Low clouds produced some stellar views on Mt. Mansfield today
Today’s first run on Stowe’sPerry Merrill had our training group thinking of old adages such as “Life’s too short to ski bad snow.”, or perhaps “Any day at work is better than the worst days of skiing.” Yesterday featured very spring-like temperatures, and this morning’s cold weather and undercast left the snow on Mansfield locked up like one of those ice blocks on the cooling unit of a mini fridge. All of us questioned why anyone would pay for such conditions, but people were out there, and along with race training groups and other school ski program training groups such as ours it made for an incredibly crowded trail. What we had was essentially a perfect combination of dangerous snow and tons of skiers in the same place; it’s exactly where you wouldn’t want to be. We were all amazed when about 100 vertical feet above the Midway Lodge, the snow suddenly softened into something reasonable. Everyone exchanged thoughts of joy as they were actually able to carve turns; apparently we’d hit the freezing line.
Fortunately our instructor Steve knew that there was no point in going back up the Gondola, and instead led us over to Spruce Peak. The sunny slopes of lower Spruce were soft and good to go, and all of us were more than happy to stay over there and work through the progression of techniques for beginning skiers. As the low clouds broke away and the sun hit in the second half of the morning, it became a beautiful day to be out on the slopes. Spruce softened up to as high as we were skiing, which was up to the top of the Meadows Quad. I suspect that even the Mansfield side softened up, but I’m not sure how high that went since we never headed back over there until we hit the Midway Lodge on our way out.
In any event, good snow and comfortable temperatures made for a great annual training day over at Spruce Peak, and if we hadn’t had other things to do in the afternoon, it definitely would have been worth staying for some additional runs. The new construction at the base is certainly coming along, and the outdoor ice rink is already in place. It looks like that area is going to be a great core to the Spruce Peak Village when everything’s complete.
One highlight from this morning was the fantastic view of the mountains above the low clouds, which we’ve apparently been experiencing a lot in the past few weeks with the fairly benign weather pattern. It does look like storms are going to pick up in the second half of the month, but we’ll have to see how much cold air they have to work with in terms of creating snow.
I had a really busy Friday, but the views of the mountains caked with snow suggested that accumulations were really holding well in those elevations that had received snow, and my plan was to head out for some turns at some point today. Ty and E had left the house early today for some volunteer work at a school function, but Dylan and I were able to head up to Bolton Valley by late morning. The lower valleys are bare in terms of snow, and it felt quite warm, so it was really hard to imagine that there was going to be decent snow for skiing just a few minutes away. We saw the first signs of snow along the Bolton Valley Access Road in the 1,300’-1,400’ elevation range by the big S-curve below Timberline, and the accumulations really shot up quickly above that elevation. By the time we got above 2,000’ to the Village, it was an entirely different world. Within the span of 1,000’ in elevation we’d gone right from November into December. There was a good 2-3” of dense snow on the ground, and temperatures were holding in the 34-35 F range. The snow was wet so that it packed very well, and as I got the ski gear together Dylan had rolled a massive snowball within moments. After a good session of building and destroying some snowballs, we headed over to the base of Wilderness to start our ascent.
Bombs Away!
We were able to strap on our skins right away, as there was plenty of coverage, and checking the depth of snow on the climber’s right on Lower Turnpike at ~2,200’, I was already measuring 3-4” of snow. We continued on up the available skin track, and I was surprised to see only about 3 or 4 tracks on the trail from skiers descending. I would have thought there’d be more pent-up demand for turns since it hasn’t snowed in a couple of weeks, but I think a few of the other trails had served as descent routes as well. We continued up to around the 2,600’-2,700’ elevation range, where we stopped at the base of the steep headwall of Cougar. The snow up there had increased to a depth of roughly 4-6”, and the temperature must have been holding below freezing because the snow was quite dry. Dylan tried to build snowballs as he’d done at the base and had no success; the snow was just too dry and it all crumbled away like sand through an hourglass. I was hoping that the loss to snowball building was going to be our gain with regard to fluffy turns.
“The snow up there had increased to a depth of roughly 4-6”, and the temperature must have been holding below freezing because the snow was quite dry.”
I started off the descent and struggled with turns on my long, skinny, Tele rock skis, and of course Dylan made fun of me as he floated along on his more modern gear. I’d brought along my rock skis because I really hadn’t known how much coverage we’d have, but with the generally grassy slopes of Lower Turnpike and decent snow depths, a pair of fat skis would leave you with minimal concerns about damaging any bases. I got my Telemark turns flowing as we descended farther, and Dylan and I exchanged some smack talk about who was actually the better Telemark skier. Dylan said that “only in my dreams” was I actually better than him, but I countered by asking if he’d like to switch skis and see how things went. I think I’d get the much better end of that deal, even if his skis would be on the short side for me. By the time we’d descended to the 2,400’-2,500’ range the snow was starting to get a bit wet, so we’d presumably hit the freezing line. The turns actually remained fairly decent all the way down to within about 100’ of the base though, and we were still able to even make Telemark turns for most of it. There were a few water bars negotiate, but we had a lot of fun working with the different techniques for those – simply zooming across the gap allowed it, or taking the more conservative approach of stepping over if it didn’t. You could certainly lap the top half of the mountain if you wanted to stay in totally dry snow, and we actually saw one guy doing just that up near Peggy Dow’s.
Dylan doing some of the work behind the lens today.
We skied down to the landing at the northeast corner of the village hotel complex, and pulled out the cameras take a few more pictures. Dylan had actually asked to bring along one of the DSLRs to use today, so I gave him the Canon EOS 30D with the EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM on it, and I used the 7D Mark II with the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM. He was shooting in auto mode getting used to monitoring the focus lock indicator as today’s training, but we talked shutter speeds as we worked on imaging either droplets or streaks from the meltwater coming off the roof of the hotel complex, the hotel had recently hired a roofing company to ensure the meltwater wouldn’t slip into the rooms. This was a great step by the hotel. We were in a similar position recently while visiting the US, Texas. The rainfall was like none other we had ever seen before, there must have been a storm on the way. It looks like the roof repair company did the work just in time as by 1 pm, the clouds spoke! I wonder which austin roofing company completed the work! Back to the present and not the past! We stopped in to grab some lunch at the Deli & Grocery before heading home, and then it was back down to the valley and a return to more of a November environment. These mild temperatures are pretty nice though, and getting to ski in some dry powder snow out there on such a gorgeous day was somewhat of an unexpected treat. It looks like the temperatures stayed pretty cool at elevation, so I suspect the powder will still be up there tomorrow.
This morning though, I was feeling notably better, and it seemed like a trip to the snow would be in order. Assessing what I’d seen for coverage on the Bolton Valley Web Cam at 2,100’, and comparing the pictures that Powderfreak posted yesterday from ~2,500’ on Mansfield, it looked like Stowe had picked up the better accumulations, so I set my sights there. Around midday I was ready to head out. I knew that the snow wasn’t going to be dry in the lower elevations, because temperatures were already well up into the 40s F, but even if the snow turned out to be sticky, I’d still get a nice hike out of the deal.
The first traces of snow along the Mountain Road appeared in the 900’ – 1,000’ elevation range just below The Matterhorn, and up at the Mansfield Base Lodge there was about an inch of patchy wet snow. A quick survey of the area had shown me that North Slope had some of the best-looking coverage, and apparently, that was because the resort had actually made some snow there. I threw my skis on my pack, unsure of whether or not I’d be skinning, and headed up the stairs to the base of the lifts. I just happened to run into Claire and Luc, who were up because Luc was anxious to get in some turns on the available snow. We hiked together at various stages, and since she was hiking back down, Claire stopped at the Crossover elevation while I switched over to skins, and Luc and I continued up to the top of the next pitch of North Slope around 2,400’. There were actually a fair number of people out and about for the “day after” the storm, but I guess it wasn’t too surprising with the nice warm temperatures.
One of many folks out enjoying the day at Stowe
Luc headed down before me to catch up with Claire, and when I finally started my descent, I found out that the snow conditions were quite good. I’d been worried about the warm weather making a mess of the snow, but the combination of natural and manmade snow, along with some skier traffic, turned a good portion of the route into dense, spring-like snow that skied very well. I hit Tele turns where the snow was good, stuck in some alpine turns where conditions were more variable, and had quite a good ride for a quick outing. We’ve got a warmer week coming up, with highs in the mountains generally in the 40s F, but it looks like we might have more cold and snow as we head toward the weekend and Thanksgiving week, so we’ll see what chances that period brings for additional turns. For now though, I’d say there’s enough snow on North Slope to last through some warm days for people interested in earning some turns this week.
There’s still plenty of great snow at Stowe for anyone that wants to earn some turns.
Between almost daily soccer coaching, practices, and games now stacked on top of the usual routine, the spring schedule for E and the boys has been pretty crazy, but fortunately I was able to get them to sneak in a trip to the slopes today. I saw great pictures of the coverage on Nosedive from Powderfreak’s report on Wednesday, so we knew it was a good bet for spring turns and headed off to Stowe in the mid-morning. We’d been hoping Joe would be able to join us, but he ultimately decided it was just going to be a little too much to manage the hike and still have enough left in the tank for dancing tonight at the BJAMS Bash.
We parked in the Midway Lot and had to walk about 50-100 yards over to the start of the snow on Lower Nosedive. You could definitely see the effects of the past couple days’ summer-like temperatures, because bare areas were making substantial intrusions into parts of the trail. The snow coverage is still fairly continuous though, with just one actual break of about 20 feet about halfway up. We topped out a bit shy of the 3,000’ mark, which was about as far as E and the boys wanted to push themselves with more soccer games tomorrow. In terms of the skiing, the snow quality was fine, with nothing overly mushy despite the temperatures. We’d all brought ski pants, but E and the boys were pretty gutsy and skied just in their shorts. I’ve been there before, and especially since I was Telemark skiing I decided to stick with full ski pants and knee pads. E was skiing Tele as well, but she didn’t care – she and the boys all felt that the cooling of the snow and breeze was worth it, and fortunately there were no notable falls to contend with.
Nosedive is still just about continuous, but areas are starting to melt out.
There were several groups of skiers around that we encountered on either the ascent or descent, and it was quite the fun atmosphere. We tested out playing Pandora on one of the cell phones on the ascent and that worked out well – Dylan made an Imagine Dragons station that had me grooving my way up the mountain at a really quick pace.
On the way out we took a peek at some of the other routes on the mountain that had substantial snow, and the best alternative to Nosedive looked like it was that North Slope area above the terrain park. Temperatures look to cool down somewhat as we head into next week, so that should slow the melting process a bit. These warm days have been great, but they’re causing the snow to disappear quickly!
A snapshot from the Bolton Valley Web Cam today – the patches of snow on the bottom half of the mountain got me interested enough to see what the higher elevations held.
Our protracted stretch of pleasantly warm and sunny weather has continued this week, and it’s allowed the ground to dry to the point that on Tuesday, I headed out for a mountain bike ride to sample some of local terrain by the house and into town. Indeed even some of the typically wettest terrain down by the Winooski was dry enough for riding, so things are ready on that front, but after seeing Powderfreak’s ski report from yesterday at Stowe, it reminded me that I should probably get back out on the slopes while the snow is available. I can still see bright areas of white snow on the slopes of Bolton Valley from my office in Burlington, but from that distance it’s hard to know exactly how continuous the coverage is. I popped up the image from the Bolton Valley Web Cam and could see that there were only patches of coverage on Beech Seal on the bottom half of the mountain, but it looked as if the snow at the bottom of Bear Run might be stretching upward for some substantial coverage.
I headed up to the resort with plans to at least get in a hike, since the areas without snow already looked pretty dry. I saw the first signs of snow along the Bolton Valley Access Road at the base of Timberline at 1,500’, and it was clearly leftovers of manmade snow. Up in the Village it was very quiet, and I’d thought about getting a sandwich from the Deli, but it was closed. This is probably one of the quietest times of the year, so I guess that shouldn’t be too surprising. I took a quick walk up to the slopes and could see that Spillway had some large areas of snow, and it was enough to suggest that I should throw my skis on my pack and bring them along.
The snow on the lower parts of Spillway ended up being rather patchy, so I headed toward Sherman’s Pass
The visible snow near the base that appeared to head up to Bear Run was the start of a reasonably long section that went about halfway up the trail, and from there to Mid Mountain the coverage was a lot more fractured or nonexistent. Above Mid Mountain I began to hike toward Spillway, since I’d seen the snow up there, but once I saw far more substantial coverage on Sherman’s Pass, I switched my route in that direction. I stopped my ascent at around 2,600’ near the top of the steeper Sherman’s Pass terrain above Mid Mountain, since there was another gap in coverage at that point.
For the descent, I found that the snow definitely had some sun cups and dirty areas, but there were a variety of areas with decent turns, and the coverage there basically brought me down to Mid Mountain before I took off my skis to connect to the lower half of Bear Run. That bottom part of Bear Run offered the longest stretch of continuous snow, and it carried me to within about 50 yards of the base lodge. With Bolton’s western exposure and more limited snowmaking than some of the larger resorts, May turns are often spotty, and this year was fairly typical in that regard. Based on what I saw, today’s turns were likely my last of the season at Bolton Valley, so that’s probably it until the fall. There’s a ton of snow left at Stowe and some of the other resorts around, so hopefully I can get out to some of those spots for more turns this month.
The snow is still holding up nicely and delivering great turns on the slopes of Spruce Peak
There’s still almost six feet of natural snow at the Mt. Mansfield Stake, and with manmade snow supplementing coverage in the lower elevations and Mansfield’s penchant for snow preservation, there’s going to be skiing on the mountain for quite some time to come. There’s even a lot of snow left across Route 108 on Spruce Peak, but with the way much of that ski terrain faces south, it’s going to disappear much faster. With that in mind, I decided that today would be a great day to make some turns on the slopes of Spruce Peak before it was too late. The weather made outdoor activities a no-brainer, with partly sunny skies and temperatures in the 60s F. I’d planned to head to the slopes at some point today, but by mid morning, E could sense that none of the boys in the house were moving quite fast enough to enjoy the great day, so she quickly started ushering us out. Unfortunately she wanted to take care of some spring cleaning chores, and after a long week of soccer practices and some games tomorrow, the boys were supposed to rest their legs today. That left me en route to a solo outing at Stowe for the afternoon.
“The corn snow on the Main Street and Side Street areas was superb, with just a couple of inches being shaved off, and none of that bottomless mush that can sometimes form in the warmer weather.”
The lower mountain valleys are pretty much bare now aside from the stray snow pile, but even from Waterbury I could see the slopes of Mansfield and Spruce Peak glistening white with copious amounts of snow. The slopes of Spruce Peak were still looking good as I got close up, and with the main Spruce Peak parking area generally closed to traffic for continued construction, I headed up to the base of the Sensation Quad to start my tour. I found a few other cars, and a family playing in the snow in the Meadows area, but overall it was pretty quiet. I walked for just a minute to get to some the snow on Side Street, and then I was able to put on my skis and skin up the rest of the way. There were a couple of small breaks in snow coverage, but they were pretty inconsequential and you’ve basically got continuous snow all the way up to the top of Spruce Peak.
Looking out at Spring in Valley from the top of Spruce Peak
It was a good ascent, and I was definitely in need of the workout with ski time slowing down over the past couple of weeks. I wrapped around by the top of the Sensation Quad and continued on the trails up by the Spruce Peak Summit, then enjoyed a good 15-20 minutes taking in the views to the south. I also consumed a good amount of food, since I was pretty tanked by the last 10 minutes or so of the hike. I sent a phone picture to E to let her know I was at the top (and of course to let her know what she was missing), and then packed everything up for the descent.
Low traffic on the slopes of Spruce Peak made for some very smooth turns in the corn snow.
The corn snow on the Main Street and Side Street areas was superb, with just a couple of inches being shaved off, and none of that bottomless mush that can sometimes form in the warmer weather. The manmade snow was actually the best for turns because it was so dense. One great thing about Spruce Peak this time of year is that traffic is especially low, and you can really find a lot of unblemished, or very lightly tracked slopes for some excellent spring turns. I did see a couple of other groups of skiers here and there, but traffic was light as one would expect. Between the ascent and plenty of Telemark turns on the ride down, I’d say my legs got what they needed. I’m tempted to try to figure out how to get in some more turns tomorrow among the boys soccer games, because the forecast is looking fairly similar to what we got today.
Ty putting together a nice bit of air above the spring snow today at Stowe.
Today was Stowe’s final lift-served day of the season, and with a pleasant, sunny forecast, we headed off for some runs in the afternoon. Temperatures were in the 50s F at the base, and the Mansfield parking lot was awash in group after group of tailgaters. We got a nice parking space in front of the Mansfield Base Lodge from someone who was just leaving and hoofed it up to the base of the Fourrunner Quad. There was a lift queue of a few minutes, which seems to be common this time of the year when the Fourrunner Quad is bearing the lion’s share of the workload.
Playing on the bumps of Hayride
Overall, the skiing was a little sloppy in spots, but there’s generally been plenty of freeze-thaw cycles to get the snow turned into corn. We did find some snow high up in the bypass chutes that was almost wintry in consistency because it was so protected from warmth. Hayride was fun, with some steep bump lines, although they were generally spaced wider than our preference. Lower National had much better bump lines as is typical. We also had some fun cruising on Lord. As usual during the corn harvest season, we had our own corn harvest of sorts each run as everyone got the snow off their skis to supply snowballs for lift tower and chair target practice.
Typical of April, the weather looks like it will soon be changing, and after this relatively sunny and warm week, next week looks to be cooler and wet with some potential for snow. The forecasts suggest that a cutoff low pressure system may form in the region, and those can sometimes deliver copious amounts of precipitation as the storm sits and spins. We’ll have to watch and see if anything develops, but there’s always the potential for late season snowstorms this time of year in the mountains. Some recent favorites that come to mind are April 28th, 2010 and April 10th, 2012, which each delivered hefty dumps of snow to the mountains for fun April powder turns.
Well, spring finally came to the Northern Green Mountains today, and it was a welcomed sight.
Today was the final lift-served day of the 2014-2015 ski season at Bolton Valley, and with the weather featuring temperatures around 60 F and sunny skies, we headed up this afternoon to enjoy some warm spring skiing. The weather was really quite a blast of spring after a long, cold winter, and with a sign at the base of the Timberline Quad Chair that read “AND ON THE LAST DAY… SPRING ARRIVED!”, it was obvious that we weren’t the only ones feeling that way. Indeed the first third of the month has been quite cool, but that’s kept the base of the snowpack in good shape, and even added some rounds of powder that we’ve been able to enjoy over the past couple of weeks. The good snow preservation was very obvious as we rode the Timberline Quad and looked down – there were just a few rocks poking through here and there. That says a lot since the Timberline terrain is low elevation and faces west; it’s typically the first place on the mountain to start losing its snowpack.
We started the afternoon off with a trip on Spell Binder, and found a nice ridge to ski down the center of the headwall. The snow was well softened into spring corn of course, and it was even a bit sticky at times. I’m sure the absolute primo time for the snow was a bit earlier in the day, but what we got was still quite good. Twice as Nice was fun, and that’s when everyone started to have snowball fights on the slope – I managed to avoid getting hit most of the time, although Ty was in hot pursuit down much of the trail.
Spring fun on Spell Binder
We decided to head over to the main mountain to see how Spillway was skiing, and it was a bit slow getting through the flats of Villager, but we had fun pushing and pulling each other along. The main base area was hopping, with lots of people out on the back deck of the lodge, and a D.J. playing tunes and taking requests. Spillway had some very nice corn snow, with a ridge along the skier’s right that was great for skiing, or grinding, depending on your preference. The boys did a lot of grinding/drifting on it, and Dylan had an especially long slide that left quite a track.
It was getting close to closing time as we approached the base, so we played it safe to ensure we could get back to Timberline and made our way to the Snowflake Summit to catch the connection. That route was a little slow at times as well, being a green slope, but we had more fun pulling and pushing each other with “crack the whip” types of moves. Areas with pitch were skiing nicely. I actually think that the snow down low at Timberline was better in some respects because it probably had seen a bit more corn snow cycling, but all elevations will be getting there eventually. With Bolton Valley’s lifts closed for the season now, we’re thinking Stowe next weekend, depending on the weather, and then we’ll see where our ski adventures take us for the next couple of months before summer arrives.
Temperatures were around the freezing mark in the valley, but dropped into the 20s F up in the higher elevations. I swung past Timberline and found about 3-4” of new snow there, but I kept going up to the main base area, planning to use the Wilderness ascent route. It was in the mid 20s F, blowing, and indeed downright wintry up in the Village. I made my way over to the base of Wilderness, and broke trail up the ascent route, since nobody had been out in that area before me. There really wasn’t any noticeable difference between the accumulation of new snow up there above 2,000’, and I found essentially the same depth as I did at the base of Timberline and even our house, so there wasn’t too much elevation dependence with this snowfall. This was actually my first time getting to use the official ascent route on Wilderness since it’s been in place. I stuck to the climbers left where the signs are, although my usual preference up there is on the climber’s right for whatever reason. I can’t figure out if it’s because it feels more sheltered or what.
I ascended to near the mid station elevation, switched over, and started my descent. The snow was reasonably dense, so with my 115 mm AMPerages it was easy to float on the available snow. There were a few scoured spots due to the winds, so I did touch down in a few of those however. I skied a bit of the Wilderness Woods, but with the contours in there, the wind had actually scoured a few more spots, so I quickly returned to Lower Turnpike. It was a nice run, certainly nothing epic, but there was some good powder skiing, I got in a quick workout, and naturally it was a great way to start the day.
Back down in the valley, snow totals had fallen off west of Bolton Flats, and in the town of Bolton itself it only looked like there was an inch or two of new snow. Snow totals seemed the least in the zone heading westward from Bolton to around Richmond, and then they increased again as I got into the Champlain Valley. I’m not sure exactly why the snow stuck to the trees so well in the Burlington area relative to other towns to the east, but it was unquestionably the most picturesque area I saw west of the mountains. Eyewall’s pictures do a great job of showing how beautiful this snowfall was in the Burlington area.
