Tag: Tree Skiing

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Bolton Valley, VT 26MAR2011

Image of Jay skiing in powder
Jay comes into view skiing some of the beautiful powder in the Villager Trees at Bolton Valley.

The upslope snow has been rolling in, and although we haven’t had a ton of snow from this event yet, snow surfaces are getting a nice freshening.  This morning down at the house we were on our way toward picking up a quick additional inch of snow to put us at 2.8 inches for this end of the week event, and 9 inches for the week.  Bolton was reporting 13 inches over that span, with the snow continuing to fall.  Today we were back up at the mountain again for an afternoon session with Stephen and his kids, and for the first half of the afternoon it was snowing at a good clip.  Everyone joined in for a run on Spell Binder, and using the knowledge about the aspects with best snow that the boys and I had learned yesterday, there were some really awesome bottomless turns available on the skier’s left.  Even with just a few inches of additional snow, the skiing took quite a jump up in quality.  We found the same snow setup on Tattle Tale, and all three boys had fun ripping up the powder in their own way.  We gave Johannes first tracks on one line, and he decided that a figure 11 was the way to go, while Ty and Dylan accented his line with some curves.  We’re starting to nickname Johannes “11”.  For the full text and all the pictures, click through to the Bolton Valley trip report from today.

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Bolton Valley, VT 25MAR2011

Ty skiing powder in the Villager Trees
Ty gets ready to dodge a tree as he rips up the powder in the Villager Trees at Bolton Valley

The boys and I hit the powder up at Bolton Valley today and found some great conditions.  The snow continues to fall as indicated in the weather updates in the blog and the skiing just keeps improving.  For all the details and powdery pictures, go to my March 25th report from Bolton Valley.

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Bolton Valley, VT 12MAR2011

Tracks in the Villager Trees
There was some decent powder in the Villager Trees

I headed up to Bolton Valley today to catch some afternoon turns, and the sking was pretty nice. There were a couple of fresh inches, and conditions varied from wintry up top with the surfaces helped out by the new powder, to borderline spring-like down low with the surfaces helped out by the warmer temperatures. The powder off piste was certainly vairable, but there were nice turns depending on elevation and aspect.  More details and images are in my Bolton Valley, VT 12MAR2011 report.

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Stowe, VT 08MAR2011

An image of Dylan skiing in powder
Dylan glides through some powder from the recent storm in the Angel Food area at Vermont's Stowe Mountain Resort

Dylan and I headed off to Stowe today to make some more turns in the snow from our recent storm.  By this morning we’d picked up 25 inches of snow at the house, and some of the Vermont resorts had received more than 3 feet.  It was a sunny, blue sky day, and the first thing that grabbed our attention when we got to the mountain was the view of the powdery lower slopes of Spruce Peak.  While they were adorned with plenty of tracks, we could see that lots of fresh lines were left, so we had to check that out for our first run.  We eventually worked our way over to the Mt. Mansfield side of the resort as well, and we really worked ourselves hard in all the powder.  The snow was synoptic in density, and there was a little wind crust in exposed spots, but it was still oh so good.  Dylan did a nice job managing the tricky conditions, even though he doesn’t yet have any fat skis.  To read about all the details and see the images from the day, check out the full trip report from March 8th at Stowe.

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Stowe, VT 27FEB2011

Image of Dylan skiing powder at Stowe
Dylan getting buried in powder in the trees around Freddie's Chute

We were up at Stowe today for our usual Sunday session, and since it’s the tail end of vacation week, many people were absent.  Our group had just Ty, Jack, and Dylan, but we also had Mike Cannon as one of the group’s coaches, and with his immense knowledge of Spruce and Mansfield he brought us to plenty of great shots.  Not too surprisingly, we found conditions to be much like Bolton’s, with untouched areas typically yielding between 12 to 18 inches of powder thanks to our recent storm.  We skied glade after glade with Mike, and the steepest and highest traffic areas are certainly down to the firm base leftover from those couple of warm days a bit over a week ago.  However, outside of those spots it was easy to find areas with either untracked or soft chowder.  To read the full text and see all the pictures, check out the full Stowe report from today.

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Bolton Valley, VT 26FEB2011

Image of Dylan skiing powder
Dylan blasting the powder in Doug's Solitude

After earning turns and skiing with Stephen and Johannes in the early morning, I headed back to the house for a bit after that session, picked up E and the boys, and we caught up with Stephen and Johannes later in the morning to hit the powder for the rest of the day.  We had some light snow and sunshowers in the later morning and early afternoon from yet another small weather system that was pushing through, and then more sunshine as the afternoon wore on.  We got into plenty of that famous Vermont fluff, and all the boys seemed to have a good time.  Click through to see all the picture and read the full report from today at Bolton.

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Bolton Valley, VT 25FEB2011

Image of Dylan skiing powder
Dylan blasting down Tattle Tale

It was back on Wednesday when our current winter storm started coming into focus, but at that point the snow totals were still somewhat in question.  However, by the yesterday/today timeframe it was looking like the local mountains could see a good foot of snow, so prospects for getting some powder on the slopes were promising.  It actually hadn’t even started snowing when I left the house this morning around 6:45 A.M., but by the time I left Burlington sometime after 11:00 A.M. they’d picked up about 4 inches, and here at the house I found 6.3 inches at noontime.  That meant that the snow was coming down at over an inch an hour in the valley, so up on the mountain they were likely getting blasted.

E and the boys didn’t have school, so around 1:00 P.M. once we were sure that the powder was building, we headed up to Bolton to get in some storm day skiing.   When we first arrived at Timberline, the snowfall was moderate and the flakes were fairly small, but flake size and snowfall intensity were picking up.  We started off with some Spell Binder, and the boys were clearly enjoying the powder with the enthusiastic comments coming out of them such as Ty’ “Beautiful Beauty”, and Dylan’s “That’s Talking Powder”; they were certainly original if not extremely descriptive.  I did my first depth check on the new snow about halfway down Spell Binder, where the tally was 11 inches.  For more pictures and the full story, click through to the full report from today at Bolton Valley.

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Bolton Valley Nordic & Backcountry, VT 21FEB2011

Image of Ty skinning on the Bryant Trail
Ty skins up the Bryant Trail and checks out the powder

Temperatures warmed up above freezing at all elevations in Northern Vermont at the end of last week, so we waited for the powder to build up over the long weekend before finally heading out this afternoon for turns.  We had three small systems that dropped snow over the holiday weekend; down at the house we picked up 3.7 inches of snow in the form of 0.21 inches of liquid, and Bolton was reporting 5 inches of snow in the higher elevations.  The new powder at the house had settled down to about 2 to 3 inches over the old base, so we knew there would be at least that much up on the mountain.  Temperatures wound up being colder than we thought, but the powder was nice – we found 3 to 4 inches of settled powder in the lower village portion of the network at around 2,000’, and up at the Bryant Cabin elevation (~2,700’) the depths of new snow were 4 to 5 inches.  It turned out to be plenty of fluff for the low and moderate angle pitches, so many nice powder turns were had, and it was also the first time that the boys had skinned all the way up to the cabin.  Dylan had some binding issues near the bottom of the run, so I had to help him through and he got quite a ride.  Read about the entire adventure in the full backcountry trip report from today.

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Stowe, VT 13FEB2011

Image of Ty skiing in the trees at Stowe
Ty playing around in the powder in the trees off Freddie's Chute

Today we were back at Stowe Mountain Resort for our weekly BJAMS  ski program day.  There was some light to moderate snow during the day for a short time, but nothing in terms of accumulation that established any powder on the trails.  Conditions were still excellent, with packed powder on piste and powder off piste, and while the most popular off piste places had seen enough traffic that they featured packed or tracked snow, untracked powder was easy to find.  We played around in the trees on Spruce Peak and had a good time, even if the powder was a bit old.  The snowpack is well past that stage where the off piste is sufficiently covered, and after finally getting in on a couple of synoptic storms, things are now at the stage where brush is becoming so buried that most hardwood areas between trails, even those that don’t receive trimming attention, have opened up enough for turns.  We were finding that aside from zones with tight evergreens etc., you’d just poke your head in the trees and go.  Click through to get to the full report from Stowe today.