Powder Archives - Page 29 of 56

November 20, 2016November 21, 2016

Bolton Valley, VT 20NOV2016

An image of trails signs with snow at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont

An image of Ty Telemark skiing in powder on the Cougar trail at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont — The boys and I got out this afternoon for some Telemark touring and powder turns compliments of Winter Storm Argos.

Since our winter storm cycles back in October, it’s been a fairly mild and uneventful period, but the weather models have been offering the potential for a quick and potent return to winter. A storm was predicted to cross the country, move through New England, and position itself to our northeast to set up the Green Mountains for an extended period of upslope snow. Indeed the storm formed, acquired the name Winter Storm Argos, and as of last night it began affecting our area. Snow levels dropped to the summits of the Greens early this morning, and finally dropped to the elevation of our house sometime before 10 A.M. It was too warm to accumulate much snow down in the valley bottoms, but the mountains were definitely getting hit, and Bolton Valley had already accumulated several inches by mid-morning.

An image of fresh snow on a fence in the Village at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Snow piling up in the Bolton Valley Village today

With the timing of the storm, our plan today was to hold off until mid-afternoon to let accumulations build up in the mountains. E was feeling a bit under the weather, but the boys and I eventually headed up to the mountain to hopefully catch a ski tour and some turns before dark. Similar to what was going on at our house, the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road at 340’ was right on the verge of accumulating snow, and you could see whitened areas in spots. Seeing at least minimal accumulations right down at that elevation suggested good things up high though. By 1,000’ there was a solid coating of an inch or so, and although we didn’t stop in at the Timberline Base at 1,500’ to formally check, I’d estimate accumulations of ~4”. Up in the Village parking lots at ~2,000 Dylan measured 5” on the parking lot surface, but most surfaces revealed depths in the 5-7” range.

“Both boys said it was one of their favorite ski tour outings ever…”

Temperatures were a couple of degrees below freezing, and moderate snow fell around us as we geared up for the tour. We watched other folks around the Village, some out on ski tours of their own, and some playing with their dogs or just out walking in the snow, but you could tell that they were all excited for winter’s return. We ascended up the usual Lower Turnpike route, and the boys has a chance to test out lots of new gear that they’d acquired in the off season. Ty was on a new Telemark setup with 160 cm skis, and being 20 cm longer than anything he’d skied before, I was curious as to how it would work out for him. Dylan was really happy to finally be into a pair of Voile Switchback bindings and out of the old three-pin setups.

There was a nice skin track in place, and it had picked up an additional inch or so due to the continued snowfall, but it was a really smooth and swift ascent. By the time we reached the 2,500’ elevation mark the snow depth was up to ~9”, and we continued our ascent up to ~2,700’ on Cougar before we decided that going higher wasn’t necessary. We knew that the descent would be a little slow in lower-angle spots based on a couple people we’d seen going down earlier, but we were all on fairly wide boards and floatation definitely wasn’t an issue. The boys had a blast and were skiing well, and not only did Ty have no issues with the longer skis, he actually made some of his best Tele turns ever. Perhaps the extra ski length and the floatation that comes with it were just what he needed to make a jump in his Telemark skiing. Both boys said it was one of their favorite ski tour outings ever, and along with the fun conditions I think some of that comes from getting stronger each season and finding that the touring is that much easier for them.

An image of Dylan Telemark skiing in powder on the Cougar trail at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont — Dylan enjoying some storm day turns on a great November day

The depth of the base snow isn’t quite what it was on my October outing with almost 20 inches of dense paste, so we had to negotiate a couple of bigger rocks (I failed in one case with the fading light) but there’s supposedly plenty more snow to come with this storm. We got to finish the tour around dusk, which always sets a fun mood with the Village lights amidst the snowfall of a storm. It looks like we’ve got more chances for snow coming during this Thanksgiving holiday week, so hopefully we’ll get a chance to head back out again soon.

October 28, 2016November 1, 2016

Bolton Valley, VT 28OCT2016

An image of October snowfall in the Bolton Valley Village in Vermont

An image of ski tracks in powder snow on the Lower Turnpike trail at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont — Taking advantage of our recent plentiful snows to get in my first turns of the season

We’ve had an impressive run of October snow over the past week in Vermont’s Green Mountains. It started off with the big synoptic storm last weekend that dropped a foot or so of dense snow in the in the higher elevations. After the system passed, we sat in the leftover cyclonic flow centered off toward the Canadian Maritimes for a few days, and that brought additional rounds of accumulating upslope snow. And most recently, we had another large storm that started up yesterday. It hit hard overnight and continued into today, delivering another 6 to 8 inches of hefty snow. For local ski areas that have been keeping track of the accumulations, here’s what I’ve seen reported for totals this past week:

Stowe: 20”
Bolton Valley: 19”
Sugarbush: 19”
Killington: 17.5”

The snow that’s fallen is by no means just fluff – it’s really hefty stuff with a lot of water in it. Thus there hasn’t been a lot of settling, and the snow has really put down quite a base. Indeed, the ski resorts know what a substantial contribution this snow can represent to the start of their base building – Killington opened up for lift-served skiing starting on Tuesday, and even Stowe has started making snow, which they would never do in October if they didn’t think they’d be able to hold onto a good amount of it heading into November.

“…I was really psyched with how the turns felt – they were actually some of the easiest first turns of the season that I can recall in a long time, so I guess my legs are ready.”

I wasn’t able to get out for the last big storm on Sunday, but I had a bit of time this morning and had a chance to head up to Bolton Valley to check out what had transpired in the higher elevations and catch a few turns. The bulk of the snow fell last night while it was dark, so I really only knew what was going on at our place down at 500’ in the Winooski Valley. It was snowing for much of the evening, although it only accumulated to 0.2” due to the marginal temperatures in the 34 to 35 F range. When I checked on the weather this morning, it appeared as though the snow level had crept upward a bit because our precipitation at the house was a mix of mostly rain with just a bit of snow. That had me a little concerned about just how high the snow level had climbed, but so much liquid had fallen by that point (0.79” in our gauge) that there had to be a lot of snow up high.

An image showing heavy October snowfall at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Arriving in the Village to heavy snowfall

I assembled my ski gear for a tour, paying special attention to not miss any of those items that one can often forget on that first outing of the season, and headed up to Bolton. On the way up the Bolton Valley Access Road I saw the first signs of what I think was vestigial snow from last night’s lower snow levels at around 1,000’. Snow quickly began to appear more frequently above that point, and it was around 1,400’ when the precipitation changed over to all snow. Up in the Village lots at 2,000’ it was dumping big, fat flakes up to 2” in diameter. It was hard to get a handle on how much snow fell from this most recent event since it was on top of previous rounds of snow, but depending on when the last plowing happened, I was finding 4” new in the 2,000’ elevation lot. The mountain was reporting 6-8”, which didn’t surprise me at all for the higher elevations.

“It was a great ascent, temperatures were right around the freezing mark, there was no wind, and those huge flakes just kept pouring down.”

I headed up the usual Lower Turnpike ascent route, and was happy to find that there was a skin track in place from a couple of earlier skiers. It was a great ascent, temperatures were right around the freezing mark, there was no wind, and those huge flakes just kept pouring down. I only had enough time to make it up to the intersection with the Wilderness Lift Line at ~2,500’, but I’d pressed a quick pace and got a decent workout nonetheless. When I began my descent I was really psyched with how the turns felt – they were actually some of the easiest first turns of the season that I can recall in a long time, so I guess my legs are ready. And, as I noted earlier, this snow is most certainly not fluff – it’s dense with lots of liquid in it. There was no concern about hitting the ground on turns, and there’s actually hardly any brush even showing on the trails. The skiing was great; they certainly weren’t the highest “quality” October turns I’ve had with respect to snow consistency, but the snow certainly wasn’t sopping wet. I was happy to be on my115 mm fats to keep myself from getting bogged down in that dense stuff though. I’d recommend going fairly fat for anyone that is heading up for some turns in this snow. The snow though dense, actually delivered some nice powder turns.

During my tour I checked total snow depth frequently, and I’d say it was something in the range of 8-12” at 2,000’, and a solid 15” at 2,500’. I’m not sure how much more it increased above that point, but 15” at 2,500’ is obviously great for October. All I can say is “wow” with regard to the coverage on those trails though. It’s been an impressive series of storms up high, and I can’t wait until we can get into some more winter storm cycles, which at this point appears like it will be a week or two away in November. Whatever the case, it would be nice to get at least a bit of a break from storms to take care of the lawn and everything else around the house that needs to be prepped for winter.

May 16, 2016September 15, 2019

Stowe, VT 16MAY2016

An image of ski tracks in powder from a mid May snowstorm on the slopes of Mt Mansfield at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — It may be May… but the powder turns on the upper slopes of Mt. Mansfield today would be considered fantastic in any month!

It’s not every May that we get great powder to ski, but this May will certainly go down as one in which we did. The potential for snow from this current storm cycle has been on people’s minds since last week, so it certainly wasn’t a surprise, but of course you never know exactly how things will play out until they actually get going. For me, it was pretty obvious that things were going OK when we were picking up frozen precipitation all the way down in the valley during the day yesterday. Reports of accumulating snow were already coming in from the mountains as well. Then, late last night we began to get some legitimate snow at our house, and it was obvious that the local mountains were going to continue with accumulations.

Snow was still falling at the house this morning, and if anything it was becoming drier as time went on, so that was encouraging. I decided to head out to Stowe as planned, and I brought along a bunch of camera gear because I expected there would be some fun photo ops along the way. As I traveled to Mt. Mansfield, it was clear that the lower mountain valleys in the 500’ to 1,000’ elevation range were right around the snow line, and that produced a fantastic amalgam of snow accumulations and touches of spring greenery. Aspect wasn’t too critical in determining accumulations since it was quite cloudy, but the type of surface and whether or not it was elevated really played a big role. Also, you could travel just a few hundred yards and see quite a variety of accumulations depending on which areas had been hit with heavier snow showers. Some yards had snow on the grass, some had accumulations only on elevated surfaces, and some had neither. In some spots only the rooves, or just sections of the rooves, held accumulations. The precipitation I encountered was all snow, but temperatures were generally in the mid 30s F, so that contributed to the variable accumulations.

An image showing tracks from various methods of snow travel on one of the slopes at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — Choose your highway!

Fairly continuous coverage on the ground really started once you got above 1,000’ in elevation, and up around 1,600’ at the Midway Lodge I found roughly an inch of accumulation. My initial plans were to skin up Nosedive, since it’s always a good late-season bet, but from what I could see, the snow depth really didn’t jump up that quickly with respect to elevation. With that in mind, I headed along Crossover toward the main North Slope route to hopefully find solid base coverage down to lower elevations. The coverage on Crossover wasn’t quite enough to make skinning worth it, so I hiked along until I caught North Slope at around 1,800’ or so, where I was able to start skinning. Indeed the snow depth was building slowly, as even at roughly the 2,000’ mark there was still only 1”-2” of new snow.

I was starting to think that I was going to be out for more of a hike than a real quality powder skiing session, when suddenly I got up around 2,500’ and the snow depth really began to jump up. Here’s my best estimates of new snow depth based on measurement pole probing along my route:

1,600’: 1”
2,000’: 1”-2”
2,500’: 4”-6”
3,000’: 7”-8”
3,600’: 8”?

I didn’t really detect any notable gains in snow depth between 3,000’ and 3,600’, and the stronger winds made the measurements more challenging anyway, but my best guess was around 8” up at the Octagon.

I stuck my pole right in the snow by the main Octagon doorway and found 14” – this was clearly due to some drifting, but that’s a decent idea of what you could find if you were hitting the deeper spots along the trails in the upper elevations. The winds were nice in some respects though – they had erased most tracks from previous skiers without really hammering the powder. For the most part it was a gentle sifting in of new snow without any formation of wind crust. You could certainly see signs of old tracks in various locations, but in many cases the trails had been wiped clean, wall to wall.

“…those turns above 2,500’ would have held up as high quality in any season.”

Anyway, that top ~1,000’ of vertical offered up simply fabulous turns – the powder was mid to heavy weight, but not sticky at all and it had plenty of buoyancy to keep things bottomless right down to 2,500’ as long as you followed the deposition patterns along the trails appropriately. I had decent turns back down to 1,800’ at Crossover, but they generally weren’t bottomless down there – laps above 2,500’ were the way to go depending on one’s time and how they set up their tour. You’d have consistently very high quality turns with that approach. The turns for me were clearly some of the highest quality I encountered this season, and certainly some of the most consistent at such a high level. Granted, we know how this season went with regard to blowing away the record books on the low end, but those turns above 2,500’ would have held up as high quality in any season. I had debated bringing my mid-fats today since I was unsure of how the accumulations were going to play out, but there was no question after my run – the fat skis were totally in their element and delivering just like they should.

April 10, 2016April 11, 2016

Stowe, VT 10APR2016

An image of Mt. Mansfield in Vermont with fresh snow from an April snowstorm

An image of Dylan dropping into a ski line below the Kitchen Wall at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — Dylan drops into some powder along the Kitchen Wall today at Stowe

Although the lowest elevations were softening in the April sun, Stowe’s terrain in the upper elevations of Mt. Mansfield appeared to hold onto winter snow all through the day yesterday. That got me thinking about taking a couple more runs in the powder today, and although Ty was a bit under the weather and E planned to stay home with him, Dylan was happy to go with me to see what we could find.

We couldn’t get out early, but we were able to head out to the mountain around midday. Even in the valleys, temperatures were holding at or below freezing despite lots of April sun, so we knew that at least the air temperature wasn’t going to be affecting the snow. Today was even sunnier than yesterday, and the high peaks like Mt. Mansfield were standing out brilliantly above the lower elevations. It was quite a sight to behold as we traveled along Route 100 east of the Green Mountain Spine.

Dylan and I followed my procedure from yesterday, parking in the Midway Lot and heading right up the Gondola. Since I knew coverage was fine in the Kitchen Wall area, we headed right there to see how the powder was faring in the highest lift-served elevations. I hadn’t actually taken the main Kitchen Wall Traverse yesterday, but I have to say it was one of the most challenging trips I’ve had through there. The snow pack is just that bit on the low side that keeps some extra stumps sticking out in a few places, so you really have to keep your eyes open for the best routes to use.

We were quickly able to tell that even up in those elevations, any snow in direct sunshine was turning mushy, so we picked a partially shaded line for Dylan and he dropped into one of the snowfields. He had some nice turns, but as we got down lower, even though we were predominantly in the trees, we encountered a lot of challenging, sticky snow wherever light was sneaking into the forest. Down in the Nosedive Glades we generally stuck to the main routes to avoid that type of snow, but we found plenty of good turns on lightly tracked or skier packed snow. We finished off with Nosedive, which had conditions similar to yesterday, with the snow quality being better the higher you were in elevation.

We knew the window for ample off piste skiing was just about closed with the way the powder was getting sticky, so we decided to stick with an on piste run down Gondolier. We debated going to Cliff Trail, but Dylan said we would be too tempted to head off piste and we’d end up paying for it if we got into mushy snow. We still managed to get sucked off piste below the switchback of Perry Merrill, and that was our most exciting adventure of the day. The snow was actually pretty well preserved because of the shady nature of the area, and we came upon a nice cliff band with an ice fall that will no doubt be a lot of fun when we have ample midwinter powder. Dylan and I were already planning to take our BJAMS ski group to the area next season. We had to sift our way through some denser evergreen areas to get back to Perry Merrill, but our navigation was good and we quickly got back on piste. We ran that run out with a combination of Perry Merrill and Gondolier, and that was enough to consider ourselves satiated for the day. We did get into a bit of corn snow near the bottom of Gondolier, and Dylan commented on how that was his favorite snow on the trail, so he’s definitely ready for full on spring conditions vs. the transitionary snow that appears on some of these spring days.

April 9, 2016

Stowe, VT 09APR2016

An image snowing fresh snow on Evergreens after an April snowstorm at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont

An image showing a depth measurement of a foot of powder at the top of the Gondola at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — A quick depth check at the top of Stowe’s Gondola today revealed a foot of midwinter powder.

Over the past three weeks we’ve had a couple of March snowstorms that produced some moderate powder days, and another April one ahead of our most resent storm cycle, but there wasn’t anything that fell on the weekend or was quite big enough to get me out for early morning turns. That’s just sort of the way it’s been this season, but yesterday evening the Northern Greens did a bit of their more typical convening with Mother Nature and snow began to dump along the spine as moisture smacked into the mountains on a westerly flow. We had some decent bouts of snowfall here at the house, and being a Friday night, it was definitely enough to get me thinking about a trip to Stowe. By morning, totals for the full storm cycle were hitting 12 to 18 inches at the northern resorts, so after catching up on a few things at the house, I headed off for some turns around mid-morning.

“Indeed Mansfield had done its usual business, and a quick probe in untouched snow outside the Cliff House as I put on my skis revealed a nice foot of midwinter powder.”

Temperatures were still at or below the freezing mark at all elevations, but the new snow was already starting to melt off in the valleys thanks to the strong April sun. The mountains were holding their own with respect to the snow however, and I headed right to the Midway Lot and up the Gondola to see what Mansfield had delivered below The Chin. Indeed Mansfield had done its usual business, and a quick probe in untouched snow outside the Cliff House as I put on my skis revealed a nice foot of midwinter powder. I took a first run down Gondolier, and encountered some simply amazing snow along the edges of the trail. The powder petered out to just a few inches in depth by the time I was back down to the Gondola base, but there had been a pretty solid resurfacing on the upper half of the mountain, and it was only the lowest ¼ of terrain that left much to be desired in terms of hitting the old base.

I wasn’t yet sure what I was going to explore with respect to off piste adventures, but back in the Gondola I rode up with a couple that had been in the Nosedive Glades, and another gentleman who had just visited the Kitchen Wall, and it all sounded quite good. Based on the accumulations I’d seen, I didn’t have to second guess any of it and headed right off to the Nosedive Glades from the north. As I headed along the Glades Traverse the realization hit me that we were indeed dealing with April-style visitation numbers at the resort – there was just untracked entry after untracked entry into the glades. Eventually I just had to choose one and I dropped in. The powder was great, with just a little hint of getting thick due to temperatures and sun, with the effect increasing a bit as you lost elevation. I knew that higher would be even better, so I visited the Kitchen Wall area next, and found a solid 10 to 14 inches everywhere I checked.

An image showing ski tracks in powder snow in the Nosedive Glades at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — Even at midday it wasn’t hard to find untracked lines in even the most common glades today thanks to the lower number of resort visitors this late in the season.

I went with my Telemark skis today because I wanted to really blast my legs after not skiing for a stretch, and my only regret would be that I was just burning too quickly each run after being off the boards for too long. I’d have to stop and rest them often, but I can’t say it was really all that bad just hanging out in the warm spring sun. A few runs on that Mansfield vertical serviced by high-speed lifts was enough to totally cook my legs, but at least my body got the workout it needed. Hopefully we won’t have to deal with such a period of generally horrible conditions as we’ve seen the past few weeks for quite a while – I can already tell that I’m going to pay for today’s workout and it’s only been a few hours since I finished!

March 6, 2016March 6, 2016

Stowe, VT 06MAR2016

An image of the Spruce Peak Village at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont

An image of Ken skiing the Green Acres area at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — Ken dropping into a line in Green Acres, where we found some of the best snow today at Stowe.

Based on my tour of the Bolton Valley backcountry yesterday, I didn’t anticipate skiing much powder today with our BJAMS ski group today at Stowe, and therefore I packed narrower skis for me and the boys. I’d say it was the right call, because we spent most of our time on piste, and aside from our initial runs on the softened slopes of lower Spruce Peak, the snow we found was roughly 20% decent and 80% crap.

Fortunately for us, we did start out on the lower slopes of Spruce Peak for the beginning of this afternoon’s session, and off the Sunny Spruce Quad the snow had softened in the sun from top to bottom. The boys had taken some earlier runs, and announced that we should head for Freddie’s Chute. I couldn’t believe that they were serious, because Freddie’s has all natural snow, faces south, and is loaded with ledges and rocks that quickly catch the sun and burn out the snow. Low and behold though, the coverage was there, so even though we haven’t had any really great winter storm cycles in the past few weeks (or at all this season for that matter) the storms of mixed precipitation that we have had are substantiating the snowpack in the mountains to some degree.

After some good turns on the lower slopes of Spruce Peak, we decided to do a few runs off the Sensation Quad. I hadn’t taken the group there at all this season, so it seemed like a good day to do it with no plans for our typical Mansfield powder explorations. I was actually surprised to see all of Spruce Line open for business aside from the initial headwall, and that’s amazing because patrol never seems to open that even when we have a ton of snow. We decided to make our way there by dropping into Green Acres, and that was where we undeniably found some of the best snow of the day. The high elevation and evergreen protection kept the snow soft and powdery in there, and it was deep enough that it was one of the few times today that I wished I’d brought wider skis. Spruce Line had some good shots, but the snow was generally dense or wind-packed, so while good, there wasn’t any of the powdery snow that we’d found in Green Acres. We did some additional runs off Sensation, hitting Sterling, Upper Smugglers, and Main Street Headwall, but they were all generally a mess of ice and firm snow with decent surfaces few and far between. Ken’s description of the worst areas was “plate ice”, which is that glare ice that’s got no redeeming qualities aside from the novelty of seeing the treads of the groomers carved into it. It’s just hideous stuff that really nobody in their right mind should have to ski.

Clouds were moving in at times, and with afternoon temperatures cooling down, snow that had softened in the sun was starting to firm up, so we headed back down to the lower slopes to finish off the day. We did a few more laps off the Sunny Spruce Quad, and even down there the snow wasn’t as soft as it was earlier, so it was changing from corn to frozen granular and becoming much less inspiring. We found that a number of us have similar boot sized and we started to switch around skis – I got to try Jack’s 163 cm Nordica Bad Mind skis (120-84-109), and that was a lot of fun because unlike my Salomon Scream 10 Pilot Hots, they’ve got some edge. I stayed on them for the rest of the day, and I thank Jack for the demo. Not only did his skis have edges, but they’ve only got a half season on them, so they’ve still got plenty of pop in them unlike my Salomons that are over a decade old.

As the boys finished off the last few runs on their own, Ken and I took a run through the Ridge Glades and down in the glades below along the right of East Run. Some of that terrain off to the side of East Run is really steep, probably 35 degrees, and in horrible shape. Ken came into one of those steep lines very aggressively and had a pretty big tumble where his equipment went everywhere. He was generally OK, although he did say he tweaked his knee a bit and something popped, so he’s going to have to assess how things go over the next few days to see if it’s anything serious. That area of trees definitely fit in with the general 20% decent/80% crap, where there was probably 20% decent snow on the whole slope, and the rest was a combination of ice, roots, stumps, dirt, and whatever else isn’t snow – it’s just hideous. We do appear to have some snow coming into the area tomorrow, so hopefully that will add a bit more to the snowpack in areas that need it.

February 28, 2016

Stowe, VT 28FEB2016

An image of Ken skiing the Kitchen Wall area at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont

An image of Dylan skiing the Kitchen Wall area of Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — Dylan drops into one of the Kitchen Wall snowfields today to enjoy some of the snow delivered to Mt. Mansfield from the past couple storms.

On our ski outing yesterday we got a taste of the current backcountry conditions at Bolton Valley, and today we got to see how the lift-served terrain at Stowe has been fairing since the snows from Winter Storm Petros. With additional snows falling overnight from another moderate system skirting the northern border of Vermont, conditions were improving dramatically the farther north one went. We had students in our group from Wolcott and Hyde Park that had picked up 4 inches of snow at their houses, and Jay Peak saw another 7 to 10 inches overnight.

Ken and I had a fairly large group with 7 students today, and based on the way the snow had played out yesterday at Bolton, we immediately took everyone to the top of the Gondola and into the lower reaches of the Kitchen Wall terrain to get a feel for how the powder was skiing. The snow was excellent, with a good 6 to 8 inches of midwinter powder for everyone to enjoy. The students commented on numerous occasions how good the snow was. The best powder lasted down to about the 3,000’ mark before it began to get thinner and a bit wetter. At that point we’d stick to the trails, where conditions varied from midwinter snow to spring like, to ice, depending on elevation and aspect.

An image of Jonah skiing the Kitchen Wall area of Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — Jonah attacking a line on the Kitchen Wall

The kids had liked the first run so much that on our next one we took the high Kitchen Wall traverse and dropped into the untracked powder in one of the snowfields. There was a good 8-12” of snow up there, so bottomless turns were the norm. Even down below in the evergreens we found plenty of untracked lines and the kids’ overall energy was very positive. One line that we found ended up taking us basically through a cave, and you had to do some major body contortions to pull that line off smoothly.

Ken was thinking of paying a visit to Ravine, and I told him that we’d likely be able to ski the top ¼ at least based on what we found last week. We were all amazed to find the top entrance absolutely untracked at 3:00 P.M. on a Sunday afternoon, so some of the boys dropped in, and we eventually found out why it was being left alone. There was nice powder on top, but presumably some of the rain from Winter Storm Petros had wrecked the subsurface. It was a moonscape under there, so after skiing the available powder for a few hundred yards, we switched out to Gondolier for the rest of the run.

Unfortunately for Ken, he really brought the wrong pair of skis today. He was at Sugarbush yesterday where he found bulletproof conditions and struggled on skis with no edges. Anticipating the same thing today, he brought his freshly-sharpened, skinny, 195 cm old-school cruising skis. He couldn’t believe that we were skiing almost a foot of powder up high, and his long, skinny skis were essentially the exact opposite of what he would have liked to have in tight, powder-filled trees. We joked about how we used to ski everything on such skis, no matter how tight, but the new shorter, fatter, rockered, twin-tipped boards are so superior, and one can forget how much work it takes to push around those long sticks.

An image of the West Slope trail at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont with large snowmaking whales — Huge snow whales made for fun times on West Slope today

We finished off the day over at Spruce Peak, where areas in the sun were already turning to spring corn snow. The resort had made some huge snow whales on West Slope, and everyone was lapping those, which held soft snow and some great contours and drops. It’s definitely starting to feel like spring with the lasting sunlight we’ve got, but apparently we’ve still got some winter storm to come – the forecast suggests we’ve got three potential storms this week, so it should be interesting to see where things stand next weekend. Right now the Mt. Mansfield Stake is at 34”, so if things break right perhaps we’ll hit that magic 40” mark that means that most of the off piste terrain is reasonably well covered.

February 27, 2016

Bolton Valley Nordic & Backcountry, VT 27FEB2016

An image of Erica, Ty, and Dylan out on the Nordic and Backcountry Network at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont

An image of Dylan skiing powder on the Bolton Valley Backcountry Network at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Dylan scoots off through one of Bolton Valley’s backcountry glades today as we take in some of the powder left by Winter Storm Petros.

I haven’t been on a backcountry ski outing since January 23^rd, but the whole family got out to the Bolton Valley Nordic & Backcountry Network today for a tour. Winter Storm Petros left up to 9 inches of new snow at the local resorts yesterday, and with a clear beautiful day today, it was a perfect chance to get out.

Temperatures at the house were in the low to mid 30s F when we headed up to the mountain in the midafternoon timeframe, and it was just a bit below freezing up at the Village (~2,100’). It’s not quite spring weather yet, but the sun is certainly getting stronger, and it was pleasant as we put our ski boots on down along Broadway in one of the tennis court parking areas.

Depth checks at the start of the tour revealed that the new powder had settled to about 2-3” down at the Village elevations, and up at Bryant Cabin it was in the 4-5” range. The Bryant Trail was pretty quiet and we didn’t see anyone else, but you could tell by the various descent tracks and a well-established skin track in spots that people had certainly been out. Up at the cabin we stopped to have hot chocolate that E had made (with a special thermos of dark hot chocolate for Dylan that he was very excited about).

An image of Dylan removing his skins from his skis on a backcountry ski outing on the backcountry network at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Everybody had a fun time working on skin removal without taking off their skis today.

I took everyone on one of my usual routes along Gardiner’s Lane, North Slope, and then down via Grizzwald through Gotham City. We skinned a bit past the cabin, and at the top of our descent everyone worked on removing their skins without taking off their skis. Everyone was ultimately successful, although I’d say Ty spent a good amount of time on the ground after things went a bit awry. We caught first tracks in some areas, and on the upper half of the terrain the powder turns were quite nice. I kept everyone off south facing terrain since I could see that it was pretty thin, but in fact I’d say this has to be the lowest snowpack that I can remember around here for the end of February. Fortunately that amount of snow is still enough to cover a lot of the glades well. Below Gotham City the snowpack and powder were notably thinner, so you had less line selection, but we still had some good turns down there. No doubt the way to go for the best turns is to stay above ~2,400’ if possible right now, but you can get some very nice powder if you know your terrain and aspects. It was really great to get the whole family out for some exercise today, since we haven’t had quite as many ski outings as usual with the low snowfall this season. The boys were in good spirits for the whole tour, I’d say probably the most positive backcountry attitude from them in quite some time!

An image of Erica sking powder on the backcountry network at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — E Teles through the powder today as we drop through one of the glades below North Slope

We’ve got another system in the area tonight giving us a bit of snow right now even here at the house, but it sounds like Jay Peak might really get the best shot out of this one.

February 21, 2016

Stowe, VT 21FEB2016

An image of Wiley spraying powder snow while he skis in the Cliff Trail trees at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont

An image of Dylan skiing in the Cliff Trail Trees at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — Stowe’s reporting up to 9 inches from our latest storm, and the BJAMS boys were out in force today doing their best to get into that fresh powder.

The Alberta Clipper system in our area had already dropped 4 to 6 inches of snow yesterday, and as of this morning the totals were passing a foot up at Jay Peak, and Stowe wasn’t too far behind. Heading northward was definitely the way to go today. It was generally just cloudy at our house, but right as we were passing north out of Waterbury into Stowe, the precipitation started to come down more vigorously, and the precipitation was snow, or a mix of rain/snow even down in the valley. That’s a good sign for even better things going on up high, and indeed precipitation changed over to all snow just as we hit The Matterhorn at around 1,000’.

Anticipating a day with fairly standard February light, I had my all around Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM on my 7D II, and although the snowfall was generally tapering off, I saw the clouds sitting on Mansfield up high and quickly switched out to my F/1.2 Storm Day Lens before I went out to meet my group. Based on everything I was hearing from Powderfreak, the powder was really sweet up in those clouds, and that was where we’d want to be getting today’s photos.

An image of Mt. Mansfied with clouds on the upper mountain at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — With this view I knew we’d be shooting up in the clouds today, so I opted for the F/1.2 lens to get the most light under those conditions.

After a couple of sessions away, I was back with my regular group of BJAMS students today, which featured Luc, Ty, Wiley, Jonah, and Dylan. Our decision on where to go was easy based on my most recent beta, so we immediately high-tailed it over to the Gondi and headed up into the clouds. Our initial foray onto Gondolier revealed some very sweet snow – worlds better than what we’d encountered on the very same route just two weeks ago. I let the boys warm up on Gondolier for that first run before we thought about heading off piste, but boy was it tempting; short forays into the snow along the sides of the trail revealed a healthy 8-10” of medium-weight powder that skied like a dream – especially in this nightmare of a ski season. By the last third of the vertical, we found that the on piste snow got a bit firmer, and the powder got a bit thinner, but we’d already seen what we needed to see up top – it was definitely time to hit the trees.

“…short forays into the snow along the sides of the trail revealed a healthy 8-10” of medium-weight powder that skied like a dream – especially in this nightmare of a ski season.”

We worked the Gondola the whole afternoon, enjoying that great snow up top whenever possible and hitting lines in the Cliff Trail Trees, High Road Trees, Perry Merrill Trees, and Nosedive Glades. We even skied the top third of Ravine before we cut back to the piste to be on the safe side. It’s not an issue of rocks in there so much as we need just a bit more snow to put a deeper later above the ice – it is a streambed after all. We could see some great lines dropping into the top of the Hazelton Zone, and I’m sure they would have delivered for a few hundred vertical, but we knew that the turns would be tough by the bottom.

An image of Ty skiing powder snow in the High Road Trees at Stowe Mountain Resort in Vermont — Ty finding great snow in the High Road Trees on the upper elevation terrain of Mansfield

On the group dynamic side of things, I have to say I was very impressed with Jonah and Wiley. They were the most eager in the group when it came to hiking around a bit and they were definitely setting a tone for getting to the highest quality snow vs. easier access to the more typical surfaces. They have definitely figure out our group’s mindset and the current makeup of the team is really starting to mesh.

An image of Jonah on the Stowe Ice Slide at Stowe Mountain Ski Resort in Vermont — The boys hit the Stowe Ice Slide after s;mores for a good session of tricks and snowball bombardment.

We finished off the day hitting the s’mores session and watching the ice skaters in the Spruce Peak Village, followed up by a lot of time on the Stowe Ice Slide with slide tricks and simultaneous bombardment by snowballs. All in all this latest little storm resulted in a great step up in conditions at the mountain. We’ve still got a long way to go to get anywhere near a normal base depth, but the snowpack depth at the Mansfield stake hit 30” for the first time this season so some ground is being gained. A couple more storms are in the pipeline this coming week, so we hope they can play out reasonably well the way these last couple did, and keep that snowpack growing.

February 20, 2016

Bolton Valley, VT 20FEB2016

An image of Erica and Dylan near the top of the Alta Vista trail at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont

An image of Erica skiing powder on the Wilderness Liftline trail at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont — Mother Nature delivered a bit of powder to hungry Bolton Valley skiers today

Temperatures hovered below zero Fahrenheit for highs in the mountains last weekend, and without any major storms or ski program obligations due to the President’s Day holiday, there wasn’t much incentive to get out and ski; so we didn’t. This weekend though, things have been a bit more hospitable. An Alberta Clipper system has been moving along north of the international border since yesterday, and it dropped 4 to 6 inches of new snow for the Northern Vermont resorts overnight. Fresh snow and comfortable temperatures up in the 30s F certainly sounded appealing, so Dylan, E, and I headed up to Bolton Valley for some midday runs today.

A quick check of the Bolton Valley snow report revealed that even the Timberline area was open, and it would be our first chance to visit it for lift-served turns this season. We even thought of basing ourselves out of there, but ultimately decided to head all the way up to the main base to facilitate picking up some lunch at the Bolton Valley Deli & Grocery afterwards. Parking was fairly easy; even though it was 11:00 A.M. we only had to go down to the third tier in the main Village lot because there was only a moderate number of skiers at the resort.

An image of Dylan skiing the Showtime trail at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Showtime was one of the highlights today with some excellent soft snow.

We decided to check out as many sections of the mountain as possible to assess conditions, so we started with a quick trip up Snowflake to make our way toward Timberline. Timberline Lane and Timberline Run didn’t really inspire us with regard to conditions – it wasn’t great either on or off piste. Despite the mild weather, the groomed terrain was strangely hard, sort of that like that hard but wet surface that you can encounter on the lower slopes of Whistler Blackcomb. There was fresh powder off piste, but unfortunately below ~2,000’ it was just a bit too sticky to be fun. I was hoping that the surface conditions we’d encountered there were not going to be all the mountain had to offer today, and fortunately what we’d experienced was the worst we were going to see. We did a Timberline Mid Station run on Showtime because we could immediately tell as we rode the lift that the conditions looked nice. Indeed the turns were awesome on Showtime, because if featured soft packed snow that wasn’t at all sticky. I’m not sure what combination of grooming, timing, or skier traffic led to such disparate conditions on routes at equivalent elevations, but whatever the case, Showtime was great fun.

“Indeed Wilderness Lift Line held several inches of fresh powder in spots protected from the wind, and there were perhaps a dozen tracks on Lower Turnpike.”

We continued our tour by heading back to the main base and riding up the Vista Quad. Temperatures were below freezing up high and the powder was very much in midwinter form up there. We headed toward Alta Vista, and Dylan and I jumped into some of the dense trees off to the skier’s left to explore some lines. There’s not really much there because the evergreens are really dense, but with E spotting from the trail we found a couple of open spots to catch a few turns and there were 4 to 5 inches of protected powder in there that made the experience quite fun. Back on piste, skier’s left of Alta Vista before the first turn was filled in with 8 to 10 inches of soft snow, so we all enjoyed that.

We made our way over to Wilderness after that, figuring that traffic would be fairly light over there. Indeed Wilderness Lift Line held several inches of fresh powder in spots protected from the wind, and there were perhaps a dozen tracks on Lower Turnpike. The powder turns on Lower Turnpike were smooth and creamy, until about the last couple hundred feet above the Village where the temperature had risen enough to cause the powder to become sticky.

An image of Erica skiing powder snow along the edge of the Liftline Trail in the Wilderness are of Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont — Fresh powder along the edge of the Wilderness Lift Line

Our run led us right down to the Bolton Valley Deli & Grocery where we picked up some sandwiches to bring home for lunch. With temperatures above freezing down in the Village, it felt more like a March or April day vs. February, but it was really nice to be able to change out of our ski boots at the car in comfort – unlike what it would have been last weekend (or the way things were much of last season). It looks like there are a couple more potential storms in the pipeline for this coming week, so we’ll see how they play out with respect to snow.

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