When the west side still has skiable snow, you know the east side is going to have plenty of options. Steep lines with decent snow were even visible on the north side of the range as we passed by on Route 2, and on the ascent of the Auto Road we could see various snowfields in the peaks towering above the Great Gulf. In the proximity of the Auto Road itself, the first signs of snow were at roughly the 3,500′ elevation. As for the East Snowfields, the setup today was a lot like we encountered during our 2010 trip, in that the broad strip of snowfields was present off to the north of the main East Snowfield. A look at the availability of snow in 2010 shows an interesting distribution of snow – that strip of snowfields off to the north was very prominent, and the main East Snowfield was surprisingly small. The current snowpack is definitely different from what we had available on our 2011 and 2012 trips, where the skiing was essentially down to just the main snowfield.

“The snowfield held
beautifully flat and
pristine corn snow…”

With the lower snowfields in action, we decided to go with the approach applied in our 2010 trip, which is to use the parking area below the 7-mile post on the road, instead of the parking area at the top of the snowfields. Using this technique, one can tour out along the more northerly snowfields as far as they want, even hitting the main East Snowfield if they’d like. Then, to finish the tour, instead of having to hike back up to the parking area atop the East Snowfield, one can essentially traverse back along the base of the snowfields with minimal additional ascent. Along the way, you can make descents in the other snowfields as well, which often have untouched snow. They’re used much less than the main East Snowfield and we’ve typically found that we have them to ourselves with untouched corn snow. At the end of our 2010 trip, we also discovered a very efficient use of the mountain’s hiking trail network for this type of tour. We’ve started traversing on the Nelson Crag Trail before, but, it turns out that simply descending straight down from the lower parking area on the Huntington Ravine Trail drops you right onto the northern edge of the snowfields, so you can use the trail to get you right to the snow. You can’t really see the snow from above, so it’s not obvious unless you know what you’re doing, but as long as those northerly extensions of the snowfield are present, it’s a really sweet and efficient approach. Even though the distribution of the snow in the snowfields area is different each spring, it’s nice to be developing a knowledge of what works well for getting to the snow. We’re definitely starting to dial in a good understanding of how to best approach what we see on the Ravines Cam in terms of touring the snowfields. This year our goal was to tour out toward the main East Snowfield as described above, with the potential to ski there, but it would depend on how good the skiing was that found along the way, as well as time, and of course the boy’s attitude and morale, which can be extremely flighty on these outings.

As expected, taking the Huntington Ravine Trail got us to the snow in just a few minutes of hiking from the car, and Ty and Dylan were ready to just stop right there and start skiing. E and I explained to them that what they saw was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of snow, and that we would be traversing southward for some longer lines. The snowfield there was only about 50 vertical feet or so, but typically the priority for the boys is to minimize the amount of hiking they have to do in whatever way they can. The boys did have a bit more challenge this year, since they were both carrying their own skis on their packs for the first time. Fortunately, they had both decided to use their Telemark skis, also a first for them, so it’s nice that their Teles are lighter than their alpines. This also meant that they could simply wear their Telemark boots and hike like me and Erica in ours, since they are very flexible and have rubber soles. This meant we didn’t have any alpine boots to carry, although Tele boots still aren’t quite as easy for hiking as standard hiking boots, so that was a bit of a bump in challenge for the boys. For E, this trip was also a chance to carry her skis on the Dakine Women’s Pro II 26L ski pack that she got for Christmas. Although she used it on some backcountry outings this winter, we were always skinning, so there was no need to carry her skis on her back. This was her first opportunity to really put it to the test with skis on it, and she was very impressed. I wouldn’t have thought about it, except that she commented on how it didn’t even feel like she had skis on her back – that’s always good sign when it comes to a ski pack. She also mentioned how the diagonal carry is so superior to the A-frame style carry in terms hitting the backs of the skis with your legs. I’ve always been very impressed with the diagonal carry on my Dakine Sequence ski/photo pack, so I’m glad E is getting to make use of that system. Dakine definitely knows how to set up a ski carry system. The one issue I did notice with E’s pack is that since it has a helmet carrying system (very cook and I wish I had one) it gets a bit tight when the skis are on there in diagonal carry as well. Overall the skis and helmet were nice and snug there though, and E had no complaints. Our only lament heading outbound on the tour was that with our skis angled down to the right, it meant that they occasionally touched the rocks because of the direction of the side slope on our southward traverse. It was only an occasional inconvenience though, and I joked that we could always traverse around the entire Mt. Washington summit cone in the other direction if we really wanted to avoid that issue ;).

An image of Jay carrying his skis on his pack on one of the snowfields on the east side of Mt. Washington in New Hampshire — Time to hit the snow!

After only about ten minutes of southward traversing, we came to a substantial snowfield of about 250′ vertical or so, and we decided to do some skiing. We hit the snowfield about midway up, so I set in a boot ladder to the top. The snowfield held beautifully flat and pristine corn snow, aside from a couple of very faint tracks from a previous skier or two that must have been there quite a while ago. The snowfield was continuous, but did have a choke point about midway down along the left, so one had to take that route.

It was good that we’d reached at least an initial snowfield, because the boys were already getting grumpy. They really wanted to get on with the camping. They’d been planning that aspect of the trip for a long time, looking on sites like campingfunzone.com for handy tips and tricks which they were now dying to try out, so while they enjoy being out on the snow, getting them to thoroughly relish all aspects of earned turns is always a challenge. They got out their flashlights for hiking when it got dark, and loved the setup and maintaining the fire, and other tasks like that. Some days they enjoy the experience, or at least substantial parts of it, but other times it’s essentially putting up with Mom and Dad dragging them around to these snowy spots. We’ve learned that it’s good to have a “carrot” aspect of the trip as well, whether it’s a stop in a the Bryant Cabin on a Bolton Valley Backcountry Network outing or the swimming pool after, a chance to eat out somewhere once we’re done, or in this case, a chance to do some camping. We relayed to them that they were sitting on their own private snowfield with great temperatures, no wind, no bugs, beautiful snow, and even some sunshine. These aren’t things that you can get every day, but in their minds they were already off the mountain and down by the tent and campfire.

An image of Jay Telemark skiing on the East Snowfields of Mt. Washington in New Hampshire in May — Getting after some of that smooth corn snow today

At the top of the snowfield, I hung out for a while and enjoyed the scene, while the boys did a bit of sliding on the snowfield, and E made the first descent. Her turns looked good, and it was amazing how fast she dropped that vertical. It seemed like she was down toward the flats of the Alpine Garden area in an instant, and she looked so far away. I skied a run next, and then we eventually got the boys to make some turns, even though they were being somewhat lazy and reluctant. They both put together some nice Telemark turns, even though the pitch of the snowfield was quite steep. E and I both made some additional turns, with me finishing off a run on the lower right of the snowfield while E shot some pictures. We had the snowfield to ourselves the entire afternoon, so even though it was only about half the vertical of what was available on the main East Snowfield, it was such good skiing that we never even continued over there. The boys were a bit too sour for that anyway, and really wanted to get on to the camping. We could hear that occasional shout from people on the main snowfield though, and I’m sure there were some great times going on over there.

An image of Dylan Telemark skiing in May on the East Snowfields of Mt. Washington in New Hampshire — Dylan out there carving some turns on the Telemark skis

The return traverse to the car was pretty quick, and E and I helped out the boys by each carrying a pair of their skis. For the extra set of skis, we went with a vertical carry, and E seemed to still be impressed with the stability and ease of her pack, even with the second set of skis on it. I made the lowest traverse, so that meant a few minutes of hiking back up the Huntington Ravine Trail at the end, but I was eager to test that out. It was nice to walk on an established trail, since the going was a big quicker than across the random jumbles of rocks that give the Rock Pile its name. While we were loading up the gear at the parking area, we had some inquiries about where we’d been skiing, and one guy was very intrigued to know that you could access the snowfield from that lower parking lot. He said he’d like to try it out in the future.

“…but in their minds
they were already off
the mountain and down
by the tent and campfire.”

Each year we like to try out a new campground on our visit to the snowfields, and this year I decided that we’d head south to Glen, New Hampshire. I’d found a couple of potential campgrounds there. The first was the Green Meadow Camping Area, but when we stopped in and found out that they weren’t opening until next weekend, we headed to the Glen Ellis Family Campground a couple of miles down the road. I’d put it as the second choice because it was a bit more expensive, but once we got there you could immediately tell why. The grounds are immaculate, and the building that functions as the main office and store was a beautiful building. Everything was first rate, and they’ve got a huge playground, basketball and tennis courts, and even a pristine baseball diamond. It’s certainly in that upper echelon of campgrounds.

Visitation was only modest since it’s no Memorial Day yet, so they gave us one of the riverside campsites. We thought that would be nice, but it wasn’t until we finally got to it that was saw how amazing it was – it was absolutely one of the coolest campsites we’ve ever had in either to Eastern or Western U.S. There’s a wooded section with the usual fire ring, picnic table, etc., but then that expands up onto a riverside area comprised of the rocks that are part of the riverbed, with a second fire ring. It overlooks a gorgeous stretch of the Saco River that made E and I feel like we were back in Jasper National Park. As soon as we saw that riverside section, we knew we were going to pitch our tent right up there. The boys headed off to the playground for a bit, we cooked up some hot dogs and beans for dinner, and finished things off with s’mores and lot of campfire time. There wasn’t actually anyone else camping out on the river since campground visitation was light, but I have to believe those riverside spots are pretty coveted on busy weekend. The fly fishing looked amazing, and we saw one guy out working the stream about a half mile downstream. That is a campsite that will not soon be forgotten, and it will definitely be on our list for the next time we’re in the area. Apparently their Laundromat is a big deal as well, because there are as many signs for that as there are for the campground itself!

An image of a campsite along the Saco River at the Glen Ellis Family Campground in New Hampshire — The view from our campsite at the Glen Ellis Family Campground today

Sunday update: The evening sky had some on and off broken clouds and a nice moon, and I bet it dropped into the 30s F overnight because even with the rain fly on the tent, we were down to the mid 40’s F. After breaking camp, we decided to try out one of the local restaurants for breakfast on the way home, and found the Glen Junction Family Restaurant. It definitely seemed to be the hot spot for breakfast, and the menu was almost overwhelming with the variety of combinations of fresh toast, omelets, and most of the usual morning fare that you can think of. Not surprisingly with the junction location, the theme is trains, and they’ve got some fairly large-scale trains that circulate around the rooms up near the ceiling. The boys definitely enjoyed watching those, as did the numerous children that were there as well – especially the younger ones. Of course any adults like me would enjoy them as well. One of the specials had eggs Benedict on French toast, which was tempting, although I ended up making my own omelet which contained corned beef hash and spinach. The waitress said that was the first time she’d ever had anyone put together that specific combination, and it turned out great. Everyone liked their fare, and we even had some extra to take home as the portions are plentiful.

We got home today around noontime, after a bit of maintenance on the mowers, I was able to do the first lawn mowing of the season. It’s only about four short months until I’ll be on the last mowing of the season, and we’ll be thinking about the first snows, but there are plenty of summer activities to do in the meantime. In terms of skiing, we’ll have to see if we want to take a trip down to Killington for some turns in the next couple of weeks, since they’re apparently going for June this year just like old times.

May 5, 2013May 9, 2013

Stowe, VT 05MAY2013

An image of skis and poles on the snow at the top of West Slope at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont looking down on the Spruce Peak Base area — High above the Spruce Peak Base and ready for some corn snow turns

Our stretch of incredible spring weather continues, and today was another clear one with temperatures in the 70s F. We had to head to Morrisville for a midday first communion mass, but we took along the ski gear in case we had the time to do some skiing on the way back through Stowe. After grabbing some subs in Morrisville, headed up to the resort and took a look around to assess the ski options. The most continuous snow is over on Mt. Mansfield, where the North Slope area is still looking very good, with no breaks that I could see even down to the lowest elevations. There’s still a good amount of snow over at Spruce Peak as well though, with a lot of continuous vertical over in the Main Street area, and even snow down by the Spruce Peak Base.

“I’d say it might
be the best corn
snow I’ve skied
all spring.”

E and the boys weren’t up for skiing, but I was still looking to get in a quick run, so we decided to set ourselves up with some easy slope access right below Slalom Hill and West Slope. We had lunch at one of the tables on the back deck of the Spruce Camp Base Lodge, and while E and the boys were off on a bathroom break, I stuck around and enjoyed the view of the slopes. It has really been quite the run of clear spring days for us out here in the mountains – we’ve now gone 10 days without measurable precipitation at the house, and that’s very impressive for the land of upslope where Mother Nature can find a way to make some sort of precipitation more often than not. Even if the rate of snowmelt is a bit faster than usual, we’re enjoying it, and there’s more to come this week. After finishing up our lunch, E and the boys headed off to play some chess on the outdoor chess set, while I headed up for a run.

an image looking down toward the steep pitch of the West Slope trail at Stowe Mountain Ski Resort in Vermont on a day of spring skiing in May — On the descent of West Slope

Although I put my ski pants in my pack, it was warm enough that I just threw on my Tele boots and hiked in my shorts. The effects of the continued warm and dry weather are very obvious on the slopes, as the areas without snow are essentially dry. That made the hiking very easy on the grassy terrain, and it was a quick ascent up to the top of West Slope. The views were excellent, and although I couldn’t quite make out E and the boys over by the Stowe Mountain Lodge, they said that they were able to see me. I took a line down the skier’s left of West Slope, and the snow was beautiful – it was smooth, with a couple inches of peel away corn snow on top. I’d say it might be the best corn snow I’ve skied all spring. It was also nice to be back on the Telemark skis – I decided to just stick with skiing in my shorts since it was a fairly simple run, and was rewarded with some nice corn spray on the knees along with some really glorious Tele turns. There was a final stretch of snow at the bottom of Slalom Hill, so I walked across the slope to connect to that, and it brought me right down to the car.

E and the boys timed their return to the car just right because they could see me on my descent, and when we met up I tried to tempt them into going for a run by letting them know just how great the snow was. It didn’t work, as they were all just a little too tired from the busy weekend. We’re watching the Mt. Washington Auto Road to see how things develop in the next couple of weeks. There’s still quite a lot of snow up there, and the sooner they open the more options there will be on the snowfields.

May 4, 2013May 5, 2013

Sugarbush, VT 04MAY2013

An image of Dylan skiing on Stein's Run at Sugarbush on spring snow in May — Dylan at Sugarbush today

Last weekend I visited Bolton Valley for turns, but in general it’s been another week with day after day of sun and warm spring temperatures of 70-80 F for the valleys, so I suspect Bolton’s snowpack isn’t very continuous at this point. The Mt. Washington Auto Road opened to tree line today, but a full opening is required to use it for access to the snowfields, so local turns seemed to be on the menu again. Stowe has plenty of snow and is one of the closest options at this point, but once I found out that Sugarbush was offering free skiing this weekend in support of Vermont Land Trust’s preservation of the Bragg Farm, that jumped right up on the list.

I’d been tossing around different ideas about when to ski among other weekend chores and activities, but once I got the word that Sugarbush wasn’t going to be opening on Sunday, that sealed the deal on today’s trip. Ty was away at a friend’s house and E was busy with other things, but Dylan definitely needed to get out of the house, so I grabbed him in the early afternoon and we headed off to Sugarbush to make some turns. Dylan actually protested about today’s trip at first, and you could tell that there was a big activation energy required to get him moving, but even he realized that he needed to get his butt off the couch. We hadn’t been in the car long before his disposition started to change. With him and Ty, it’s often about that activation energy.

The main paved parking lot right below the Clay Brook Complex had a decent amount of cars in it, but it wasn’t chock full and there were plenty of available spaces right up front from people who had already left for the day. The mountain was requiring that everyone have free tickets, even with the free skiing, but the process was easy – we just stopped in the ticket building and they handed them over to us. You could make your donation to the Bragg Farm preservation project right there as well if you wanted. As we were walking over to the base of the lifts, my fired Chris spotted us from his seat outside at the Castlerock Pub, and he said to stop back after we’d done our skiing. The scene was lively outside at the pub, with live music from a guitarist going strong.

I was initially surprised when we walked up the steps and found that the Super Bravo Chair wasn’t running, and quickly realized that skiing was off the Valley House Double today. That’s a much slower and lower capacity lift setup, and meant that there was a decent queue of about 10 minutes or so to be able to load. The upside was that it probably helped to keep traffic down on the minimal terrain they had open – essentially Stein’s Run with the Coffee Run runout below that to get you back to the base of the lift. I wasn’t too excited when I’d initially heard that the skiing was only off Stein’s, since it never really seems to have any decent bump lines, just big, widely-spaced things, but at least it was warm enough out that its traditionally hard, manmade snow would likely soften. As we stood in the queue, Dylan was still a rather reluctant participant. He said, “Dad, I’ve got three things to tell you that I don’t like… one, it’s too hot out; two, this line is too long; and three, the snow is going to be sticky. Apparently his glass was well empty, but I did assure him that the snow wasn’t going to be sticky; it was definitely well-ripened corn snow and you could tell that even as we stood there at the base elevation.

The skiing turned out to be much better than I’d expected, not so much due to the snow, which I expected to be decently softened with temperatures in the 70s F, but the terrain setup. In this case, Stein’s tendency for those wide, spread out bump lines meant that there was actually some pretty smooth snow off to the sides where fewer people were skiing. It wasn’t totally flat, but the bumps were fairly scattered, so you could enjoy that area for smooth turns, and then move toward the middle of the trail for more bumps. Amazingly, even on such a warm day, Stein’s still found a way to have firm snow between some of the bumps. It’s almost hard to imagine that on such a day, but Stein’s is steep and it really faces north. Dylan worked on his pole technique and we both had some fun turns. I’d gone with alpine equipment, not wanting to deal with Telemark turns on the typical crazy assortment of bumps that can sometimes be found on Stein’s, but it turned out to be so much better than I’d expected; Telemark skiing would certainly have been fun as well.

The lift queue at Valley House had gone down somewhat by the time we finished our run, but I still couldn’t convince Dylan to do any more skiing. He did say that the skiing was better than he’d though it would be, so that was at least a bit of a positive note in his rather sour disposition. We met up with Chris down at the Castlerock Pub, where we had some nachos and root beers. We’d checked over at Timbers first, but they weren’t opening until 4:00 P.M., so it seemed like a perfect time to introduce ourselves to what to the pub had to offer. On such a gorgeous day, you could either sit inside and be just out of the sun but catching the cool breeze, or hang out on the patio and absorb some rays. We haven’t seen Chris since the Warren Miller movie in the fall, so we caught up with his latest exploits; he’ll be up in the area for some work in the next couple of weeks, so hopefully we’ll see him again.

An image of a Route 100 highway sign in Vermont covered with a variety of ski stickers — At least Vermont’s Skier’s Highway has got it’s 15 requisite pieces of flair.

I’m really glad that Sugarbush offered the free day today, because in our case, it needed to be something pretty economical to make it worth it for the minimal terrain. Simply skinning for turns at a place like Stowe is pretty high on our list, but today’s skiing was definitely worth it for a nice change of pace. It’s been a couple of seasons since we’ve had the occasion to visit the ‘bush, so I’m glad that we snuck a visit in under the wire today.

August 16, 2012September 10, 2013

2011-2012 Ski Season Summary

With everyone having their own unique perspective on skiing, some of which you can discover at supreme ski morzine skiing school. They tend to love skiing since they teach people how to do it! But combined with the multitude of weather-related factors involved in winter recreation in general, there’s usually ample room for debate about where a ski season sits relative to average. However, when it comes to the 2011-2012 ski season in Northern Vermont (and perhaps to an even greater extent in other parts of the Northeastern U.S.) most any metric would set it firmly in the lower half of seasons. Some key contributing factors to the outcome of the season were temperatures, which were above average for every month from October through May (specific monthly temperature departures are available in the monthly detail section), overall precipitation, which was well below average during that period, and as expected with that combination, snowfall that was well below average. However, the numbers don’t always tell the whole story, and indeed that was the case in Northern Vermont this past season. If numbers aren’t everything, perhaps timing is everything, and the snow machine of the Northern Greens exhibited some impeccable timing for some of the busiest ski periods when it came down to it. There was also a consistency and intensity in backside snows that seemed to heal just about every mixed precipitation event. So while I don’t think that the winter of 2011-2012 can be considered anything but below average around here, the bigger story might just be how “surprisingly good” it was. That story unfolds in the details below, and may inspire people to look at other skiing options. Some may consider the vail village ski rentals in such a situation, especially after reading about this different location.

Snowfall: A very reliable and trustworthy indicator of just how poor the winter’s snowfall was for the general Northern Vermont area, is the data from the area’s first-order weather station at the National Weather Service Office in Burlington. Out of 127 years worth of data going back to the winter of 1884-1885, the 37.7″ of total snowfall in Burlington during 2011-2012 was the third lowest in their records (only 1912-1913 with 31.3″ and 1904-1905 with 32.0″ were lower). Interestingly this third lowest recorded snowfall obtained in 2011-2012 came right on the heels of Burlington’s third highest recorded snowfall of 128.4″ in 2010-2011. Relative to average snowfall, which for the 1884-2011 period of record in Burlington is 73.3″, 2011-2012 came in at just 51.4%. Burlington is the local first-order weather station for the area, but despite its proximity to the spine of the Northern Greens, the Champlain Valley’s snowfall doesn’t necessarily correlate with what goes on in the mountains. Looking next at Winooski Valley snowfall data obtained from our house, which sits right along the spine and is a decent representation of what happens in the mountain valleys of the Greens, we find that snowfall was well below average during all the key winter months, and our season total was 115.3″. Not surprisingly, this is the lowest snowfall total obtained in the six years that we have collected rigorous data at our location, and it’s almost two standard deviations below the mean (172.1 ± 31.5″) obtained from 2006-2011. However, at 67.0% of the average snowfall, it’s not quite as low as what Burlington experienced. Like the local mountains themselves, some spots in the mountain valleys have what Powderfreak refers to as a snowfall “insurance policy”, which comes in the form of upslope snow. Burlington and the Champlain Valley can get in on a bit of mesoscale weather action in the form of lake-effect snow from Lake Champlain, but it’s not a major contributor to snowfall due to the size and orientation of the lake. To the east of the Champlain Valley however, the upslope snow, sometimes referred to as Champlain Powder™, is what sets the snowfall in the Greens apart from areas that rely solely on synoptic precipitation. Interestingly, as we head up in elevation above our house in the valley, we find Bolton Valley reporting a very similar deviation from average snowfall compared to Burlington this season. Bolton recorded 159″ of snow this past season, which based on Bolton’s reported seasonal snowfall mean of 312″, comes in at just 51.0% of average. That amount of snow is extremely low for this area, and is more akin to what one might find in a typical season at Lake Louise Ski Area in Alberta vs. the spine of Vermont’s Northern Greens. The updated table with Bolton Valley’s snowfall from the past several seasons is added below, which illustrates the strong snowfall deviation from average seen in 2011-2012:

A table displaying the season snowfall totals at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont from the 2006-2007 season through the 2011-2012 season, as well as the average reported by the resort and the average during that period — Snowfall at Bolton Valley Resort during the 2011-2012 ski season (shown in blue) was extremely low, just half the average amount.

Although still well below average all around, there certainly was a trend toward slightly better snowfall as one continued to head north in the state, with the northward trend of 63.4% at Stowe, 66.6% at Smuggler’s Notch, and 71.5% at Jay Peak relative to average. A contributor to the low snowfall at the resorts was the fact that there was really only one big, multi-foot storm cycle during the heart of the season. That storm came at the end of February and dropped 40″ at Jay Peak, just on the heels of a couple smaller systems for a total in excess of 50″ of snow in just a few days. The resulting skiing was fantastic due the density gradient that was set up by the way it fell – 1 to 2 feet of dense snow came first, and it was topped off with another couple feet of champagne that finished at around 2% H2O. The snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield Stake jumped from 49″ to 81″ during that period, and the icing on the cake was that the storm cleared right out to produce bluebird skies on Feb 26^th. Unfortunately, one great storm doesn’t make a season. Based on estimations from my weather data, on average we should only expect one or two of those 40″+ storms per season, but they would typically be backed up by several 20″+ storms, and the deficiency of those is part of what left the overall snowfall lacking.

Tree Skiing: In the past I’ve used empirical data from trip reports to establish a mean date for the start of tree skiing in Northern/North-Central Vermont, and as I outlined in last year’s ski season summary, that analysis revealed a date of December 10^th ± 13 days, with an average depth at the stake of 28.1 ± 6.5 inches. However, after a comment from Powderfreak back on December 12^th, in which he indicated that he’d observed tree skiing on appropriate terrain at Stowe to start roughly when the snow depth at the Mt. Mansfield Stake hit 24 inches, I decided to run an analysis using snowpack data from the stake. Instead of just the 15 to 20 seasons worth of ski trip reports that are available since the arrival of the internet era, there are almost 60 seasons worth of data available from the Mt. Mansfield Stake. Analysis of the stake data using the first date of attaining 24″ of snow depth or higher as the start of tree skiing, actually produced a very similar result (December 12^th ± 19 days, with an average depth at the stake of 25.8 ± 2.7 inches) to what was obtained from the empirical data. With the date being so close to what I determined from the empirical data, I’m pretty confident that the date of attaining 24″ in the stake data will serve just as well in determining the average start of tree skiing, and the relative start date for individual seasons. With the median and mode for that analysis coming in quite close to the mean, the distribution seems normal, so the standard deviation in the data should have some predictive value. This “24-inch rule” isn’t meant to replace the traditional “40-inch rule“, but it’s there to compliment it as a more practical measure of when people actually start venturing into the trees in this area (the fact that it is corroborated by many years of empirical data can testify to that). The point at which the stake hits 24 inches is a decent mark for when appropriately maintained trees are going to start offering up good turns for those with the right skills and knowledge, whereas once the stake hits 40 inches, skiers can pretty much venture into most off-piste areas with a good degree of confidence. Between those two points is going to be a continuum of increasing access to off piste terrain. Moving from the 24″ depth to the 40” depth will typically take place during the month of December, with the snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield Stake reaching the 40″ mark at the beginning of January on average.

So where did the 2011-2012 season stack up in terms of the start of tree skiing in Northern Vermont? Not surprisingly, when assessed by the new method of reaching 24″ at the Mt. Mansfield Stake, it’s down near the bottom of the pack. Below, I’ve added a scatter plot that I generated using the Mt. Mansfield snowpack data; the X-axis is a timeline spanning from October to January, and the blue stars represent the dates when 24 inches of snow depth was attained at the stake for the various years from 1954-2012. The red data point is for the 2011-2012 season (date of attaining 24″ = January 3^rd, 2012), so the season is indeed more than one standard deviation on the late side (the large vertical line in the plot is the mean, and the small vertical lines are ± 1 standard deviation), although it actually isn’t as late a start as some seasons:

A scatter plot showing the date of attaining a 24-inch snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield stake in Vermont for the years 1954-2012 — A scatter plot showing the date of attaining a 24-inch snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield Stake. Each star represents a year from 1954-2012, and this year’s date of attaining a 24-inch snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield Stake (January 3rd; indicated by the red star) is on the later side.

For those that want the actual raw data from the above plot to see where specific seasons stacked up in terms of reaching that 24-inch mark at the stake, the numbers are available in my initial post with the plot in the New England Regional Forum at American Weather.

How did the 24-inch snowpack depth analysis compare to what we actually found on the ground this season? Since skiing natural snow terrain on piste began first, I’ll mention that momentarily before discussing the trees. I saw the first signs of people skiing natural snow trails this season on December 27^th at Bolton, and coverage certainly looked sufficient on at least moderate terrain. The tracks I saw at that point already looked old, and I suspect that on piste natural snow coverage was actually sufficient the day before (December 26^th), thanks to the Christmas Day storm. Bolton picked up close to a foot of snow from that storm, and at the end of the day on the 26^th, the snow depth at the Mt. Mansfield Stake came in at 14″. The first day that we actually ventured into the trees at Bolton Valley was December 29^th, and as I stated in my report from that day, we only ventured in for one run because the base was just a little too thin to really ski with confidence in there and enjoy it. And, when the snowpack was measured at the Mt. Mansfield Stake later that afternoon, the depth was 21 inches, just a bit shy of that 24-inch mark. By the next day, we were skiing natural snow trails with more than enough coverage, but it wasn’t until January 7^th at Bolton that I commented about some of the trees finally being ready after the boys and I skied Wilderness Woods. The measurement from the stake came in at 24 inches that afternoon, and we were clearly reaching another threshold of sorts, so attaining that 24-inch depth at the stake was indeed a decent measure for the start of tree skiing this season in our experience. Powderfreak and I have discussed how that 24-inch number is going to be quite rough, since a 24-inch depth attained mostly with fluff will represent something substantially different that a 24-inch depth attained with cement, but it looks like it’s going to be a reasonable approximation of when people start to take their initial forays into the trees and find the conditions good enough to stay there.

Looking at tree/off piste skiing for the season as a whole, there’s no question that it was curtailed relative to normal. The very late date of reaching 24 inches at the stake in the beginning of January (January 3^rd) is 1.13 standard deviations beyond the mean according to the Mt. Mansfield snowpack analysis, putting it close to the bottom 10% of seasons. When this is coupled with the large amount of melting in Mid March due to record heat, which closed a lot of terrain, it equates to a tree skiing season that is roughly 2 ½ months long, compared to the more typical length of 4 to 5 months. The off piste season was certainly condensed, and while coverage was there to enable plenty of access in January (Stowe reached 100% open status by January 14^th), tree skiing really seemed to take forever to hit its stride; to wit, the snowpack at the stake didn’t hit the 40-inch mark until the end of January.

Snow Quality: In last season’s summary, I checked my trip reports and found those days in which we were skiing powder, typically suggesting a fairly high level of snow quality, and those days in which powder skiing wasn’t available, often indicating some sort of thaw (or in one case this season, insufficient base depths). For the list of outings below, I’ve again placed a P whenever we were skiing powder, and put a red X if we weren’t, to reveal the temporal pattern associated with that categorization. Outings with an X may still be providing decent skiing such as wet snow, corn, etc. (or else we’d probably be doing something other than skiing) but aside from the spring period, there’s going to be a price to pay in terms of snow quality after these episodes when temperatures eventually cool back down. Chronologically, the first X appears for the outing on December 10^th at Bolton Valley. The lack of powder skiing on that date wasn’t actually due to temperature fluctuations, but instead due to the fact that there just wasn’t enough natural snow; substantial snowfall was very slow in coming in early December. The natural snow depth up above 2,000′ in the Bolton Valley Village was still only 2-3″ at that point, so short of junkboarding, skiing was really restricted to just the limited terrain that had manmade snow. The next X appears on our Bolton Valley outing on December 31^st, and it represented a notable bump in the winter weather. The holiday week wasn’t too cold, but it was certainly snowy like one would expect at Christmas time in Vermont, with three decent snowstorms totaling more than two feet of snow at the northern resorts (refer to the December entry in the detailed monthly section for more information). So there was indeed some great powder skiing during that stretch. The main factor that kept the overall quality of the skiing from being really outstanding was the lack of base. The natural snow terrain that was open was excellent, but there still hadn’t been enough snow to open the steepest terrain without snowmaking. The X in this case comes in at the tail end of the holiday period where there was a thaw. I described the skiing on New Year’s Eve as reminding me of the Pacific Northwest, with low hanging clouds on the mountains, and dense snow underfoot. I’m not sure how long the resulted firm snow conditions lasted, because three small to moderate storms came through the area that week, with the first one dropping a half foot of snow in the mountains. By the following Saturday there was powder skiing again for the weekend. From that point on there were no interruptions in powder skiing though to mid March – at least from our perspective; we don’t ski every day of course, but we did ski every weekend through that period. However, Powderfreak does ski just about every day of the season at Stowe, and he noted that there were only a few select days without powder. I’ll speak more about that at the end of this section. By far the section of the outings list that stands out the most is the second half of March – the dramatic change in conditions is quite obvious, with seven outings in a row marked with an X. Record warm weather came in with a vengeance in mid March, and it was all spring skiing until the weather cooled back down to normal levels and produced snowstorms for the final two thirds of April. We finally finished off our season with a couple of corn snow days in May, a point in the season where that type of snow is the norm.

The 2010-2011 ski season was the first one to which I applied this type of powder skiing analysis, and relative to what I thought it would look like, I was certainly surprised by the consistent availability of powder conditions once I saw the data lined up. But as surprised as I was with that result, the 2011-2012 analysis is even more astounding. Somehow there was good to great skiing every weekend/holiday period throughout most of the core ski season, despite the overwhelmingly warm temperatures and low snowfall. As I mentioned above in the snowfall section, Bolton Valley reported just 159″ of snow for their entire season. That’s ridiculously low – it’s half their usual snowfall, and we typically average more snow than that at our house, almost 3,000′ below the upper elevations of the resort where the snowfall measurements are taken. That amount of snow might suffice for some decent skiing in an environment like the high elevations of the Rockies with very consistent winter temperatures, but this season in Vermont was anything but that. There were temperature issues throughout the season, and January was a perfect example – at the end of the month, local meteorologist Roger Hill pointed out that we’d had seven January thaws. I had many ski weather-related conversations with Powderfreak in the 2011-2012 ski thread at American Weather’s New England Subforum about the surprisingly high quality of the skiing, and there was certainly consistency in conditions, but we also determined that it was an issue of timing. Snowfall was low, and spells of warm temperatures abundant, but storms were just timed well to ensure that most snow quality issues were remedied by the weekend. Although the season was warm on average, we didn’t have many big rain events, and any that we did have seemed to be quickly covered by backside snow. There was indeed something special about the timing though, because somehow we had weekend after weekend of nice skiing with powder on Bolton’s 159″ of snow. The detailed reports below and the monthly ski summaries that follow, provide the specifics of how it all went down, and the frequency and distribution of P in the outings list really speaks to that theme of “surprisingly good”:

Monthly Summaries for the 2011-2012 Ski Season:

An image of Erica skiing powder on the Birch Glades Trail at Pico Vermont - October 30, 2011 — E enjoys some of the October powder at Pico after back to back storms set up some great ski conditions.

October: Snowfall in the month of October is generally scant down at the elevation of our house (495′), and because we’re on the fringe of the cold season at that point, it’s not a great indicator of snowfall in the local mountains. The six year average I have in the valley is 0.9″ of snow for October, so by that measure, the 1.2″ of snow that we received in October 2011 was very typical. However, for the New England region as a whole, October 2011 would wind up being anything but typical. Back to back snowstorms hit New England at the end of the month, with the first one on October 27^th dropping over a foot of snow at Killington to kick things off with gusto. That type of storm is pretty standard for the mountains of Vermont in October, but just a couple days later on the 29^th, it was followed up by a second, larger storm – a record-breaking monster of an October snowstorm for Southern New England. Over 30 inches of snow fell in some locations, and those weren’t necessarily high elevation locales. Massive power outages ensued because leaves were still on the trees in those areas, and people were without power for up to two weeks. Ironically, despite the back-to-back snowstorms in New England, including an historic, 100-year event, Northern Vermont ended up with little if any snow from either of them. The lack of snowfall is seen easily in my 2011-2012 Waterbury/Mt. Mansfield snowpack plot – the only snow depth recorded on Mt. Mansfield for the entire month was 0.5″ on October 30^th, and that is essentially invisible with the scale used. I don’t know what Mt. Mansfield averages for snow in October, but I’m sure what they got was well below average. As for the skiing though, what we couldn’t get in the Northern Greens was easily obtained about an hour south in the Central Greens. With the mountains of Central Vermont getting hit by both storms, we headed down to Pico with the boys for an outstanding day of turns in the powder. The back-to-back storms had essentially set up snow on snow, or powder atop a base. That’s a bit of a treat compared to the way October skiing on natural snow often plays out, so it was enjoyed by many. It almost seemed like half the ski population of Stowe had temporarily migrated south to access the great turns at Pico. So while in general, October was pleasant, mild, and nearly snowless in Northern Vermont (Burlington came in 2.0 degrees F above normal at the National Weather Service Office) some great skiing snuck in there a bit to the south.

An image of old ski tracks on the Sherman's Pass ski trail at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont after a November snowstorm — Some November turns on Sherman’s thanks to our recent snowstorm

November: I’ll put November 2011 into perspective by looking at November 2010, in which the ski conditions were apparently poor enough that we didn’t ski once. Fortunately, that didn’t happen this season – even if just by a day. The near lack of snow in November 2010 could be considered demonstrative of typical November snowfall in the valley though, because up to that point it had truly been feast or famine since we moved to our current Waterbury location in 2006. However, this past November finally bucked that trend by coming in with 11.4″ of snow (128% of average) which is as close to “normal” snowfall as I’ve ever seen for the month based on my data. We had a couple of minor accumulating snowstorms early in the month, and then another mid month, but it was a storm near the end of the month that really produced 95% of our November valley snowfall. That storm dropped almost a foot of snow at the house, and got me to head up to Bolton Valley for some turns. In terms of skiing, options for catching the new snow atop a manmade base were rather limited because most of the local resorts were of course using their manmade snow to serve customers, but I headed up to Bolton Valley to see if the natural snow alone was enough for some turns. Since they don’t open until December, Bolton hadn’t yet made any snow by that point, but it turned out that the storm had dropped over a foot of snow up there, and it was dense enough that one didn’t need much of it to keep them off of whatever lay beneath. I enjoyed some decent turns, even if that outing wound up being the only one for the month. This past November was a decent step up from the previous couple of seasons with little to no snow, but we’ve still yet to have a very snowy November since the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 seasons; both those seasons delivered roughly 20″ of snow in the valley, and plenty more in the mountains. The general seasonal trend of warm weather continued right through the month as well; although much colder than October on an absolute basis, November was even warmer relative to its long range average, coming in 5.1 degrees above normal at the National Weather Service Office in Burlington.

An image of intricate, feathery patterns of frost on one of the windows of the main base lodge at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Holiday week frost delicately adorns one of the windows in the Bolton Valley base lodge.

December: The first two thirds of December simply felt like a continuation of November; the pre-holiday period was hampered by above average temperatures, but the more notable issue was the absence of significant storms. The Northern Greens were holding their own thanks to numerous small snowfalls, and these events were definitely enough to get us into some powder skiing, but they weren’t enough to really build a deep base of natural snow. The last third of the month was really the highlight in terms of snowfall. As the all-important holiday week approached, Central Vermont northward finally got into some moderate storms. The localized nature of these storms was good for highway travelers from down south, and one could hardly ask for better timing of fresh snow for the holiday week. Storm 1 hit on Friday the 23^rd, dropping roughly half a foot from Killington northward, storm 2 was on the 25^th, centered on Stowe where they received over a foot, and storm 3 began on the 27^th, with totals again topping out around a foot. The skiing was quite good, indeed excellent by the end of the week as the snow from the storms continued to pile up, but the lack of snowfall earlier in the month meant that the natural base depths weren’t there like they would normally be. Fortunately, some natural snow terrain was open, but certainly not the steepest stuff, and the natural snowpack was still just a bit too lean to spend much time in the trees. In any event, we skied eight times during that holiday stretch, a sign that there was definitely some good skiing. With all the new snow, our local area certainly had it a lot better than many places in the country did during the holiday week, so in that regard we were lucky. I’m sure business was still down at the Vermont ski areas in general, but people may have been hearing about the holiday snow that Northern Vermont was getting, because Powderfreak posted on Christmas Eve how lodging space was still very tight in Stowe. Despite the snow in the northern half of Vermont though, the general talk around the region was how poor and snowless it was in general, so I’m sure many places lost some potential visitors due to that. Even with those moderate storms at the end of the month, when all was said and done, we still ended up quite low on snowfall down at the house; the 24.7″ we received was just 59% of our average for the past six seasons. Temperature consistency/snow surface quality: With the slow start to snowfall, we didn’t even ski during the first weekend of the month, but we did get out for the other four. The second weekend was the one where there was no powder simply because there wasn’t enough snow. Temperatures were certainly above average as a whole (NWS in Burlington was +4.8 F on the month), but December mean temperatures start getting cold enough that even above average departures can still be sub-freezing and produce snow in the mountains . The third weekend of the month had some decent conditions at Stowe, and then the final two weekends sort of lose their definition with the big holiday week, and that period gets lumped together. Conditions for the holiday week were mostly wintry; strictly speaking though, the last weekend of the month did see a thaw, but in the context of the whole holiday week it was rather insignificant.

An image of Greg and some of the boys in our ski group on the Sensation Quad at Stowe Mountain Resort, with tracks visible in the powder on the lift line trail below — Greg and some of the boys riding Sensation today between laps in the powder below

January: We had 13 accumulating snowstorms at the house in January, which is quite decent and actually a bit above average in number, but as mentioned in the Snow Quality section of this season summary, we also had seven January thaws. These thaws didn’t mean torrential rains, but what we saw were many storms with mixed precipitation in the middle, cutting down on snow totals. The Northern Greens continuously made fantastic recoveries in snow conditions due to grabbing that upslope snow on the backside, so snow surfaces were quite nice in general, but in those first couple of weeks after the holiday storms, we got back into what Powderfreak calls “nickel and dime” snows. They kept surfaces fresh, but base depths built very slowly. Finally on the 12^th, we got a more significant storm, which dropped two feet at Jay Peak, and roughly a foot and a half down through Sugarbush. That storm was an undeniably propitious event, and Stowe’s terrain was 100% open by January 14^th. Again we saw Mother Nature pulling off some of her nice timing with that storm cycle, since it was just in time for the MLK weekend. I remember skiing great packed powder snow on Waterfall at Stowe on the 16^th, and commenting to Powderfreak how astonished I was – it seems like that trail is hardly ever open even in a good season, and there we were skiing it with such premium snow in a very low snow season. We were fortunate to get that storm though, because after that it was back to nickel and dime storms with some of those similar mixed precipitation sandwich events with backside snows for the remainder of the month. Overall snowfall at the house was 32.6″, not quite as low as December, but still just 83% of average, so we weren’t making any gains on the low season snowfall. At +5.8 F, the deviation from normal temperatures at the Burlington NWS for January was even a degree higher than it had been for December. Like December though, normal January temperatures are cold enough that substantial snow can fall with positive departures like that. Temperature consistency/snow surface quality: With eight days under our belts from the holiday week, and nothing returning the conditions to midwinter after our Pacific Northwest-style outing on December 31^st, we didn’t ski on January 1^st, but we did ski on all four of the full weekends during the month. As seen in the outings list above, powder was present throughout our trips to the mountain, which was pretty amazing considering all those thaws/mixed precipitation storms.

An image of Ty skiing in heavy snowfall during a two-foot snowstorm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — It was storm skiing today at Bolton Valley.

February: There’s no question that February will go down as having the best skiing of the season in Northern Vermont, but the month certainly didn’t start out in a spectacular way. An initial half foot storm at the beginning of the month did a fantastic job of resurfacing the slopes after one of those January “sandwich” storms with mixed precipitation in the middle, and Mt. Mansfield continued to impress. Although still well below average in terms of both snowfall and snowpack, Northern Vermont was clearly doing extremely well in comparison to even Central Vermont by that point. After that initial modest snowfall event, our wishes for a weather pattern change that would get us away from all those mixed events were indeed answered, but perhaps not exactly in the manner we would have liked. Instead of switching over to more typical snowstorms, the precipitation basically shut off. Down at the house, we’d had just over half a foot of snow through the first three weeks of the month. For a month in which we average over 40″ of snow in the valley with a very low standard deviation of about 8 inches, we were staring at the potential for an amazingly low monthly snowfall total. Happily, the last week of the month ensured that February 2012 didn’t live on in infamy. We quickly picked up a couple of appetizer storms on the 21^st and the 22^nd, which didn’t produce much snow at the house, but delivered close to a foot in the mountains. It was on the 24^th though that the big kahuna came through; that storm dropped up to 40″ in the northern mountains, with a total of over 50″ at Jay Peak for the three storms combined. It wasn’t just a fluff storm either; snow from that storm definitely fell “right side up”, and ski conditions were off the charts. So much snow fell so quickly though that the avalanche conditions got a bit tenuous in the backcountry. I saw mention that Jay Peak broke their 24-hour snowfall record during the storm, but since I see that listed as 42″, I don’t think that was actually topped with this storm. In any event, the natural snow depths made huge gains, and as mentioned above; that storm even brought the snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield stake to an above average level. With a final storm total of 22.7″ at the house, it was our largest valley snowfall of the season. That one storm pretty much made the month in terms of our valley snowfall, but we still ended up with just 30.7″, which is 73% of average. The general presence of heat didn’t let up either, and the departure from normal at the NWS in Burlington again went up an entire degree from the previous month to reach +6.8 F. Temperature consistency/snow surface quality: The great timing of storms continued, and even the reduced snowfall in the first ¾ of the month was enough to keep powder around; conditions certainly remained good as we moved through that first part of February. The big storm was wall to wall snow and timing hardly mattered, but it was a weekend event anyway, with storm day skiing on Saturday, and fresh powder and blue skies on Sunday. That weekend took the cake of course, but all four weekends of the month offered some great skiing.

An image of Dylan skiing an expanse of powder on the Spell Binder Trail at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Dylan roaming the expanse of Spell Binder

March: The first half of March felt like a continuation of that decent stretch at the end of February, even if we didn’t get any additional three to four foot storm cycles. Just a few days after the big February storm ended, another decent cycle came through heading into the 1^st of the month, with close to a foot of additional snow at the northern resorts, and a foot and a half at the southern resorts. Amidst other freshening events, a storm on the 4^th dropped about a half foot of snow, and then over a foot fell from a storm on the 9^th that targeted the north-central resorts. The boost from the big February storm was felt in base depths and surface conditions, and you could feel that the season had really turned into what one would expect for March. Even as unseasonable warmth started to intrude and occasionally turn the powder wet through the first half of the month, there was usually enough time to get in turns for a good part of each day while the powder was still dry, and then more snow would come along to freshen things back up. The weather through that period was certainly on the warm side, but it was during the second half of the month when all hell broke loose with regard to temperatures. That expression is somewhat apt, because for March, it felt like that when five consecutive days of record temperatures with departures of +40 F hit the state from the 18^th-22^nd. Combined with the more moderate warmth during the rest of the month, the result was an incredible +12.2 F departure from the average March temperature at the NWS in Burlington. With almost no new snow in the valley during that warm second half of the month, March snowfall was a paltry 14.2″ at the house, just 60% of average. Temperature consistency/snow surface quality: The list of ski outings from above shows the trend here quite well, the first two weekends offered powder conditions, and from then on it was spring skiing. However, powder had been available for every weekend or holiday period since the middle of December by the point at which the snow conditions flipped, and that’s a commendable three-month stretch for such a season. Beyond the middle of the month, X was the only way to describe the powder conditions until we finally got to April. There was decent corn snow and great weather during that second half of March, but it was so warm that trail counts dropped rapidly at many resorts; even the huge snowpack gains made by the northern resorts at the end of February were lost as the snow depth at the Mt. Mansfield stake fell well below where it had been before the big climb. Despite the good spring skiing, it seemed like many resorts closed down simply because people had given up on winter by that point. The slow start and rapid end to winter seemed to take the wind out of everyone’s sails and, it had them looking to quickly put the season in the rearview mirror.

An image of two skiers ascending through deep snow via a skin track on the Nosedive trail at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — A pair of skiers ascending Nosedive this morning amidst the continued snowfall.

April: Temperatures for the month of April still came in above average (+1.2 F) at the National Weather Service in Burlington, but after the unprecedented warmth of March, that felt downright cool by comparison. Indeed April was more typical though, and some good skiing returned, even if the slightly warm temperatures kept the snow especially elevation dependent. With that trend, snowfall down at the house was almost insignificant, just 0.5 inches or 8% of average. That’s the least snowy April we’ve encountered in the six years that I’ve been monitoring snowfall at our location. Storms nailed the mountains with snow though, in the form of a minor event on the 4^th of the month, then a big cutoff low dropping 2 to 2 ½ feet on the 9^th. That snow was fairly dense and represented an unmitigated resurfacing of the slopes as one headed up in elevation. The skiing was great, at least in a Sierra Cement/Cascade Concrete sort of way where it doesn’t take much to cover whatever is below, but it would have been even better if the March warmth hadn’t deteriorated the snowpack as much as it did. With most ski areas closed after March sapped people’s interest in the season, plenty of great earned turns were made, but at the resorts that had stayed open, there was also some excellent lift-served skiing. April finished off with one final storm at the end of the month, which was nothing like the big one earlier, but it dropped about a half foot in the upper elevations and that was enough for some final powder skiing before we moved on to May. Temperature consistency/snow surface quality: While certainly not up to the level of April 2007, we did get to ski powder on all of our April days except April 1^st. Most of what fell during the month for snow was rather dense, but it was still a nice reprieve to have fresh snow after the way March had gone. We only skied three of the five weekends that month, as half of our outings ended up being midweek.

An image of Jay skiing one of the snowfields on the east side of Mt. Washington on Memorial Day weekend 2012 — Heading over to another snowfield to our north for some smooth turns on the untouched snow

May: After some tempering of the heat for April, Mother Nature was back at the stove for May, with a +5.3 F departure for the month at the NWS in Burlington. We didn’t have any accumulating snow in the valley, although that’s typically the case down at our elevation. There were actually no significant winter storms to speak of, but we did have one Vermont ski day on the 12^th, enjoying the last of the corn snow up at Jay Peak. We took advantage of a Mother’s Day package that offered a chance to sample a lot of the new facilities up at the resort (water park, arcade, restaurants, etc.), and indeed taking in that smorgasbord of activities is an especially nice way to go when skiing is only going to be a minor part of a trip. Our other day in the month was actually out of state in New Hampshire on Memorial Day weekend, taking our traditional camping trip Auto Road ascent with the boys to ski the snowfields. The snowfields were somewhat on the lean side this year, but not bad considering what the region went through meteorologically during the winter season.

At the monthly level, the 2011-2012 ski season was a simply amazing stretch of positive temperature departures followed by even more positive temperature departures, and that trend has continued right into the summer, with June and July coming in at +1.9 F and +2.4 F respectively. August is currently coming in with a positive departure as well, and if it ends up staying that way, it will be the 17^th month in a row in the positive departure streak for Burlington. Those departures are going to flip at some point, and it’s going to feel quite chilly by comparison. Despite that trend though, even when combined with below normal precipitation, the quality of the ski surfaces encountered this past season in Northern Vermont was quite good. I’m not sure if I’m willing to say better than average, since I don’t think surfaces were better than average at Bolton Valley, but I am willing to say that in our visits to Stowe this season, the typical on piste surfaces we encountered were actually better than the previous season. One thought is that the lack big storms in general also played out as a lack of notable rainstorms, which while generally infrequent in the heart of winter anyway, are likely more detrimental to the snow surfaces than more modest events with simply some mixed precipitation in the middle. The Northern Greens certainly showed throughout this past season that they have the ability to cover the back side of mixed precipitation events with additional snow quite effectively when there’s at least some moisture in the atmosphere to be wrung out. The fact that business was down somewhat at the resorts, may also have contributed to less skier traffic and slightly elevated on piste snow quality. Whatever the case, for a ski season that felt like an abysmal “perfect storm” of sorts with regard to temperatures and precipitation, 2011-2012 in Northern Vermont can certainly be described as “surprisingly good”.

August 16, 2012September 10, 2013

2011-2012 Winter Weather Summary

Summer is moving along here in Northern Vermont, but at J&E Productions we’ve still been thinking about the winter of 2011-2012, and we’ve finally analyzed our reams of weather data and put together our 2011-2012 Winter Weather Summary. In this post I’ve hit on some of the highlights that came out of the data, and attached our various plots and graphs, but to get to the full data set, you can use the following link:

2011-2012 WINTER WEATHER SUMMARY

The first item that I’ll highlight from the winter of 2011-2012 is the monthly snowfall plot for our location. As meager as the snowfall was this season at our location (just 115.3″ of snow, or 67.0% of our 2006-2011 average), the monthly distribution of snow did retain an aesthetically symmetrical look, peaking in January with February close behind:

A bar graph of the monthly snowfall at our location in Waterbury, Vermont for the 2011-2012 winter season — Snowfall at our house in Waterbury was relatively low during the 2011-2012 winter season, but the monthly distribution was quite symmetrical, peaking in January.

So although 2011-2012 will go down as our least snowy in the six years that we’ve been collecting snowfall here in Waterbury, the 67.0% of our 2006-2011 calculated average is relatively decent compared to the snowfall experienced at some of the first-order New England stations like Burlington (51.4%) or Boston (21.2%). These types of seasons happen, but next season is already closing in fast, and hopefully snowfall totals will be much improved.

The next piece of information is our updated yearly snow/snowfall data table, with the 2011-2012 season now included.

A table showing some key winter weather parameters for the 2006-2007 through 2011-2012 winter seasons at our house in Waterbury, Vermont — When compared to the previous five seasons, the 2011-2012 winter season at our house in Waterbury was the lowest in snowfall, maximum snow depth attained, and snowpack on the ground as assessed by snow depth days. As you can imagine, it gets pretty cold at the house and so it’s always important to make sure that the heating system works. Maintaining it can be easy if you get hold of professionals in your area such as these – thecomfortdoctors.com/heating-and-cooling-services-wilkes-barre-pa/.

The table touches on some of the highlights (or in this case lowlights) from this past winter season (top data row of the table). The 2011-2012 winter season had the somewhat dubious honor of being the “worst” in our data set in three categories: total snowfall, maximum snow depth, and snow depth days (see the red entries in the top row). The snowfall and max snow depth values weren’t all that far from the runner up values, but the big standout was snow depth days, which was well below the next closest season. It’s amazing to see a number so far below the 1,000 day·inches mark, which speaks to the state of the snowpack this season. We still had continuous snowpack at the house for about three months (vs. the typical four months) but the big factor in the low snow depth days was that the snowpack just never got that deep. It sat around at a bit below the one foot mark for most of the season and just didn’t build beyond that except for a couple of periods in February/March:

A plot showing the snowpack depth during the winter of 2011-2012 at our house in Waterbury, Vermont — At our house in Waterbury, the 2011-2012 winter season featured a fairly meager snowpack that sat around the one-foot mark for much of the season, and topped out at just one and a half feet.

With only six seasons worth of data, the low snowfall this season did deal quite a blow to the overall calculated snowfall average, dropping it by almost 10 inches from up above 172 inches per season down to 162.7 inches per season. That’s probably Mother Nature at work getting to her real averages after some banner years. Even though two of the past six seasons have been up around 200 inches of snowfall, presumably that is going to happen only so often. Nonetheless, snow of any size will cause extremely cold temperatures. As a result, make sure your heating is working properly. If not a repair kc team will be able to ensure everything is in working order. However, if you are unable to use these services you must look around for ones that are in your vicinity and can get to you in the proper amount of time. You may want to check here to see who may be available to you. Now back to the science that can help us determine the measurement of snowfall.

As for the rest of the parameters that I track in the table, they were either right around or slightly better than average this season. An interesting note is that the number of snowstorms this season (45) was right around average, so naturally with low snowfall, the amount of snowfall per storm had to take a hit. Indeed, while the average amount of snowfall per storm is typically up around 4 inches, this season it came out at just 2.6 inches, so there were clearly a lot of systems that were weak on snow. This average snowfall per storm was a huge deviation from the mean (almost 2 S.D.), so that must say something about the weather pattern during the past winter, even if I’m not exactly sure what it is at this point.

While the detailed reports of the 45 accumulating snowstorms from the past season are available with more information at the 2011-2012 winter weather summary page, they’ve also been posted here for quick access. If you know of a storm that interests you, you can head right to it. The reports are comprised of text, links, graphs, photos, etc., and much of the text is derived from my posts and dialog from the Americanwx.com New England regional forum. Thanks to the great features available on the forum, you can click on the icon associated with any quoted text in the report, and you’ll be linked right to that post its respective thread. Hopefully this will be useful for folks that are researching/reviewing winter storms. The list of linked winter storms observed at our house is listed below:

01. 10/29/11
02. 11/11/11
03. 11/17/11
04. 11/23/11
05. 12/02/11
06. 12/07/11
07. 12/09/11
08. 12/13/11
09. 12/17/11
10. 12/19/11
11. 12/21/11
12. 12/23/11
13. 12/25/11
14. 12/27/11
15. 12/30/11
16. 01/02/12
17. 01/05/12
18. 01/06/12
19. 01/10/12
20. 01/12/12
21. 01/17/12
22. 01/19/12
23. 01/21/12
24. 01/23/12
25. 01/26/12
26. 01/28/12
27. 01/29/12
28. 01/31/12
29. 02/03/12
30. 02/11/12
31. 02/13/12
32. 02/16/12
33. 02/21/12
34. 02/22/12
35. 02/24/12
36. 02/28/12
37. 02/29/12
38. 03/02/12
39. 03/04/12
40. 03/08/12
41. 03/09/12
42. 03/26/12
43. 03/28/12
44. 04/04/12
45. 04/26/12

Something new that we’ve also added this season is a gallery of our snow measurement devices in action, so other folks that measure snowfall may enjoy those images:

SNOWFALL MEASUREMENT PAGE

The various data charts and graphs from this season’s analysis can also be viewed in the gallery below:

May 27, 2012May 19, 2013

Mount Washington, NH 27MAY2012

An image of Dylan skiing the snow on the Mount Washington snowfields on Memorial Day Weekend 2012 — Dylan getting his taste of Mount Washington’s Corn snow this Memorial Day Weekend

It’s becoming an almost annual tradition that once the Mount Washington Auto Road opens for its summer season, we head over with the boys for some skiing on the summit snowfields. It’s not quite an annual tradition though, since there are years where an appropriate window of pleasant weather never presents itself to us before much of the snow melts out. But then there are those years like 2010; the snow was so plentiful on our trip that we could easily travel among different snowfields. The variability in weather and snowpack keeps these trips really interesting though; with the way that the weather patterns create different assortments of snow deposition each season, it never seems to be the same experience twice.

This year’s auto road skiing season began last weekend, when the road opened with outstanding weather for getting out on the mountain. However, with other things on our plate, we had to wait until this weekend for a shot at some turns. After some clouds and a bit of precipitation midweek, the fantastic late spring weather returned, and we were set up for blue skies on the mountain. I’d been following the state of the snowfields in one of the Time for Tuckerman Forum threads, and coverage looked great last weekend. The amount of snow dropped off a lot this past week, but it still looked like we’d have more snow than we did for our trip last season, when we couldn’t make it out to ski Mount Washington until June due to obligations and weather. It looked like both Saturday and Sunday were going to be excellent days on the mountain, and we decided that skiing Sunday would work best with our schedule.

I finished up some yard work yesterday, and then we headed off to New Hampshire in the mid to late afternoon. Our plan was to get in a night of camping at one of the New Hampshire campgrounds, and since we’d visited the Israel River Campground last year, we decided to try out the KOA in Twin Mountain this time around. Although it’s Memorial Day weekend, we didn’t make any reservations and just decided to play it by ear. As it turned out, we got the last available site at the campground, so we didn’t even have to check out any other options. Even though it was the last available campsite, we really enjoyed the spot we got, which was under a bunch of stately white pines, and pretty close to the playground, pool, bathrooms, etc.

An image of the Ammonoosuc River in New Hampshire with early evening light — Beautiful early evening light hits the Ammonoosuc River as we travel toward Twin Mountain, New Hampshire.

The boys really like the campgrounds with the added amenities, so we’ll choose those sometimes, and of course as soon as we were at our campsite they were off to the playground. One of the neat features at the playground was this huge soccer ball that was as tall as Ty’s waist; they had all sorts of fun kicking it around and launching themselves on top of it. At least we were able to pull them away from the playground for a bit to help get the fire started and finish setting up the tent. Instead of pulling wood out of our she, we’d purchased an armload of firewood from the campground, and I was happy to discover that the quality was good – it really got the fire blazing. Sometimes we’ve gotten that moist wood that just likes to sit there and smolder, and that’s annoying. We cooked up the usual assortment of burgers, dogs, and beans for dinner, and then had time for some s’mores, where I created perhaps the best s’more ever. Dylan pointed out that since we hadn’t actually seen all the s’mores in the world, we couldn’t possibly know that, but I’m standing by my statement. I contend that mine could easily have been used in a magazine to create a model image of how a s’more should look.

An image of Erica, Ty, and Dylan around a campfire making s'mores at the Twin Mountain KOA campground in New Hampshire on Memorial Day weekend 2012 — S’mores around the campfire last night in Twin Mountain, NH

As we headed into the tent for the night, I was able to get on the internet (another benefit of campgrounds with amenities) and check on the forecast. With the nice dry weather, the Twin Mountain area where we were located was forecast to have a low temperature of 43 F – some classic Memorial Day Weekend weather for Northern New England and very similar to last year where the forecast called for the upper 30s F, although that was actually at the beginning of June. It looked like it was going to be comfortable sleeping weather, at least if we stayed in our sleeping bags. The high for Sunday was expected to be 74 F in the valley, which would probably translate into the 50s F up on the snowfields.

I woke up pretty early this morning, at the point where we were just starting to get some light in the sky. It was indeed chilly and I hung out in comfort in my rectangular sleeping bag watching some squirrels that seemed to be playing around way up above us in the towering pines. Ty was chilly when he woke up, so he huddled up in his bag as well. Dylan even hopped into Mom’s sleeping bag with her, and pointed out that his bag has definitely been getting too small. He also added that this wasn’t the first time he’s told us about the size, and proceeded to hop in and demonstrate how his head is certainly sticking out, while his feet are crammed right up against the end of the bag. OK, we get it Dylan, we are definitely behind on getting you a new sleeping bag. Both boys are really in need of new bags though, and they are ready for some mummy-style ones, so I hopped on the internet and started looking around while we generally dozed in the tent. I found that several companies make nice bags for kids – I saw a nice review on one of the 20-degree bags from Mountain Hardwear, and that seems to be the frontrunner in the selection process so far.

An image of pancake batter being dispensed for the all-you-can-eat breakfast at the Twin Mountain, New Hampshire KOA Campground — Now that’s how you make a pancake!

The campground was having an all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast so we stopped in there and had our fill. I enjoyed the batter dispenser that they had – you load it up with a bunch of pancake batter and it does a beautiful job of dispensing it evenly out of a funnel in the bottom. It was fun chatting with the folks that helped run the campground, they’re really an enthusiastic bunch, and why not when you’re spending the summer camping. E and I then got a chance to hang out on the front lawn in some of the wonderful Adirondack chairs that they’ve got assembled out there, and we watched the boys hit the playground with some of the other kids. I got a chair with arms that must have been 6 to 8 inches wide, and of course flat, like the arms of a real Adirondack chair should be. The wide arms are a hallmark of the chairs anyway, but these were fantastic for holding my last round of breakfast while I ate – if we get more Adirondack chairs, I’m going to be partial to those extra wide arms. It would have been nice to kick back there in the chairs for a while, but there was skiing to be done, and with the forecast calling for clouds moving in later in the day, the sooner we got up the mountain the better.

The clear weather held strong as we headed up to Gorham and wrapped our way around down to the Great Glen area to the start of the Mount Washington Auto Road. It’s always nice when you start seeing those patches of white up in the high peaks, and they were definitely sparkling in the late May sunshine. The trip up the road went smoothly, and we threw in our copy of the audio tour CD, which is always a fun refresher of the history of Mount Washington and the auto road. I guess that there’s actually a new version of the tour CD available, but the woman who helped us at the toll booth said to keep our old one because the narrator is better. When we arrived at the parking area above the snowfields, we were surprised to find only two other cars there at midday on such a nice weekend day. We weren’t surprised to see that both cars were also Subarus though – skiers know what works well for getting you to the slopes. Whatever the snow conditions were going to be, it didn’t look like finding space on the snowfield was going to be an issue.

The boys played around and headed off for a quick hike up Ball Crag (6,106’) while E and I got the gear together. The weather was indeed pleasant as forecast, although with a temperature in the lower 50s F and probably a 10 MPH breeze, it was nice to get our ski pants and other gear on while we worked. After visiting various spots on the snowfields over the past few seasons, we’ve finally got a good sense for where the vestiges of the main snowfield like to sit at this time of year, so we dialed that descent in fairly easily – although you generally can’t see the snow from above once the snowfield has gotten small enough, heading in the direction of Wildcat’s ski trails will get you in decent shape.

An image of Jay advising Dylan as he skies though a narrow area with rocks on the Mount Washington east snowfields - Memorial Day Weekend 2012 — A little advice from Dad as Dylan makes his way through the choke point on the upper snowfield

Unlike last year’s trip, when the remaining snow was only toward the bottom of the general East Snowfields area, there is currently substantial snow much higher up, so even in our Telemark boots it was a quick five to ten minute descent today to get down to the skiable snow. We met a couple of guys from Time For Tuckerman Forums who are part of the Memorial Day Slackfest tradition, and had a fun time chatting with them. One was RR, who plays a big part in the gathering and sets up the poles for the slalom that they like to have on Memorial Day. RR and others have been keeping the auto road & snowfields conditions thread nicely updated with pictures, so many thanks go out for their work. They filled us in on the status of the snow while another couple was just hiking back up from a run. We were on the top of the main snowfield section, and it was broken up into three areas, with another similar snowfield down below us, and a smaller one off to the skier’s left. Our snowfield had a choke point in the middle with some exposed rocks, so one had to be careful going through there. It turned out to be enough of a hassle that we spent most of our time skiing the section of the snowfield below that point – the rocks just broke up the flow too much to try to get through there. The turns were nice and smooth below that point though, and even sticking to just that one snowfield seemed to give us more vertical that we’d found on last year’s trip.

An image of Ty skiing under beautiful blue skies on the Mount Washington snowfields on Memorial Day Weekend 2012 — Blue skies and corn snow for Ty

The boys were really excited to just slide on the snow in their ski pants, but we convinced them that they should do at least one run on the skis before they got to sliding, so they got their alpine boots on and were happy with that. I skied down first with Dylan, getting some photos in the process, and when we reached the bottom I told him that I’d bring his skis back up for him so that he could go off and play. Dylan had done a nice job with the turns – the snow quality was excellent as usual, and getting through that crux point was the only real challenge. I hung out at the bottom of that upper snowfield and took pictures while E and Ty also did a run down to meet me. Ty left his skis at the bottom like Dylan had done, and then they were off on their sliding adventures and created a “slide of doom” like they had last year.

An image of Erica skiing the snowfields on Mount Washington in New Hampshire, with a stripe of cirrus clouds among blue sky in the background — E’s back for another run.

E wasn’t very happy with the fluidity of her first run, and she made a couple more runs to get her groove going, which she definitely did. I took plenty of shots with our usual Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens, then got her on another lap taking some wider-angle shots using our friend’s Canon EF-S 10-22 mm f/3.5-4.5 USM lens that we’d borrowed. It’s a great compliment to the 24-105, and it’s been on my wish list for quite a while. It’s been a lot of fun catching huge sweeping images, and it really takes some time to get used to just how much is going to be contained within the image when you’re using that lens. People and objects to the side of my view were constantly ending up in the images if I didn’t pay attention.

An image of Jay Telemark skiing on the Mount Washington snowfields on Memorial Day Weekend 2012 — Carving up the corn snow today on the snowfields

After E had had her fill or turns for a bit, she got behind the camera and I did a few more runs, including a side trip over to that other small snowfield to our north. That one had some pristine snow, and it was a neat perspective getting shots of that snowfield from the side. In general, the consistency of the snow was excellent today everywhere we went, but the main area was more tracked up, so the smooth turns were a treat. Skies were generally blue, turning whiter as the afternoon wore on and clouds started to build in. Having been out on the snowfields in less than optimal conditions before, we appreciate that fact that there was sunshine, minimal wind, no bugs, and simply perfect air temperature. It would have been awesome if the whole snowfield had held together with good coverage for today, since the runs would have been much longer, but even sticking to the upper section of snow was enough for some good turns, and with the way this season went, it’s really nice to even be skiing on Memorial Day Weekend. We actually never even visited that other chunk of the big snowfield that was down below the one we skied, but now that I look back at the web cam images and see what others had to say, it sounds like it was pretty decent in size and was probably offering up some fun turns. Each year though, I get a better ability to translate what we see on the web cam images of the snowfields into what is actually on the ground, so we’ll be able go in with an even better perspective on what we want to ski next time around.

An image of Erica, Ty, and Dylan on the observatory deck of Mount Washington State Park's Sherman Adams Visitor Center at the summit of Mount Washington in New Hampshire — E and the boys spending some time on the summit

The other folks had left by the time we were winding down our session in the mid afternoon, so it was very quiet as I finally got a chance to have my lunch while we packed up the gear. With some weather on the way, we got to watch some fun lenticular clouds form off to our east above Wildcat. I bet that something similar was forming over our heads knowing the tendencies of Mount Washington and weather, but the sky never really got so cloudy that the intensity of the sun was lost. The return trip to the car was very quick; it must have been just about five minutes since we were so close and knew exactly the direction to go. Along with some clouds pushing in, the wind had picked up noticeably at the car, and it was probably in the 25-30 MPH range while we were packing up our equipment. We switched out of most of our ski gear, and decided to stop in at the summit for a little while to take a look around with Ty and Dylan. The boys got a couple of fun scientific toys in the gift shop (a gyroscope for Ty and a spinning magnet for Dylan) and they’ve been having a lot of fun with those.

An image of the sign for Alburrito's Mexican restaurant in Littleton, New Hampshire — Alburrito’s in Littleton, NH

It was sort of an interesting trip this year, since we camped before we skied. That’s just the way things worked out with our availability and the forecast, but it gave us the chance to grab dinner somewhere on the way home. We decided to check out Alburrito’s Mexican restaurant in Littleton. We weren’t all that excited by the chips and salsa and the appetizer chili queso dip, but my vegetable burrito was quite good and E’s coconut shrimp was as well. That redeemed things a bit, but we didn’t find it to be on par with Frida’s Mexican restaurant that we often visit in Stowe. It made for a nice stopover though on what has been yet another successful trip to the Mount Washington snowfields. These past couple of trips have certainly been on fairly small snowfields, so we’d hoping for a good combination of snowfall and spring weather that can get us up there when more snow is left next season. We’ll see what Mother Nature has in store. As I was writing this up, I noticed that RR has already made a post on the Time For Tuckerman Forum with some pictures from today; he even captured E and I and the boys in one of them. That’s another great spot to get some pictures from this fine day out on the slopes.

May 12, 2012April 20, 2013

Jay Peak , VT 12MAY2012

An image of Jay Telemark skiing in May on the Haynes Trail at Jay Peak Resort in Vermont — May turns today on the Haynes trail at Jay Peak Resort

The boys and I had visited Jay Peak exactly one month ago today to take advantage of the 2+ feet of upslope snow that a cutoff low pressure system had dropped on the Northern Greens. It was great to catch up on all that had happened at the resort over the past couple of seasons, and since that visit I’ve been checking in on the Jay Peak website to keep up on the latest news. I’d looked into lodging deals for that trip with the boys last month and hadn’t found quite what I was looking for at that point, but over the past couple of weeks they’ve been promoting a Mother’s Day brunch/lodging/water park package that looked quite attractive. Prices started at $159 for brunch and lodging for two, and options were available to add on additional people and water park access.

I mentioned the idea to E earlier this week, and she thought it was a possibility, but we let it simmer for a while as we thought about what we might do with my parents over the weekend. The boys caught wind of the Jay Peak idea, and they were of course gung ho about the whole thing, since it included visiting the Pump House Waterpark. Finally, after finding out yesterday that my mom was heading with my sister to New York for the weekend, we decided to go ahead and book a room at the resort. Since it was technically Mother’s Day on Sunday, we made sure that it was what E wanted to do, and she was excited about the idea. I called up Jay Peak, spoke with a representative, and they set us up with a nice room in the Tram Haus. The package included the Mother’s Day brunch at Alice’s Table, two days worth of access to the Pump House Waterpark, Ice Haus Arena access, and apparently a collection of other goodies that we saw listed on the website. Another very cool part of the trip was that there was still snow for skiing. Earlier in the week the resort had posted a photo of all the snow left at the Stateside area with the caption “May snow for the motivated”. The snow looked good and I was motivated to get some turns, and I suspected that I could get E and the boys motivated as well.

After taking care of some yard work and other stuff at the house in the morning, we headed off to the resort around mid afternoon today. Temperatures were around 70 F, and skies were partly clear with some clouds building in ahead of precipitation that’s expected overnight. As we crested the top of Route 242, which is somewhere above 2,200′ in elevation, the effect of the altitude was very obvious as the temperature dropped well down into the 60s F. We checked in at the Tram Haus and found our room there to be quite impressive; various locally crafted materials were used in the construction, and the craftsmanship seems first rate. Our room was a suite-style setup, with a full kitchen and a good size living area that contained a pull-out bed for the boys. Our balcony looked out right over the slopes, and we could even see the snowy slopes over at the Stateside Area.

An image of Ty looking out from the balcony of our room in the Tram Haus Lodge at Jay Peak Ski Resort in Vermont — Ty takes in the view of the resort and the snow at the Stateside area from our balcony at the Tram Haus Lodge.

After getting settled in the room for a bit, we hopped back in the car and drove over to Stateside to make some turns. A quick look revealed that the Haynes/Mont L’Entrepide route seemed to have the most continuous snow, so we made use of the access road to the Jet Triple Chair, which allowed us to drive right up to the base of the runs. It was nice dry grass there at the bottom of Mont L’Entrepide, and made for a great place to prepare the gear and get suited up. There was a brisk breeze at times, and being Jay Peak, the weather was doing its own thing, so we even had a few spits of rain among the mixed clouds and sun. We were thankful for the breeze when it was there, because black flies were already starting to appear. They didn’t seem to be biting much yet, but they were still annoying when the breeze didn’t keep them away.

An image of a May wildflower on the Mont L'Entrepide trail at Jay Peak Ski Resort in Vermont — We saw beautiful wildflowers appearing on Jay Peak’s slopes.

We hiked for the first couple pitches of the ascent with our skis on our packs, and E and I took care of carrying the boys skis so that they could enjoy the ascent. We saw a couple of other guys making the ascent as well, and climbing on the skier’s right seemed to be the most practical route. Small patches of snow started to appear almost immediately as we headed upward, and then after passing a one relatively large area of snow, we were able to put on our skins for the rest of the ascent. The snow was generally decent corn, although there were some areas where it was icier – we tried to avoid those areas on the ascent because they didn’t offer the skins very good grip. One didn’t really need an established skin track for the ascent, but we generally followed what was set up by other skiers. The continuous snow reached to just about the top of the trail, and for the last third of the ascent, E was really blazing the path and set up some a skin track with nice switchbacks.

An image of Ty making a Telemark turn on the Haynes Trail at Jay Peak Resort in Vermont in mid May — Ty getting in some Telemark turns on Haynes today

We enjoyed some relaxing time at the top of the ascent on Haynes as we soaked in the views of the resort and the wilds of the Northeast Kingdom. The sun was in and out of the clouds, but the temperatures were perfect, and with the wind picking up as we ascended, any black fly issues disappeared for the most part. The Haynes Trail is actually quite steep, so we were excited to see if the boys were going to go for some Telemark turns, or simply stick with alpine turns. They actually mixed it up, with Ty making Tele turns throughout much of the descent regardless of pitch, and Dylan throwing them in where he felt comfortable as the pitch decreased a bit. There was some really nice snow near the top of Haynes on the skier’s left – some fun, steep corn snow that let you push hard into the turns. We did our best to avoid the dirty, icy areas, and we still had to hit some, but they were manageable. We were able to make our way to the end of the last big patch of snow crossing just one notable gap, and then we strapped our skis back onto our packs and had about a five-minute descent to the car. It was definitely fun to get in some May turns today, because even though May skiing is pretty standard most seasons, the combination of low snowfall and incredibly warm weather this March depleted the snowpack much quicker than usual.

An view of the Tram Haus Lodge, Tramside Base Lodge, Hotel Jay, and Pump House Waterpark viewed from the top of the Stateside area at Jay Peak Ski Resort in Vermont — A view of the Tramside Base Area from the Stateside Summit

The boys were actually in very good spirits for today’s ski session, because they knew that a trip to the water park was coming right on its heels. We made it back to our room at the Tram Haus, got suited up for swimming, and headed out quickly to the water park because it was actually getting late. One very cool thing we discovered today is that although the Pump House Waterpark is in the Hotel Jay, even if you are in the Tram Haus Lodge, you don’t have to go outside to get to the water park. It turns out that the Tram Haus and the Tramside Base Lodge are connected to the Hotel Jay and water park by an underground tunnel; you never even have to go outside because the buildings are essentially all part of one huge complex. I had initially inquired about getting a room at the Hotel Jay since we knew the water park was going to be big with the boys, but it was great to find out that staying at the Tram Haus works out just as well. I’m sure this is a huge benefit to people in the winter; imagine being wet from the water park and having to head out into the elements at a place like Jay Peak. It’s actually quite a labyrinthine trip to get through the whole complex from the Tram Haus to the Pump House, but it’s fun and you get to see a lot of what the resort has to offer. You go right past Mountain Dick’s Pizza, so you can stop in if you want to get a bite to eat, and we saw that the Hotel Jay even has a big family/game room for people to use. In addition, right next to the water park there is a huge arcade. Overall it’s quite a mesmerizing place to be a kid, and the boys were really bouncing off the walls due to the dizzying array of things to do.

As for the Pump House Waterpark, it was the first time visiting for me, but E and the boys had been before so they were my tour guides. They started things off with a couple of laps in the Big River, which is the lazy-river style stream of water that encircles the area of the water park. It’s actually got a decent current, and you can ride tubes or just swim around and go with the flow. I was next introduced to the four main water slides. I joined Dylan on the “blue” water slide, where you ride on one of the inflatable tubes just like in the Big River. It’s been years since I’ve been to a water park, but man, these slides are fast! The last time I’d been on a water slide before these ones was when we were at a party back home and someone had rented one from their local water slide hire shop, it was great fun but nowhere near as big as these ones. In one section you go into complete darkness and as the slide dips and turns, it really throws you around. I was yelling up a storm on the blue slide once the darkness hit – you really have no idea which way the slide is going to go next, so you’re just on the edge of your seat. The “green” water slide has a similar setup, and Dylan and I started on our knees on our double tube – we had a pretty bad tumble in the dark section of the slide and ended up falling off our tube! It was pretty crazy, and if you’re looking for something tame, these slides are certainly not it. I was next introduced to the “orange” slide, which kicks it up a notch – you don’t ride a tube, and there are some serious g-forces if you let yourself pick up speed in that one. To finish off, I tried the “red” slide, which is called “La Chute”; it has an off-axis loop in it. Whoa, that one really is in a league of its own. You take an extra staircase that gets you up into a little room sticking out of the top of the water park structure – that’s already a message right there. You start off standing in what is essentially a clear, vertical coffin that gets closed around you, then the floor drops out from beneath your feet and you are just about free falling – that is until you start to get into the loop and you are crushed to the outer wall of the slide. It is a huge, harrowing rush of a ride. One very cool thing about our visit to the Pump House this evening was that since we were near the end of the day, we just walked right onto all the slides and there were no lines. We also visited a bunch of other attractions in the water park – one that I really liked was the bouldering wall that is perched right above the water, so that when you release, you just splash down. I want to get back to work on that one tomorrow. We finished off in the huge “Hot Springs” hot tub, which has a number of little coves that act like little secluded hot tubs of their own. I’d heard quite a bit about the Pump House from E and the boys and other folks that have gone, but I still wasn’t quite sure what my own experience would be like. Now that I’ve been, I’ve got to say that almost anyone will find something there that they’ll enjoy. I’d like to try the surfing wave tomorrow; there always seems to be at least a bit of a line there even when it’s slow, but it looks like it would be a lot of fun.

An image of the four main water slides in the Pump House Indoor Waterpark at Jay Peak Ski Resort in Vermont — The main water slides at the Pump House Indoor Waterpark

We stayed at the Pump House right up through the 9:00 P.M. closing, and then headed back to the room and cooked up a late dinner of pasta, bread, salad, and other stuff that we’d brought from home. The kitchen in our unit has plenty of space and naturally everything you need for cooking and cleaning is available. The boys say they already can’t wait to come again, so we’ll be watching for more lodging packages. The water park really makes the trip quite unique, and it’s certainly an incentive to stay over and make it a multi-day event. It’s also nice to be able to acknowledge Jay Peak’s efforts to make the resort a place that has got so much to offer that people will really want to come here, even if they aren’t skiing. Being able to come up and have a good time, while supporting the economy in a part of the state that could really use the boost is a win-win as far as we’re concerned. We came up two years ago for the Mother’s Day brunch at Alice’s Table for a day trip, but with all the additions to the resort since then, an overnight stay was a really good fit this time. I’m sure the incentive to take similar trips will only increase as the resort’s developments continue – I can’t wait to see what the West Bowl ski terrain expansion will be like if the resort is able to continue with their plans. On a practical note, I was able to hop right on to the free wireless here at the Tram Haus and upload this report with ease. The signal was strong, and upload and download speeds were both in the 20 Mb/sec, so uploading pictures for the trip report was a snap. It was almost as good as the kind of services you can find more about online!

Sunday update: As forecast, the sky was gray this morning. There wasn’t any notable precipitation when we first awoke, but from our room we could see umbratilous clouds pushing their way down from Jay Peak to hide the upper mountain slopes. Brunch down at Alice’s Table was excellent, just as we’d experienced on our last Mother’s Day trip, and it felt like there were even more options available this time. While at brunch, the rains finally came, and that quickly evoked memories of the snowstorm that was taking place the last time we’d been eating there – we were even sitting at the same table!

An image of tram and chairlift towers under descending clouds from the tram base area at Jay Peak Ski Resort in Vermont — Gray skies and descending clouds on Sunday morning

Our brunch was right at the start of the morning, so when we were done we had time to head back to the room and relax for a while. The boys were of course chomping at the bit to get back to the water park, but they were at least able to amuse themselves watching some TV and playing their video games. They asked me some things about league of legends boosting, which I didn’t really understand, but they seemed to know a lot about and it made them happy when I helped them. Most importantly, Mom got to spend at least some of the morning relaxing in her big king bed in the master bedroom, and the boys generally let her do that. When we finally checked out, I was still curious about all those additional perks that we’d heard about on the website. The associate at the front desk eventually realized that they were part of a coupon book, and she passed a copy along to us. Coupons are a great way to still experience a variety of activities without having to spend a fortune so we were very appreciative of the coupon book. To this day, we still use coupons and even troll sites like Raise looking for the best discount and promo codes. Who doesn’t love a saving, right?! The book we were handed was full of discounts, and I mean FULL! Indeed it’s chock full of some great Jay Peak deals, such as a family tram ride, an additional ticket for the water park, a $10 gift certificate that was good anywhere at the resort, tokens for the arcade, equipment rental at the Ice Haus Arena, etc.

An image of Dylan, Erica, and Ty having lunch at The Warming Shelter snack bar next to the water park at Jay Peak Ski Resort in Vermont — Lunch at The Warming Hut snack bar

After checking out, we moved on to the water park for another session, and as we headed from the car through windy sheet drizzle, it only reinforced the fact that an indoor water park is absolutely the way to go when it comes to Jay Peak. You get the winter access of course, but at any time of year, you never quite know what the mountain is going to deliver for weather. There were a few more people at the water park today compared to last night, but the slides were essentially “walk on” again, with occasionally two or three people in front of you at the slide entry. I didn’t get a chance to try the surfing, but it looks like one of the coupons we received provides a lesson with one of the instructors, so that may be useful. I’d managed to eat well at brunch (not surprisingly), but E and the boys can’t quite pull that off, so they had some lunch at “The Warming Shelter” snack bar attached to the water park. By that point, Ty and I were done swimming, so we hung out in there while E and Dylan went back out for several more laps in the Big River. Ty and I were able to watch them from our seats as they’d float by, and we had a good time chatting and relaxing in the snack bar. It’s quite a disparity of environments when you are behind the glass there. Out in the water park it’s warm, humid and loud, but in the snack bar it was the exact opposite.

Before leaving, we stopped in at the Elevation 1851′ Family Arcade, used our coupon tokens for some skee ball, and the boys played a round on one of the video games where you ride on motorcycles. We also checked out the surf shop to see if they carried any Jay Peak surf shirts; a lot of folks (including Ty and Dylan) use those type of shirts at the water park, and they help to keep you a bit warmer if you’re going to be in the water all day. I’ve got one that I use for kayaking, which also keeps away that board rash from long days of boogie boarding, and E has been wanting one for a while. The surf shop is fairly big, with lots of Jay Peak merchandise, but we had no luck on Jay Peak-specific surf shirt. That would be kind of a neat item though, a surf shirt from a ski area. As we headed home, the sky gradually brightened and eventually gave way to partly cloudy conditions, and a check of the rain gauge at the house revealed that we hadn’t even received any precipitation while we’d been gone. In the winter that precipitation pattern probably would have meant some snow for Jay Peak, while even just an hour south at the house we would have totally missed out on it – just some off season work by the famous Jay cloud.

May 29, 2010May 19, 2013

Mt. Washington, NH 29MAY2010

An image of Jay Telemark skiing on the Snowfields of Mt. Washington in New Hampshire on Memorial Day weekend 2010 — We found lots of options for great turns on Mt. Washington’s snowfield’s this weekend.

The Mount Washington Auto Road was finally open for business by the weekend of May 22^nd – 23^rd, but since E was out of town, Memorial Day weekend was our first opportunity for a ski trip. As always, weather was an important determinant in whether or not we would try to take the boys up the mountain, but as the weekend grew closer, the good forecasts continued to hold. None of the days looked like a total washout, but Saturday looked like the best bet since the NWS point forecast indicated the chance for gusts as high as 100 MPH in the higher elevations of the Presidential Range on Sunday, and Monday had higher potential for precipitation. On Friday evening we put ice packs in the freezer, charged batteries, and planned to make a final check on the forecast in the morning.

Saturday morning’s forecast still looked decent; there was a chance of precipitation in the afternoon, but winds were expected to be low with comfortable temperatures. I reserved a campsite for Saturday night, and we spent most of the morning getting things together for the trip and taking care of other stuff around the house. We finally headed out in the late morning under mostly cloudy skies, but no signs of precipitation.

Once we’d reached the base of the Mount Washington Auto Road, we stopped in at the Great Glen Lodge to hit the restrooms and check on the summit weather. We were excited to see that the summit weather board indicated winds of just 4 to 12 MPH and a temperature of 50 F. Even better though, was being able to look up toward the higher elevations to the west to see blue skies. Last year’s trip featured 50 MPH winds and fog, conditions that were more amenable to playing in the strong gusts on the deck of the observatory than skiing with the boys. From our views along Routes 2 and 16, the snow up high looked less plentiful than we’ve often seen at this time of year. The level of the snowpack was potentially due to at least a couple of factors. Although there were some nice snowy storms in April and May, too many of the midwinter storms skirted off to the south of Northern New England this season, and more recently we’d seen warm, or even hot, dry weather with lots of sun. One never really knows quite what the snow situation is going to be until they get up on the mountain though, and based on the Mt. Washington web cam images, we knew there was going to be plenty of terrain to ski.

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The fair weather made for an enjoyable drive up the Auto Road, and the views were stupendous as usual. We stopped in just briefly at the summit, and got an overview of the various eastern snowfields on the drive back down the road. We could see that there were plenty of options, and continued our drive down to the parking area below Ball Crag where we’d based ourselves before.

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Consistent with the faster depletion of the snow this season, although potentially due to seasonal variability as well, the snowfield that we’d skied with the boys in May of 2008 was absent. But, based on the boy’s enthusiasm, along with their improved endurance and ski abilities, we were looking to hit some different snowfields this season anyway. The plan was to head up the Nelson Crag Trail for a bit as we’d done on our last ski trip to the area, and then traverse generally southward below Ball Crag to search out some snowfields that would work well for everyone.

Our equipment setup from our last Mount Washington ski trip had worked well, so we used a similar configuration with just a couple of changes. I carried the big SLR in my photo/ski pack, which is also set up well to carry multiple pairs of skis, so I carried mine as well as the boy’s. E and I simply hiked in our Telemark boots, but since the boys would be skiing in alpine ski boots, they wore their hiking boots to make their traveling much easier, and along with her skis, E carried their ski boots in her pack. The boys had their poles for hiking, and a new addition this time was that they carried their water, food, clothing, and helmets in/on their packs.

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We hiked roughly two tenths of a mile up the Nelson Crag trail before breaking off and contouring southward. The boys were very mobile in their hiking boots and light packs, and they moved along at a great pace. Compared to our last ski outing on Mount Washington, Ty was much more comfortable traveling through the alpine setting; he was well ahead of the rest of the group and opted for a much higher traverse. I knew that we would eventually run into the main portion of the east snowfield if we didn’t run into any other snowfields first, but there turned out to be earlier options. Ty was the first to spot some of the bigger snowfields below us along the Upper portion of the Huntington Ravine Trail, and we planned to work our way toward those after seeing what we found ahead of us. After only about a tenth of a mile of traversing, we hit a small snowfield, and the group, which had become a bit scattered during the traverse, got back together to start the descent.

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That first snowfield was moderately steep, perhaps in the 30 degree range or so. Since it was steep and rather short, the boys decided to wait until one of the bigger snowfields to start skiing. They opted to simply do some sliding on the snow. E and I mentioned that it was likely to be easier to ski than slide since they would have edges to control their descent, but they were having fun. E and I skied the snowfield, and then we all traversed over to a much larger snowfield off to the north. When we’d arrived at the initial snowfield, there had been a couple of people skiing laps on the edge of the larger snowfield below, but by the time we got there they were gone, and we had the whole thing to ourselves. In fact, they were the only people we’d seen on any of the snowfields in that area. We were surprised by the lack of people since it was Memorial Day weekend, but perhaps everyone had already done their skiing the previous weekend. The weather continued to feature interludes of sunny and cloudy periods, and although we’d seen what looked like thicker clouds and showers off to the Green Mountains in the west, no precipitation materialized in our area.

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Ty and Dylan were the first to ski the larger snowfield, and it was fun to watch Dylan follow Ty through the terrain. The snowfield wasn’t quite as steep as the first one, and it was a fun experience for the boys to have the whole face to themselves with the ability to decide what route they wanted to take. The boys stopped about 2/3 of the way through the descent to wait for us, then E joined them, and I skied all the way to the bottom to get some pictures from below.

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From the bottom of that snowfield we traversed north and slightly upward to another snowfield section that was connected to the first. At that point we were on the long collection of snowfields that sits above Huntington Ravine. The next section of snow didn’t provide quite as much vertical drop, but it didn’t seem like it had seen any skier traffic in quite a while, so it was extremely smooth. I made a boot ladder that was spaced well for the boys, and we hiked up to the top of that section. The boys had been happy with their earlier turns, and were most excited to play on the rocks and stairs of the Huntington Ravine Trail, so they switched back to their hiking boots and played around while E and I did a bit more skiing. Those turns were a lot of fun, and E got the time she’d been looking for that let her practice and dial in some smoother Telemark turns.

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I hadn’t really been following the recent freeze thaw cycles up on Mt. Washington prior to our outing, but looking back at the Mount Washington summit weather archive, it says that the lows for the two nights before our trip were only down to 35 F, and the nights prior to that were even warmer. Apparently, once the corn is formed, it doesn’t necessarily matter if the temperatures go below freezing nightly or not in terms of maintaining quality conditions for spring skiing. We never encountered sticky, rotten, or mushy snow, just good corn with a peel away layer on the surface. I’m sure it would have been much less enjoyable for the boys if the snow had been difficult, but thinking back, I can’t recall any really tough snow in our Mount Washington outings at this time of year. Perhaps the snowpack is dense enough by this point in the season that freezing cycles aren’t as critical.

It was only a few minutes of hiking to get back to the car from there, and it really had been an efficient outing; for all the skiing we’d done, it had only required about ¾ of a mile worth of total travel. Although I’m sure Dylan was a bit tired, both boys were still bounding around on the final leg back to the car, so the distance had clearly been good for them. Just as we were about finished changing clothes and packing the gear back into the car, one of the Auto Road vans came by and let us know that he was the last one heading down. It was just about 6:00 P.M. by that point. We didn’t dawdle on the way down so that we wouldn’t hold up the final van, but there were plenty of people still out of their cars below us as we passed by, and even a pair of hikers just below our parking area that seemed to be making their final descent via the road.

After an enjoyable Auto Road descent with more fun views, we headed over to Shelburne, NH and checked in at White Birches Camping Park. We’d reserved a grassy site, and they’ve got some nice ones right on the edge of an evergreen forested area that contains access to the Shelburne Basin Trails. The evening’s burgers were some of the best in a while, and there were no complaints from me when Ty couldn’t quite polish his off burger or sausage.

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In the morning, we had some breakfast and broke camp, then the boys went off with E for a while to go swimming and play on the campground’s equipment while I worked on repacking the gear. The weather was still nice, so we decided to take a circuitous route home and see some sights. We headed back to Gorham, then north along the Androscoggin through Berlin, past Umbagog Lake, and up to Lake Aziscohos. North of Berlin, we were certainly in the land of lakes, loons and logs; houses seemed just as likely to have a loaded logging truck in their yard as anything else. Between the abundance of big rivers, dams, and lakes, it’s quite a water paradise. We saw several groups of flat water and whitewater boats, and lots of fly fishing taking place. At Aziscohos we were getting close to the Saddleback/Sugarloaf zone, although we didn’t head quite that far into Maine.

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After lunch at the picnic area on the south shore of Aziscohos, we headed west through Dixville Notch and got to take in its impressive craggy views. We also stopped in to check out The Balsams Resort Hotel and The Balsams Wilderness Ski Area, which we’d never visited before. The ski area isn’t huge, offering just over 1,000 feet of vertical, but from everything I’ve heard, it’s very much the type of ski area we enjoy. Akin to some of our favorite local ski areas like Lost Trail Powder Mountain in Montana and Bolton Valley in Vermont, it’s got low skier traffic, low speed lifts to keep it that way, and decent snowfall. Wilderness doesn’t quite get the 300+ inches of annual snowfall that Bolton and Lost Trail do, but knowing the snow trends for northernmost New Hampshire, I suspect they do decently on snow preservation like Saddleback and Sugarloaf. Based on an article I found by David Shedd on easternslopes.com[SJ2] , it sounds like minimal skier traffic helps out in maintaining the powder and general snow quality as well. The 1,000 feet of vertical at Wilderness is said to be nicely sustained, with no runouts, and that was definitely the impression we had when we drove to the bottom of the lifts and looked around. E and I have been thinking it would be nice to do a ski trip coupling Wilderness, Saddleback, and Sugarloaf together. Of the three areas, we’ve only been to Sugarloaf, and only in the spring. It’s usually hard to leave Northern Vermont’s snow during the middle of the ski season, but a good time to go east would be when one of those storm cycles comes through that focuses on Northern New Hampshire and Western Maine.

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We got back into Vermont in the far northeast part of the Kingdom, and took the northerly route to I-91 along the Canadian border past Wallace Pond. It’s not a huge body of water, and it was fun pointing out to the boys that the houses just a couple hundred yards away on the other side of it were actually in Canada. We also passed Great Averill Pond, Norton Pond, and finally Seymour Lake, where we stopped for a few minutes. We went through Derby, but didn’t quite get up to Derby Line to show the boys how the library/opera house is split by the international border. At some point we will have to get them up there. Once on I-91, we were pretty quickly back in our own neck of the woods, and I’d say one of the more surprising things that we discovered was how close Balsams Wilderness Ski Area is to our location. Being so far north in New Hampshire, and mentioned so infrequently, it seemed to be on another planet. But, barring horrible road conditions, it should only be two to three hours from Waterbury. After our visit to the area, it has certainly moved up higher on my hit list.

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Below I’ve added a web cam image of the east side of Mt. Washington from last weekend, showing the various areas of snow that were present at the time. The longest runs up near the summit still seemed to be off the main east snowfield that we didn’t visit. We haven’t had any of the hot temperatures that we had the week before our visit, and things have been much more seasonable, so there should still be some decent easy access skiing up there at this point.

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http://easternslopes.com/2010/03/28/resort-review-the-balsams-wilderness-ski-area/

Click through temporarily for integrated images in the report at SkiVT-L.

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