Melting snow from warm temperatures caused the Winooski to rise today - our local VAST snowmobile bridge was basically floating on the river.
With the recent warm temperatures melting some of the snowpack, the Winooski was quite high today, so I’ve added a couple of pictures of our local VAST snowmobile bridge. The bridge was refurbished in the fall, and from the pictures one can see that the boards are still pretty light in color. Normally the bridge is 5 to 10 feet above the river, so that provides a sense of the rise of the water level due to the melting snow, and with the fields off to the south taken over by water (visible in the background) the Winooski was several times its normal width.
A close up view of the south side of the VAST bridge and the flooded fields beyond
Jay joined the kids for some half pipe fun at Stowe today.
After closing out our lift-served Bolton Valley ski season yesterday, today we headed to Stowe for more spring skiing. We ran into many of the friends that we’d seen yesterday, and since the boys had been excited for a couple of weeks to check out Starr, we took advantage of the great snow and base depths to ski it from the top. We also got to the ski the entirety of Goat, another Stowe classic, and we even worked in a couple of runs through the monstrous half pipe. Stowe will be running the lifts for another week, so we’ll see how the weather looks and we may head back for more turns. For the full details and pictures, read my Stowe report from today.
Ty hits the spring snow at the top of Bolton's Show Off trail with the mountain's wind turbine in the background.
Today we headed up for what will probably be our last lift-served day at Bolton this season, since Bolton won’t be running their lifts after this weekend and we’re planning to head to Stowe tomorrow. It was as excellent day with some almost wintry snow to start in the morning, which gradually became more and more spring-like as the day went on. We skied with many friends and family including my mom, Stephen, Johannes, Helena, Claire, Luke, and Claire’s sister Missy and her whole family. The last regular turns of the season on the mountain are always bittersweet, but it was a great way to end the lift-served portion of the winter at Bolton with full coverage and a deep base. For all the pictures and the full text from our adventures, check out my report from the day. The season ended around average with 330 inches of snowfall, and we’re already looking forward to next season when we expect to see more of Claire and Luke who just became Bolton Valley 2011-2012 season passholders!
I headed up to Bolton Valley today and got in on some of the powder from the recent snowfall. The depth of the new snow was topping out in the 9-inch range, but the nice density gradient had it skiing deep just as Denis commented in his report from Stowe, and Powderfreak indicated in his initial update as well. It was another great April powder day in the Northern Greens, read my full report to see more pictures and details.
The snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield stake hit 100 inches after yesterday’s snowfall – click for the full size plot
The snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield stake has been flirting with the 100-inch mark for several weeks, but thanks to yesterday’s snow, the afternoon reading indicated that we’d finally hit the century mark. A depth of 100 inches at the stake is a nice benchmark indicating an excellent snowpack in the Northern Green Mountains, so the base depths for skiing should be decent for quite some time. Down in the valley, the snowpack at our house in Waterbury was at 16 inches as of this morning’s reading. I’ve added my latest plot for the Mt. Mansfield and Waterbury snow depths in this post.
The kids from BJAMS gathering together at the Stowe fire pit on our final ski program day of the season
Today was our final BJAMS ski program session of the season at Stowe, and we had a nice sunny day with great coverage to finish things out. The conditions were actually an excellent combination of going from mid winter up high to spring-like down low, with easy to ski snow at all elevations. I was amazed at the way the Nosedive Glades had mid winter snow. Groomed surfaces seemed much better than last Sunday’s heinous frozen granular, presumably because of some extra snow and warmth from the sun helping out. While the non-groomed trails were OK, they probably weren’t quite as fresh as last week when we had all that upslope snow. We did ski the lower part of Lookout and found some decent packed powder surfaces, but also spots of iciness that had to be avoided. The snowpack on Hackett’s Highway under the triple continues to be impressive – I could touch my ski pole to the trail while riding the lift. We had Ty, Dylan, Jack, Luke, Ethan, and Madeline in the group – and they had quite a blast hitting the big half pipe. My friend Chris joined our group, so with Claire and Sue we had four adults for the six youngsters, providing plenty of supervision. It looks like Stowe will be open for a couple more weeks, so we’ll likely be there for some visits if the skiing looks good. Coverage shouldn’t be much of an issue with roughly 100 inches at the Mt. Mansfield stake and more snow that fell today.
Jay enjoying the spring powder and sun in Bolton's Wilderness area
We headed up to Bolton today to check out the powder from our recent storm, and conditions were great. We had some snowfall in the mid morning period that gave way to more sun as we approached noontime. For all the details and powdery pictures, check out my report from Bolton today.
The winter storm watches from yesterday have been upgraded to winter weather advisories and winter storm warnings today
I’ve added the updated advisories and warnings map from the National Weather Service Office in Burlington, but their projected accumulations map looks similar to yesterday, so I’ll just refer to the one that was already posted earlier in the blog. In his forecast from this morning, Roger Hill suggested the potential for 1 to 2 feet in the Green Mountains, with 6 to 10 or 8 to 14 for some valley locations and the potential for school closures. Looking at the winter storm warnings from BTV, it seems that the biggest totals are more south of here, although as is often the case, if upslope gets into the picture later in the storm cycle, the Northern Greens seem to do pretty well. The current point forecast for our location in the Winooski Valley at ~500’ suggests 5 to 10 inches through tomorrow, and then additional snow Friday night, Saturday, and Saturday night. We’ll have to see how this system goes around here, but similar to what we saw in 2007-2008, we would be closing in on the 200-inch mark for seasonal snowfall at our location if we get a decent dump.
