Tag: Sprig O’ Pine

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Bolton Valley, VT 07JAN2024

An image of Erica Telemark skiing in powder from the beginning of Winter Storm Ember in the Hide Away area at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont
An image of Ty Telemark skiing in powder from the beginning of Winter Storm Ember in the Hide Away area at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont
Ty drops a knee as he dives into some of the Bolton Valley powder delivered by the start of Winter Storm Ember today.

January snowfall is rolling along now with the appearance of our first major weather system of the month, and thus our first big event of the new year. Winter Storm Ember began to affect the area last night, and Bolton Valley was indicating that an additional 3 to 4 inches of new had fallen as of their early morning report. E and I headed up with Ty a couple hours later to catch the opening of the lifts, and there was probably another inch or two down by that point because it was snowing at a decent clip. Even more notable though was the wind – it was easterly and quite strong, and it was hitting you right in the face while riding the Vista Quad. Combined with temperatures in the teens F, our storm gear was definitely earning its keep and was highly appreciated.

Based on my analyses from the house, the mountain had seen probably about a half inch of liquid equivalent by that point. Combined with the several small storms we’ve had over the past week as we’ve kicked off January, it was a decent contribution to resurfacing, but certainly not at the point where patrol could simply drop the ropes on all the natural snow terrain. The snow was enough to open up certain natural snow areas like the Enchanted Forest, but at that point of the storm there just wasn’t enough liquid equivalent down to get the steepest terrain going. There was plenty of terrain open to enjoy the fresh powder though, and we knew additional trails would open as the storm continued to deliver more snow.

An image of Ty catching some air in the Hide Away terrain park area during the beginning of Winter Storm Ember at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont
Ty catching some air in the Hide Away terrain park area today as we enjoy the fresh snow from Winter Storm Ember
An image of a snowcat with fresh snow falling during Winter Storm Ember in the Village are of Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Some midmorning accumulations on the Village snowcat as Winter Storm Ember starts to deliver fresh powder to the slopes of Bolton Valley

In the late morning Ty had to head off to work, but Dylan son and his college friends who are staying over for a mini ski vacation were headed up for some runs, so we got to ski with them. The fierce winds from the morning had abated to essentially nothing, so that made the lift rides much more comfortable. A depth check I made around noontime in undisturbed snow at about mid-mountain elevation revealed 9 inches of surface snow, which was probably the combination of what had fallen from this storm on top of the lighter amounts from our other recent storms.

After we left in the early afternoon, I heard that they began to open some steep terrain like Schuss, so the storm was definitely having an impact on replenishing coverage in areas that needed it. The resort was reporting 9 inches of new snow as of closing bell, but with the way it’s been snowing around here this evening, I’m sure they’ll have picked up more by tomorrow morning.

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Bolton Valley, VT 26NOV2022

An image of snowboards leaning on a rack in the sun outside the main base lodge on a November ski day at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
An image of the Wentworth Condos in the village area behind the base of the Snowflake Chairlift on a November ski day at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Afternoon light hitting the Wentworth Condos beyond the base of the Snowflake Chair

Temperatures were expected to warm above freezing today, so I was thinking of heading up to the mountain in the afternoon to catch some turns in soft snow.  Dylan and his friends headed up to Bolton Valley in the morning, and said that things were indeed softening up by the time they’re returned in the early afternoon.

Since Ty wasn’t working today, he decided to join me for some skiing, and based on the limited terrain that was open, I recommended that he bring his Telemark gear so that he could get in some practice.  With only the Mid Mountain and Snowflake Chairs running along with the Mighty Mite, there were actually some lift queues, but we still had a fun session getting in a few fun runs on the available terrain.  We didn’t encounter much in the way of soft snow though.  I’m not sure if we’d just missed the window of softening, but looking at just how low that sun was with its November sun angle, it made me wonder how much softening could actually occur – even on a sunny day like today.  The only softened snow we actually found was on the south facing terrain near the top of Bear Run.

Ty had a good time working on his Telemark turns, and he commented that what he needed to work on was smoothing out his transitions from one turn to another.  I told him that’s exactly what Mom and I had discovered when we first started Telemark skiing.  The transition from one Telemark stance to the next is much more challenging than a typical alpine turn, because it’s a longer duration, a longer distance, and there’s a lot more body movement to do.  But, once you get a smooth transition down, your Telemark turns can really flow and you can have a lot of fun with it.  It’s still a tremendous workout compared to alpine skiing, and that’s part of the allure if one goal of your outing is to get in some exercise.

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Bolton Valley, VT 25NOV2022

An image of the Mid Mountain Lift disappearing into low clouds on a November day at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
An image of the summit station of the Snowflake Lift on a November ski day at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Soft snow and low clouds at the summit station of the Snowflake Lift today

After some initial frozen precipitation at our house this morning, we’d had on and off rain in the valley heading into the afternoon.  It had been steady at times, but nothing too heavy.  I got a bit worried though when I encountered a couple of downpours while driving through Bolton Flats, because the thought of skiing in the pouring rain wasn’t all that enticing.  I was happy to see that the rain changed over to snow around 1,500’ at the Timberline Base, so that alleviated the concerns about having to potentially be out on the mountain in a downpour.  The drive up the Bolton Valley Access Road definitely gave its usual introduction to the local temperature profile – the temperatures ticked right down at a steady pace and dropped from the lower 40s F in the valley to the lower 30s F by the time I hit the base village.

An image looking down the Sprig O' Pine trail from the top of the Snowflake Lift on a November ski day at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
A look down the Sprig O’ Pine trail during today’s ski outing

I was getting concerned that the snow surfaces were going to be quickly tightening up as colder air moved in, but the lower mountain seemed to be just enough around the freezing mark that the snow remained soft.  I could tell it wouldn’t be too long before the surfaces would be getting firm though – the wind had really picked up as the back side of the storm system was pushing through, and the Mid Mountain Chair appeared to close early because of it.

An image by the village circle with some November snows at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
In the Bolton Valley Village today with some of the November snows
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Bolton Valley, VT 07MAY2015

An image looking westward toward the Adirondack Mountains and Lake Shamplain from Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
An image from the Web Cam at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont in early May
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.

An image showing the remaining snow on the Spillway trail at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont in early May
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.

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