Spring temperatures have arrived, and the snow coverage is still in good shape even down at the Timberline elevations at Bolton
With systems like Winter Storm Uriel coming through the area, the weather and ski conditions had generally been staying on the wintry side of the spectrum, with no sustained periods of spring warmth. Ty and Dylan were up at Bolton Valley on Friday for a session, and the word was that the conditions remained hard both on and off piste. Yesterday was probably a bit warmer, but with valley temperatures topping out in the upper 30s F, that still wasn’t going to cut it with respect to softening the snow.
A view back toward the main mountain from the top of the Timberline area
Today showed more potential though, and I headed up to the mountain for an afternoon session that saw temperatures pushing well into the 40s F at 1,500’ at the Timberline Base. That was definitely enough to soften the snow into pleasant spring conditions, especially on west-facing terrain with afternoon sun. The boys were up at the main mountain with friends for some terrain park runs, and I thought about heading over to see them, but it was well into the afternoon so I just stuck around Timberline for a few Telemark laps. Temperatures certainly cooled with elevation, but the snow was soft enough everywhere to produce great turns. In some spots with direct sun, the snow was even getting a little sticky since it hadn’t gone over to 100% corn, but in general the snow quality was excellent. Coverage is still quite good on piste even down to 1,500’, but there are a few bare spots opening up on natural snow terrain at those low elevations.
Looking out toward Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks today from the top of the Timberline area
Winter Storm Uriel brought significant snows into the area right into the evening to set up for some great skiing under the lights tonight at Bolton Valley.
The system currently working its way through the area has been named Winter Storm Uriel, and it’s actually provided a nice addition to the snowpack so far. There hadn’t been too much coverage of its snow potential in the forecasts, presumably because it was one of those systems passing well to our northwest with anticipated front end and back end snow, but mixed precipitation and rain in the middle. I was in Burlington yesterday afternoon when the storm started up, and the snowfall came in with some decent intensity right away. Temperatures were marginal in the Champlain Valley, so the snow didn’t accumulate very rapidly, but there was probably about a half inch of new snow on the UVM campus when I was heading home to Waterbury.
I arrived at the house to find that Parker was with Ty and Dylan, and they had just loaded their ski gear into their car to head up to Bolton for some runs. Ty son was on his alpine gear, but asked me to bring his Telemark equipment to switch over if I came up to the mountain later. In my mind, I was certainly not planning to go for a ski session. It didn’t seem worth it to head up to the hill for what I thought was probably an inch or so of new snow atop the spring base that had probably gone through some freeze-thaw cycles over the past couple of days.
But apparently, Mother Nature was going to convince me otherwise. It just kept dumping snow at our house, and of course, Bolton’s Webcam at their main base showed the exact same thing as we watched it on the TV. I couldn’t quite get a feel for the amount of new snow from the webcam, but my snow analyses from the house revealed that we’d already picked up a few tenths of an inch of liquid equivalent in the snow we’d had. Before long, I texted the boys and let them know that I was on my way up.
I was really curious about the new accumulations up at the Village elevations, so as soon as I parked and got out of the car, I headed to an undisturbed location to check out the depth of the snow. I was surprised to get a new snow depth of 6 to 7 inches, and I figured there could have been some drifting around the parking lot area as there often is, but the measurement was quite encouraging.
It was clearly a wintry evening with plenty of fresh snow as I arrived up in the Bolton valley Village for some night skiing.
The timing of my arrival was great, and I caught the boys right at the base of the Vista Quad, so we all hopped on together for a run. It continued to snow steadily, and the conditions were looking really good – folks below us on the trails were making virtually silent turns aside from the usual steep and heavily used spots like the middle of Spillway. Up at the Vista Summit, I checked the new snow depth in the clearing right below the wind turbine and measured 7 inches.
The snow wasn’t enough for a full resurfacing of all pitches of course, certainly not the center of very steep, high-traffic trails like Spillway, but the periphery of the steep terrain was skiing really well, and mid-level pitches were great. Based on my snow analyses back at home, I bet the mountain had picked up a half in of liquid equivalent by that point. I’d say the quality of the skiing was just a touch below the conditions we had back on Sunday with the 6 to 7 inches of new snow that we found then; that round of snow may have had just a bit more liquid equivalent in it.
The boys were mixing things up with a bunch of runs through the terrain park on Valley Road, but fresh tracks were easy to get just about anywhere off Snowflake with the continued snowfall. While riding the Snowflake Chair, we saw a couple of guys skiing some of the unlit Snowflake trails by headlamp, and those were probably some sweet turns because all those trails were essentially untracked.
The snowbanks from a long winter season dominating the Bolton Valley parking lots, with the slopes lit up for night skiing in the background
Dylan sailing his way through a 360 during today’s session with the family up at Bolton Valley. Our most recent spring snowstorm brought excellent conditions for both powder skiing and hitting the terrain parks.
We haven’t seen much snow here in the Northern Greens since last weekend, and from what I’ve heard, the conditions on the slopes haven’t been all that remarkable. A more substantial winter storm started to affect the area yesterday however, and it seemed to hold some promise with respect to putting down several inches of snow in the mountains.
While the storm had only dropped an inch or two of snow down here at our house in the valley as of this morning, that snow contained almost a half inch of liquid equivalent, and with the temperatures being marginal in the lower elevations, it was easy to see that the accumulations were going to be elevation-dependent. The Bolton Valley snow report was only indicating a few inches of new snow as of this morning, but that was enough to at least get us to head up to the hill and check out the conditions. It seemed like a toss-up with respect to whether or not the snow would really be enough to kick the conditions into high gear, but there had to be more than a half inch of liquid equivalent from the storm at elevation, and that’s certainly enough for a decent resurfacing of the slopes.
We parked at Timberline, and right from the start, we were encouraged by what we saw. There were 2 to 4 inches of dense accumulation even at those lowest elevations, and as we rode the Timberline Quad and watched and listened to the skiers below, their relatively quiet turns suggested that the new snow had bonded well to the subsurface. Our plan was to head up to the main mountain, get a good assessment of the conditions at all elevations, and then take it from there. Up at 2,500’ when we got off at the Timberline Summit, it was immediately obvious that the conditions were going to be good. The new snow had clearly put down a resurfacing that was incorporated well into the grooming and created a soft, quiet surface that let you cut right into it with your carves. We next took a trip up the Vista Quad, and the conditions above 3,000’ were even better. The sides of Alta Vista yielded excellent turns, and my depth checks were coming in with 6 to 7 inches of new snow.
We were treated to wintry scenes and great snow all around the resort today compliments of our latest winter storm.
We’d met up with some colleagues from work and their families, and our group spent much of the afternoon roaming around the main mountain, venturing from Vista to Wilderness, with a lot of time spent on Snowflake. The boys were having some great fun on the jumps in the terrain park, and with the usual low traffic of Snowflake, the trails held plenty of untracked lines. When we were over on Wilderness, just about everyone hit the Wilderness Woods and had some great turns, and those of us inclined to hit the trees off Snowflake were treated to run after run of untracked powder through some very nice lines.
We spent a lot of time today catching up on some powder skiing in the trees today, and the conditions were excellent thanks to this most recent winter storm.
We finished off our day with a long run down from the Vista Summit to the Timberline Base, and based on that run it was very evident that the main mountain was the place to be today for the best powder and groomed surfaces. The snow below 2,000’ was still decent, but as we’d seen, the accumulations were a bit less, and the powder a bit denser. Up on the main mountain was definitely where the best snow was located, and skier traffic was quite light. It’s March after all, and since this wasn’t an obvious slam dunk storm cycle, I’m sure there were many folks that opted not to make the trip to the mountain for conditions that probably could have gone either way.
Dylan and Colin blast their way down the Wilderness Liftline today amidst continued heavy snowfall from Winter Storm Sage
Continuing on overnight, Winter Storm Sage brought an additional resurgence of heavy snowfall into the area this morning. So, combined with somewhat limited lift service at Bolton Valley on Tuesday due to power outages, today was an obvious day to get out for turns. Dylan was off from school for his second snow day in a row, and since it initially didn’t look like Colin would be able to join him for skiing, he and I headed up to the hill to catch the opening of the Vista Quad. Snowfall was probably in the inch per hour range at that point, so the Bolton Valley Access Road was a bit slick, and we encountered a couple of vehicles having trouble on the ascent.
Colin sends up a wall of white as he slashes his was down the steep headwall of the Wilderness Liftline today
Areas up around the ridgeline of the resort were getting hit pretty hard by the wind, so the new snow was heavily wind packed up there, but once you were down a couple hundred feet, most areas were fine. Surface snow depths I measured were generally around 20 inches on the low end, up toward 30 inches on the high end, and that seemed to fit pretty well with the resort’s reported 32” storm total. While the initial forecasts for Winter Storm Sage looked fairly lean in the Northern Greens, accumulations ultimately approached 3 feet, and the snowpack depth at the Mt. Mansfield Stake took a healthy jump up to 90 inches. Winter Storm Sage wound up being a solid storm cycle up and down the spine of the Green Mountains, with roughly 3 to 4 feet of accumulation. The north to south listing of available storm totals from the Vermont ski areas tells the tale:
At times on the mountain today, especially late morning, we were getting hit with larger flakes for increased loft in accumulations, but there was still plenty of dense snow present as well. When you’re nearing 3 feet of dense snow like that, the name of the game was still to hit steepest terrain for the best turns, so Dylan and I started off with a run of Vermont 200. After only that one run, we ran into Colin at the base of the Vista Quad, and our posse just continued to grow as the morning went on to include Parker, Parker’s dad, and Jesuin. We found excellent conditions on Cobrass, and Maria’s was outstanding – most specifically the initial steep section due to the pitch being a great fit for the substantial depth of the moderately dense snow.
With almost three feet of snow from Winter Storm Sage, the steepest terrain was the place to be today, as Dylan demonstrates on a steep pitch of Maria’s glades.
While the Wilderness Double Chair was schedule for a midmorning opening, it wasn’t until midday or so that it actually opened. Wilderness offered up the clear highlight of the day in the form of the headwall of the Wilderness Liftline. That terrain isn’t usually open, because it’s very steep. It’s so steep, ledgy, and exposed to the wind that it rarely holds snow. I don’t believe it’s even officially a trail. Although the very top is usually roped off by patrol, you can access lower parts of it by traversing in from the surrounding trees. As we passed over it on the lift, it was clear that coverage below the first several yards was excellent, so we traversed in below that point to check it out. It delivered some classic steep and deep, and more than once I heard some of the boys proclaim that was the steepest powder they’d ever skied. Ski patrol clearly felt that the entire slope was safely skiable, and by our next run, the rope was opened and everyone was diving in from the very top. The energy and excitement of the folks on the slope, and those right above you on the lift (the snowpack is high enough that you needed appropriate timing to stay clear of people on the lift at the entry) was quite palpable.
With storm after storm affecting the area, the mountain snowpack is getting deep and buildings like the Mountain Market in the Village are starting to disappear as the snow on the roofs begins to merge with the snow on the ground.
Although the lower slopes of Wilderness are too shallow in pitch to support skiing in 2 plus feet of dense powder, they did offer another highlight of the day. The parts of the Wilderness Liftline that had been groomed were substantially lower than the surrounding areas of the trail that had not been groomed, so it provided a kicker to use if you wanted to jump into the powder. The boys started launching powder bombs as they threw themselves off the side of the trail, and eventually everyone got into it and was burying themselves silly. It was great fun all around and made for lots of hilarious GoPro footage. Action photography was definitely tough yesterday with the heavy snowfall, but we still our best to document the great outing in one of the top winter storms of the season thus far.
A view of the Timberline Base Lodge this morning with 18 inches of snow having already fallen from Winter Storm Sage
In Bolton’s early morning report they were indicating 3 to 4 inches of new snow from Winter Storm Sage, but little did they know, by the afternoon the storm would already have dropped several times that amount. The Winter Storm Warnings from the National Weather Service in Burlington started including counties farther and farther into the northern parts of Vermont as the storm drew closer, and that was definitely a sign that there was going to be a bit more impact in the Northern Greens than the weather models had initially suggested. Here at our house in Waterbury, the snowfall really started to pick up today in the midmorning period. We began to get very large snowflakes with diameters in the 3 to 4-inch range, and those flakes were accompanied by very heavy snowfall rates; over the course about 30 minutes, we picked up roughly half a foot of new snow.
Some of the morning accumulations from Winter Storm Sage down at the Timberline Base Lodge.
It looked like Bolton had been hit with similar intense snowfall rates, and it was obvious that there was far more than the initial few inches when I headed up to Timberline for a ski tour this afternoon. My depth checks from the Timberline Base at 1,500 feet were indicating 12 to 16 inches of new snow. I wasn’t sure if there was going to be much additional accumulation with elevation, but by the time I hit 2,500 feet, my measurements were in the 15 to 18-inch range. Bolton’s snow report update from later in the day had their accumulations topping out at 18 inches, so that fit well with my observations.
A little ski traffic from folks who were out touring at Timberline today
The actual skiing itself was rather interesting. On my ascent it was already obvious that the snow wasn’t at all wet at elevation. It was fairly dense though, with small flakes falling during my tour. With those small flakes falling atop the accumulation of the larger ones that would have fallen during that midmorning, the powder wasn’t perfectly right-side-up. It wasn’t exactly upside-down either, but there was an element of that in the powder, and combined with a foot and a half of new depth, it added some extra challenge. When you’re on 115 mm boards and you’re feeling like they might not be wide enough, that’s saying something. While I didn’t personally see anything slide or even slough when I was out on my tour today, I did feel tinges of spookiness of steeper slopes, with part of that coming from the slightly imperfect density profile. It didn’t come as a complete surprise when I saw the following in Bolton’s updated snow report:
Urgent Message From Patrol: Avalanche hazard present at this time. If travelling on terrain (especially uphill routes and backcountry) follow appropriate avalanche precautions and gear up accordingly.
So, be careful if you are riding in potentially hazardous spots in the near future with this current snowpack. And unfortunately, the best skiing really is on the steepest terrain right now. I could tell on my ascent that I was going to need some serious pitch to get a quality descent, so I dropped in on the Tattle Tale Headwall, and it certainly delivered. We’ll see what the back side of this storm cycle does for the snow profile, but for now, you’re going to want at least black diamond pitches for the best turns in undisturbed snow. Indeed, if you’re planning to head out for turns tomorrow on anything that hasn’t been tracked, bring your fattest boards and hit the steepest terrain you can find. Conditions should be great though, because we’re in the process of getting another massive resurfacing of the slopes, and its already atop a surface that didn’t really even need it.
Ty blasts his way through some of today’s fresh powder in Bolton’s Timberline area today. Thanks to plenty of liquid equivalent in this recent snow from Winter Storm Quest, you could charge as hard as you wanted on even the steepest terrain and get soft, reliable turns.
I’m not sure exactly when the snow from Winter Storm Quest started up around here, but it was well into the overnight hours, and I’m not even sure if I saw any accumulation before midnight. So, waking up this morning to find over 8 inches on the boards for 6:00 A.M. CoCoRaHS observations meant that the snow must have been coming down in the 1 to 2 inch per hour range. There were plenty of large flakes falling at that point, and this morning’s liquid analysis revealed that the water content in the snow was 8.5%, or a snow to liquid ratio of approximately 11 or 12 to 1.
Ty and I got up to the hill just about the time of the opening of the Timberline Quad, and had a great bunch of runs while we waited for Dylan and Colin to join us. During those morning runs, it was quickly obvious that the new snow that had fallen had laid in a massive resurfacing of the slopes. The snow was actually on the dense side due to fairly small flakes up at Bolton Valley, and I’d say it was running a bit above 10% H2O up there. The snow was dense enough that you wanted terrain on the steeper side to really have a good flow on the descent, and that was fine, because in terms of sufficient coverage of the base snow and any underlying obstacles, it didn’t matter how steep the terrain was. On piste, off piste, it didn’t matter; just pick the steepest lines you could find, ski as aggressively as you wanted, and you weren’t hitting the subsurface. We tested many of the steepest lines available on Timberline like the Spell Binder headwall and the Tattle Tale Headwall, and they skied beautifully. We hit steep off piste lines that I don’t usually find to be that great because their pitch is often too much for the quality of the snow or achieving bottomless skiing, and it just didn’t matter.
Dylan tweaks some style into one of his jumps in Doug’s Woods during today’s ski outing at Bolton Valley
In terms of surface snow depths, our checks in the 1,500’ to 2,500’ elevation range were about 15 inches if we had to pick a best estimate, but it was really hard to tell exactly how much snow came from just this storm. The new snow was sitting atop snow from other recent storms, and it all just continues to stack and set up excellent surfaces. It snowed all morning, so that kept piling on new snow to the accumulations as well. Total snowpack depth is 40 inches or more above 2,500’, and the snowpack depth at the Mt. Mansfield stake being over 60 inches speaks to that.
Colin spraying around some of that powder on today’s excellent ski outing
Later in the morning we finally met up with Dylan and Colin, and we just went around hitting some of our favorite steepest off piste lines all over the mountain. Timberline had no lift queue for essentially the whole morning, but after about midday, the temperature at those lowest elevations seemed to creep up toward freezing and the snow became even a bit denser. It was somewhat subtle, but you could tell when you skied a run that the powder in the lowest elevations was a bit thicker than it was above 2,000’. After most of the morning at Timberline, we focused on the main mountain for the early afternoon where everything was above 2,000’, just in case Timberline continued to warm and the powder got wet.
Today’s powder had plenty of substance to it, but as Ty shows, it you could still spray it around with ease.
We joined up with Parker and his dad for a final run on the main mountain before making a big long run all the way down from the Vista Summit to the Timberline Base. Temperatures clearly hadn’t gotten too high to really ruin the powder because it was still fine all the way to the Timberline Base at 1,500’. Ty, Dylan, Parker and I finished off our day around midafternoon with a visit to the Timberline Base Lodge and some great food from El Gato, and we definitely felt like we’d earned a good meal with the energy we’d put into the day’s skiing.
It continued to snow most of the day, and after a bit of a lull around midday, the snowfall picked right back in the afternoon to the level it had been in the morning. So, we knew there was definitely more accumulation on the way. Back down at the house at 500’ that afternoon we could see that temperatures had definitely gone above freezing because some of the new snow had settled, but the mountain elevations seemed to fare quite well with respect to any melting or settling.
Parker surfs along through some of that bottomless powder out there today at Bolton Valley
Today had been looking like a good ski day for quite a while. The cold air was moving out to bring our temperatures back up into the 20s F, and low pressure from the Ontario/Quebec border passing southeast across our region looked to bring us more fresh snow. The weather models had been showing a nice shot of liquid equivalent coming into the area, and it seemed to hold some potential for a nice topping off of the current powder that’s out there.
I was working on some exam questions in the early morning in my home office and had the blinds closed, but I eventually finished off a section and decided to take a break. I opened the blinds to find that we were getting hit with heavy snowfall made up of some massive flakes that were nearly 2 inches across at times. The forecast did call for some snow starting around 10:00 A.M., but this was a bit early, and the intensity was impressive. A quick measurement out back revealed that the snow was falling at a rate of around 2”/hr., and it was stacking up fast and dry with that typical consistency of upslope champagne.
Colin catching some air in one of our tree lines today.
For today’s ski session, the plan was to head out with Dylan, Colin, and Parker, and there’s nothing like seeing the heavy snow pounding outside your window to kick the mood up a notch. I didn’t wake Dylan up immediately because I wanted to make sure he had the sleep he needed, but when I did check on him a bit later it turned out he’d been up anyway. He hadn’t opened his blinds, but he’d already gotten a text and picture from Colin; the same huge flakes had been pounding down at his place as well.
With the new snow not coming in until mid-morning, we’d planned on a late morning start up at Bolton Valley. That timing worked out well, because they’d already picked up a few additional inches from the intense snowfall. And, the snow that had just fallen was the perfect consistency to top off all the powder that was already out there – my morning liquid analyses from the house revealed that the snow came in at just 1 to 2% H2O. So, it was incredibly dry and set up some excellent right-side-up, bottomless powder skiing.
Dylan slicing and dicing his way among today’s fantastic powder up at BoltonParker blasts his way through one of the many tree lines we hit today among all the new snow at Bolton Valley.
I had a tour planned that brought the boys around to some of the lesser used areas of the resort, so they had a great time and got to ski plenty of untracked powder. I’d say powder depths we encountered were generally in the range of about a foot, and there’s well over an inch of liquid equivalent in that surface snow now. With the new champagne on top, it skied quite well and was typically bottomless in the case of first tracks. You’re still hitting bottom at times on the steepest slopes, but that old base is becoming more and more distant with every one of these storms that comes through the area. On that note, it appears as though we’ve got another storm cycle on the doorstep for tonight into tomorrow.
Gearing up in the Bolton Valley Village today for my ski tour, I could see the signs of recent snows from the past few days.
The very cold air was still in place today here in the Northern Greens, but we also had some fresh snow moving in with a bit of weak upper-level vorticity pushing through the area. Temperatures at elevation looked like they would stay in the single digits F, so ski touring once again seemed to be the call vs. riding the lifts.
We’d picked up a half-inch or so of new snow down at the house when I headed up to Bolton Valley in the mid to late afternoon. Flakes had been small throughout the storm, so accumulations were coming in a bit on the denser side at around 10 to 12% H2O. I found the same type of snowfall up on the hill, although it was coming down with a bit more intensity. You could see that vehicles had taken on some decent accumulations from the day’s snowfall up to that point.
My ski tour was over in the Holden’s Hollow area, and my initial descent was down through some of the C Bear Woods and Holden’s Hollow West Side Glades that I’ve hit many times before. Based on yesterday’s Wilderness tour, the sweet spot for best turns based on the depth and consistency of the powder seemed to be those mid-angle slopes, so that’s what I was seeking out. Today I was touring at relatively low elevation in the 2,000’ to 2,500’ range, and depth measurements revealed a similar 8 to 10” of powder to what I’d seen yesterday. That surface snow was bolstered a bit by what was falling, but the liquid equivalent from that snow was only about a tenth of an inch, so it wasn’t a major addition. Those mid-angle slopes delivered once again though, with generally bottomless turns on 115 mm fat skis. I mixed things up a bit on the tour to explore some new terrain and continued my descent on the back side of the ridge down below the Telemark trail to the Maple Loop area. I then joined back on to a lower part of the Telemark trail and looped back around to the Holden’s Hollow area again to finish off with a front side descent.
The Google Earth map with GPS tracking data for today’s tour on the Bolton Valley Nordic and Backcountry Network
Although temperatures weren’t supposed to be all that different from what they were on Friday, I think they were a few degrees warmer, and with the absence of those 30 to 50 MPH winds, the difference was dramatic. The air was quite calm while I was touring, and the snow was falling straight down, so the overall conditions were just much more comfortable and easy to handle.
Skis all lined up at one of the houses along the Wilderness Chair and ready to go out into all the new snow that’s fallen from Winter Storm Olive.
I didn’t have an opportunity to get out on the hill yesterday to ski the new snow from Winter Storm Olive, but Dylan and Colin were out at Bolton, so they filled me in and I was able to see some of their GoPro footage. It was clear from their comments and videos that as of yesterday morning, the storm certainly hadn’t put down enough liquid equivalent for a full resurfacing of the slopes. Low to moderate-angle terrain was skiing quite well, and I saw some really nice footage of the potential for powder turns there, but it was obvious that on the steep stuff you were quickly down to that hard subsurface, especially if there had been even a bit of preceding skier traffic.
As of this morning though, our area has definitely picked up more snow than what was present on the boy’s outing. After the lull during the middle of the day yesterday, the snow picked back up in the evening and we had continuous snowfall to varying degrees right through much of today. There was little if any mixed precipitation that I saw down at our house, although I think there was a bit of sleet in one of rounds of accumulation later in the day yesterday, because my wife said she heard some ticks on the window, and the snow was on the denser side when I ran the liquid analysis. Here at our site, we’ve picked up over ⅔” of liquid equivalent from the storm as of this evening, and I’d say Bolton must have picked up over an inch of liquid equivalent based on the amount of new snow they’ve reported and my experience from the mountain today. As of this morning, the Bolton Valley snow report was indicating 12” of new snow in the past 72 hours.
A classic scene from one of the condominiums in the Bolton Valley Village with drifting snow from Winter Storm Olive
When I headed up to the mountain for a tour this morning, it was snowing here at the house, but the intensity of the snowfall increased notably as I headed up in elevation. Although the flakes were relatively small, the snowfall rate up in the Bolton Valley Village at around 2,000’ was moderate to heavy. In addition, that snowfall was being driven by hefty winds. Winds were in the 30 to 50 MPH range, certainly hitting those upper numbers in gusts when I was up on the ridgeline above 3,000’. Temperatures were in the single digits F, so between the temperature, the winds, and the snowfall, it was downright nasty out there. I was quite comfortable while touring, but even with my hat, I kept my hood on for much of the tour ascent, so that speaks to the effects of those low temperatures and winds. Plenty of people were arriving in the morning to ride the lifts, but that must have been rough, and I was very happy to be down low to the ground out of the winds and generating plenty of extra heat.
“We’re now well past just the low angle terrain being optimal, and with the cold temperatures today and the increasing snow depths, low angle terrain was actually a bit slow. Mid-angle terrain was probably the sweet spot today, and steep terrain was actually nice as well if it was untracked or had seen minimal skier traffic.”
With its schedule, the Wilderness Chair hasn’t run since the storm started, so it was the obvious place to tour today for the best access to untracked snow. Throughout my tour, surface snow depths I measured were generally in the 8-10” range, with no big changes with respect to elevation. As of today, we’ve definitely moved beyond the level of resurfacing that my son experienced yesterday morning. We’re now well past just the low angle terrain being optimal, and with the cold temperatures today and the increasing snow depths, low angle terrain was actually a bit slow. Mid-angle terrain was probably the sweet spot today, and steep terrain was actually nice as well if it was untracked or had seen minimal skier traffic. You’re not going bottomless on steep terrain that’s seen substantial skier traffic yet; we’re going to need to get more liquid equivalent down atop the snowpack before that happens. But, the existing base is deep (depth is now 50” at the Mt. Mansfield Stake), there’s tons of terrain that was sufficiently resurfaced by this storm, and it looks like there are more potential storms in the pipeline in the coming days that could affect the area as well.
A view of the hotel this morning in the Bolton Valley Village with drifts of snow from Winter Storm Olive.
Some of today’s snowfall as I enjoy the views on my trip through the Nebraska Valley up to the Catamount Trail
With the strong snowpack in the area now, I decided to head out to the Nebraska Valley for some ski touring today. The last time I toured in the Nebraska Valley I was on the valley’s north side, but I’ve now heard from multiple students of mine that the south side of the valley offers some great skiing off the Catamount Trail. I didn’t have too much information beyond the fact that you can just use the Catamount Trail as a collector for the ski terrain in the area, but it sounded pretty straightforward, fun, and convenient.
I was able to park right at the Catamount Trail parking area on the south side of Nebraska Valley Road, so the trail access was very easy. It had started snowing around midday, and there was steady snowfall through much of my tour in the afternoon. Following the Catamount Trail southward, the options for great backcountry skiing are indeed very obvious. From the trailhead at an elevation of ~1,000’, the trail rises at a moderate grade for about 400 feet of vertical over the course of perhaps ¾ of a mile, and then the terrain flattens out into a relatively broad valley with the main drainage on your left, and steep slopes rising up to your right. The slopes consist of very open hardwood forest throughout, with tree spacing in many areas as much as 20 or 30 feet. I couldn’t see all the way to the top of the terrain, but there must be hundreds of acres there with very obvious ski lines, and the fact that there were tracks coming down out of this terrain suggested that it held good potential. At around a mile from the trailhead I came to the first obvious skin track that headed up off the Catamount Trail into these slopes, so using that was a clear option for some great runs.
I was able to enjoy gorgeous midwinter views of the ice and snow on the local tributary of Miller Brook as I made my way up the Catamount Trail.
I just happened to run into one of my students descending on the Catamount Trail as he and his group were finishing up their session for the day, and he said that if I had the time, I should head higher up because the snow was better. Being my first time in the area, I did want to take a long enough tour to get the lay of the land, so I continued another mile or so and toured up to around 2,500’. The snow was indeed even better higher up, but the tree lines weren’t as open as the beautiful looking terrain I’d seen lower down. That higher elevation terrain was plenty steep, and certainly offered decent skiing, but I’d say those initial slopes rising from the valley at around 1,500’ are the best bang for your buck as long as the snowpack and snow quality are good at those elevations.
It was snowing quite hard up at 2,500’ when I began my descent, hard enough that I would have been worried about being out there in such weather if I didn’t know the forecast wasn’t calling for sustained accumulations. The snow had added another couple of inches to top off the snowpack, which certainly helped make the powder even a bit fresher. Temperatures had been cold much of the afternoon, but on my descent I quickly realized that the freezing level had risen. I descended out of the heavy snowfall down into mixed precipitation by ~1,500’, and just sprinklings of rain down at the trailhead elevations of ~1,000’. I was glad that I’d finished my tour by that point because the lower elevation snow was definitely getting sticky and more difficult to ski.
A Google Earth map with GPS tracking data of today’s backcountry ski tour along the Catamount Trail in the Nebraska Valley
