Tag: White Rabbit

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Bolton Valley, VT 04MAR2023

An image of Dylan catching some air while dropping into the KP Cliffs area of Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont during Winter Storm Quest
An image of Ty jumping in powder snow in the trees during Winter Storm Quest at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
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.

An image of Dylan jumping in powder snow from Winter Storm Quest at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
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.

An image of Colin spraying powder while skiing in the trees during Winter Storm Quest at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
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.

An image of Ty spraying powder while skiing during Winter Storm Quest at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
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.

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Bolton Valley, VT 26FEB2023

An image of Dylan performing a twisting jump among the powder while skiing in the trees at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
An image of Parker skiing in bottomless powder snow at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont
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.

An image of Colin jumping amidst the powder while tree skiing at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
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.

An image of Dylan skiing powder snow among the trees at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Dylan slicing and dicing his way among today’s fantastic powder up at Bolton
An image of Parker blasting his way through a tree while tree skiing in powder after a storm at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont
Parker 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.

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Bolton Valley, VT 06MAR2021

An image from a parking area in the Village on a typical ski day in March at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
An image of the Hotel in the Village at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
The snow atop the Bolton Valley Hotel reveals the layers upon layers of snow in the snowpack from the past couple months of winter storms in the area.

It would have been great if the  upslope system we’ve had in the area over the past couple of days delivered more than an inch or two of new snow, but putting that on top of the 9” from the midweek event has definitely kept the off piste conditions respectable at Bolton Valley.  The resorts is reporting 11” new in the past week, and the bulk of that must be the sum of those two events.  Not surprisingly, that powder has settled a bit over the past few days, and that actually helps out somewhat with respect to how it skis.  When that first round had fallen on Wednesday, it really was so incredibly dry that you sank right through it and got down to that relatively firm subsurface, but the settling, and the addition of a couple more inches that wasn’t quite as dry, gives you a bit more underfoot to cushion things.

I was hearing noise from skiers and riders even on low angle groomed terrain today, and it wasn’t as if it was horribly icy, but the noise revealed that there was at least something firm there.  It could just be a traffic issue on the groomed slopes – I’m not sure how much liquid equivalent the mountain ultimately got from the two rounds of snow, but it probably wasn’t more than a quarter of an inch, and that’s only going to hold up so long with on piste skier traffic.

I focused my time in the trees today, and I found the conditions there were far superior to the groomed terrain.  I spent my time exploring more of the sidecountry off Wilderness that I’d visited last Saturday.  There was plenty of snow for good powder turns on low-angle terrain, and even moderate and steep terrain weren’t too bad where people had skied and sort of packed the new snow into the base.  The trees were the place to be though – the snow was protected from the wind in there, and I’d say there was plenty that had been blow off the trails as well.

An image showing the view from the Wilderness at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
A northward view from the Wilderness Summit looking out toward Mt. Mansfield that’s just barely visible though the gray clouds and light snow that covered the sky much of the afternoon

Temperatures were in the mid-teens F when I was out this afternoon, which is certainly nothing to complain about in terms of cold, but there was plenty of wind around, especially up high.  We had some peeks of sun, but in general it was cloudy with some light flakes in the air, and it just sort of had the feel of a hum drum midwinter day.  Being in the trees meant that I was out of the wind, but as I’ve heard other folks around here expressing, I could certainly use some warmth.  I definitely found myself missing the nice temperatures up around the freezing mark that I encountered last Saturday, even if that storm did bring a touch of mixed precipitation.

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Bolton Valley, VT 27FEB2021

An image of sidecountry terrain with powder near Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
I was quite surprised to find bottomless powder and a lack of crust out there on the mountain today as I made some sidecountry explorations off the Wilderness Chair.

I gotta say, the turns were really nice out there today.

Ty and Dylan had hit the mountain on Wednesday and reported nice soft conditions thanks to some warming temperatures, but then E was out Thursday night and said the snow was quite hard and icy, at least on piste where she had been skiing on the main mountain.  I figured that made sense with temperatures cooling back down, and that’s what I thought would be the theme out there on the mountain today.

But there was also all that great snow that PF reported on from Thursday as well, which was at least 8” up above 2,000’, and Chasing Flakes said it was feeling like 10”+ at Jay Peak.  It was hard to know what to think, and I was somewhat ambivalent about skiing today.  But then while I was working on the computer this morning, I checked the Bolton snow report, saw that they’d picked up 6” in the past 48 hours, and read this text in their detailed report:

“Happy Saturday, Boltonites! Today is a great day to get some snow under your feet. We have 38 groomed trails for you this morning and tons of fresh snow still hiding in the woods. Yesterday afternoon there were sightings of 6 inch stashes of powder still in Sleepy Hollow woods and Bolton Outlaw woods!”

That sounded just a bit too good to pass up, and it tipped the scales to get me to head up to the hill.

An image of snow on the roof of the hotel in the Village at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Enjoying some of the interesting snowy views up in the Bolton Valley Village today

We’d been getting snow this morning at the house, but it had just started to transition over to mixed precipitation while I was getting ready to head to the mountain in the early afternoon.  The precipitation was generally sprinkles of light rain as I headed up to the Bolton Valley Access Road and eventually changed over to sleet as I rode the Wilderness Double Chair and got up near 3,000’.  During my second run, the mixed precipitation decided to change back to snow, and there was a nice period with some big fat flakes coming down.

“…I was pleasantly surprised to find all that bottomless snow out there today. I was thus able to probe the depth of the entire snowpack, and was typically getting depths of 30-40” in the 2,500’ – 3,000’ elevation range.”

Bolton definitely got in on that Thursday snow, and I think my wife must have just been on those wind scoured trails on the front face of the main mountain, because that’s not at all what I experienced at Wilderness.  The groomed slopes were quiet, and the off piste was covered with up to a foot of dense powder.  That seems like more fresh snow than there really should have been based on the snow report, so I’m not sure what to think.  I also couldn’t even find any signs of crust below the most recent snows, so I’m not sure what to think about that either.  I probed all over the place in the 2,000’ to 3,000’ elevation range, and the only real crust I found was a bit of sun crust on the surface of the snow in a couple of exposed areas.  Maybe this was one of those setups where the new snow comes in, starts out wet, and bonds to any crust below to sort of remove the demarcation of that layer a bit.  Whatever the case, I was pleasantly surprised to find all that bottomless snow out there today.  I was thus able to probe the depth of the entire snowpack, and was typically getting depths of 30-40” in the 2,500’-3,000’ elevation range.  That makes decent sense, with the snowpack now at 55” on Mansfield at 3,700’.

An image snowing the Branches area of the backcountry network at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Out in the Branches area of the Bolton Valley Backcountry Network today

I spent my entire session at Wilderness this afternoon, and the Wilderness sidecountry and nearby backcountry terrain have actually seen a decent amount of skier traffic.  Seeing that, and being alone with plenty of time to explore whatever I wanted, I decided to go a bit farther afield, hitting a lot of terrain beyond White Rabbit, Snow Hole, and Jamie’s.  Being on mid fat Tele gear, I figured I’d just see where my travels took me in search of untracked powder, and if I ended up on the backcountry network, I’d just skate my way back to the Wilderness Chair as needed.  It actually ended up being a bit of a revelation with regard to traveling in that area, because on my first run, I hit Gardiner’s Lane, and then simply followed it until I came to the junction with Snow Hole.  All it took was probably 60 seconds to herring bone up to the Snow Hole return to the Wilderness Chair, so as long as you’re on something with good mobility like reasonably light Tele gear, you can easily return to the base of the Wilderness Chair.  I even discovered a new area in my explorations today called “Branches” off to the right of Snow Hole.  I guess people are always putting in their own little areas out on the backcountry network, so I don’t know how long that’s been around, but it’s always fun to find new areas for skiing that you didn’t know about.

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Bolton Valley, VT 09MAR2019

An image of Dylan wearing a silver ski goggle lens on a sunny day at the Timberline Base of Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
An image of Dylan skiing powder snow in the Snow Hole area at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont
Dylan in the snow hole area at Bolton Valley today, working his way through some of the powder from the past few days

It’s been quite a cold week with low temperatures in the single digits above and below zero F, but as of today the weather is warming up to be a bit more in tune with March.  Like yesterday, the forecast for today was absolutely clear, and with temperatures expected to edge into the 30s F, Dylan, E, and I headed up to Bolton Valley to catch a few afternoon runs.  The temperature was in the mid-30s F at our house in the valley, and right around the freezing mark when we arrived up at 1,500’ at the Timberline Base.

The mountain has picked up 8 inches of new snow in the past three days, but I was unsure about how well it would cover up the old base.  It turned out to be fine, and the powder was in great shape at all elevations aside from the sunniest spots where it had been affected a bit by the warmth.  My depth checks on the upper mountain typically revealed about 8 inches of powder, so the mountain probably picked up a bit more than that before settling.

An image of Erica skiing powder in the Snow Hole area at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont
Telemark turns, blue skies, and powder this afternoon for E!

“My depth checks on the upper mountain typically revealed about 8 inches of powder, so the mountain probably picked up a bit more than that before settling.”

The lower elevations of Timberline were nicely warming in the afternoon sun to produce some beautifully soft surfaces on the groomed runs, but we didn’t really find any snow that had lost its winter consistency. We ventured all the way over to Wilderness and in those high elevations we found some nice powder on White Rabbit and Snow Hole.  Even down in the Timberline elevations we found that the KP Glades held a multitude of fresh lines through dry powder.

An image of the Waffle Cabin and skis at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
The waffle cabin, adored with skis and starting to disappear under the snow, was a huge hit with today’s gorgeous weather based on the size of the line out front.

Starting tonight we’ve got Winter Storm Taylor moving into the area, which should bring some fresh snow to the slopes for tomorrow.  The forecast indicates that the upslope snow on the back side of the storm cycle should continue right through Tuesday.

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Bolton Valley, VT 23FEB2019

An image of Dylan Telemark skiing in powder on Maria's at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont
An image of a ski pole in the snowpack at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Dylan and I were very impressed when we tried to check on the depth of the new powder from this week. We couldn’t quite a good measurement because the new snow simply blended in with old, but we were impressed with the fact that we could stick our poles into the snowpack right up to the handle and beyond. The Bolton Valley snowpack is deep!

This week wasn’t especially snowy, but we had at least some modest accumulations, with Bolton Valley reporting 9 inches during the period.  Overall ski conditions have been quite good as of late though, so we expected there to be plenty of good powder skiing in the usual stashes with just these recent rounds of snow.

E and Ty were both a bit under the weather, but Dylan and I headed up to the mountain with our Tele skis for a good session of powder turns and exploration.  Temperatures were really nice, well into the upper 20s F for our midmorning arrival at Timberline.

D and I put together what was essentially a truncated version of the great session that the family had last Saturday.  We hit the whole breadth of the mountain, traveling all the way from the bottom of Timberline over to the top of Wilderness, and back again.  We hit powdery favorites like White Rabbit, Snow Hole, The Crack, and Maria’s.  Dylan was skiing really well on his Telemark skis, and it was fun to watch him developing the wherewithal to throw in alpine turns among his Tele turns whenever he’d be in a tight space that called for it.

An image of Dylan Telemark skiing in powder at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont.
Dylan enjoys surfing some of that powder out there today in the trees at Bolton Valley.

We caught some really nice powder turns, and it was hard to say exactly how much of the surface snow was new, but it was certainly several inches.  We had fun checking snow depths around the 3,000’ mark, and you could simply push your pole down into the snow right up to the handle… and then keep going deeper if you wanted to.  While the powder today wasn’t quite as fresh as what we experienced last weekend, it’s all just great skiing at this point. 

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Bolton Valley, VT 16FEB2019

An image of Ty skiing powder with Dylan and Erica looking on in the KP Glades area at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont
An image of Dylan skiing powder in the Villager Trees area of Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont
Dylan in the Villager Trees floating through some of the 25 inches Bolton picked up over the last three days.

In the past 72 hours Mother Nature has dropped 25 inches of snow on Bolton Valley, and with the first part of that accumulation coming in quite dense, it’s been a great resurfacing of the slopes.  The bulk of the snow came from Winter Storm Maya during the early part of the week, and the last few inches came from a slightly warmer storm that hit the area yesterday.  That system brought freezing levels above the base elevations of the local resorts, so we were eager to see how that played out with respect to the quality of the snow surfaces.

“In the past 72 hours Mother Nature has dropped 25 inches of snow on Bolton Valley, and with the first part of that accumulation coming in quite dense, it’s been a great resurfacing of the slopes.”

We got to Timberline not long after the opening of the Timberline Quad, and encountered some briefly heavy snowfall that ended up sticking around in lighter intensity much of the morning to add a bit of freshening to the slopes.  Temperatures were forecast to be in the mid-20s F, but it certainly felt a bit colder than that with the snowfall and some wind.  We kicked off the day with an initial top-to-bottom run on Timberline to get a sense for how high the freezing line had gone yesterday, and the effects were definitely a gradient with respect to elevation.  There was no obvious sharp line to note, but above 2,000 the effects seemed to be fairly minimal.  Even below that elevation though, the mountain has seen several additional inches of accumulation, so there actually was great powder skiing all the way down to 1,500’.  The areas that created the most trouble in our experience were where grooming had kicked up some chunks of dense snow to create an irregular subsurface.

An image of big flakes of snwo falling at the Timberline base area at Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont
Some fairly heavy snowfall greeting us this morning as we arrive at Timberline

We headed over to the main mountain to take advantage of the additional elevation and catch some lunch after a bit more skiing.  We had a great run on White Rabbit and Snow Hole, and indeed the depths of powder and quality of the subsurface just kept getting better and better the higher you went.  We relaxed with a good lunch at the James Moore Tavern, and seemed to get in there just before it started getting busy.

An image of Erica deep in the powder skiing the KP Glades area of Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont
E blasting away some of the powder as she drops a steep pitch in the KP Glades

After lunch we headed up The Crack, found a lot of nice powder in Maria’s, then worked our way back to Timberline.  We were still finding a lot of powder even at that point in the day, so we hung around for some additional Timberline runs, catching things like the Tattle Tale headwall, that was looking very steep and appealing to Dylan, and then some fun and games in the KP Glades where everyone seemed to get themselves covered in powder through various crashes or others purposely lacing them with the white stuff.

It is technically a holiday weekend, and while the resort was bustling, lift queues were almost nonexistent since the entire resort is open and everyone is well spread out.  We even got word from Stowe that while the free days on our passes were certainly working there, the resort was really busy due to the holiday, so people should be prepared for that.  Overall though, it’s just great that the resorts are getting such excellent conditions for a big holiday weekend and upcoming vacation week.

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Bolton Valley, VT 05JAN2019

An image of Ty skiing powder in White Rabbit area of Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont
Ty enjoys the great weather and takes in some powder today on our visit to Bolton Valley

With help from our most recent winter storm, Bolton Valley is reporting 6 to 9 inches of new snow over the past several days, so Ty and I decided to head up today to ski a bit of that powder.  We got to the Village in the late morning, and were surprised to find the upper parking lots were hitting capacity.  We poked around in the lots for a bit though, and eventually got a spot from someone who was leaving.  Parking at the main base was at an unusual premium today because there was a big Nordic race taking place.  They certainly had a really fantastic day for the event – the sky was a mix of sun and clouds, and temperatures were just edging above freezing at the 2,000’ level.

An image of snow banks in the parking lots near the village at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Fresh snow covering snow banks today in the busy Bolton Valley parking lot

With temperatures expected to rise a few degrees above freezing, Ty and I quickly got on our way over to Wilderness to make sure we could get in some powder turns before any potential temperature effects on the snow.  We started off with a warm up on Bolton Outlaw, connecting down to the Wilderness Woods area and Lower Turnpike, where we found plenty of powder along the edges of the runs.  I was definitely leery of the subsurface on Bolton Outlaw based on my experience over at Timberline on Thursday, but I ended up being really impressed with the overall conditions we found.  The new snow has settled some and it’s now had a chance to form a much better bond to the underlying surface.  In addition, there’s definitely been some additional liquid equivalent added to the surface snow relative to what I found earlier in the week.  There was plenty of loose snow on Bolton Outlaw, but even when you got down to the subsurface there was substantial grip.  Steep, natural snow trails like Bolton Outlaw being in good shape bodes well for the overall surface conditions on the mountain, so it’s not surprising that most terrain has been reopened now.

“There was a good half foot or more of powder in there in general, and a nice subsurface that made for some excellent overall turns.”

Ty and I also visited White Rabbit, where we found just a couple of tracks and acres of fresh powder.  The freezing level was rising, so we had to start paying attention to aspect and sun protection, but the effects on the powder were still fairly minimal overall.  There was a good half foot or more of powder in there in general, and a nice subsurface that made for some excellent overall turns.

The forecast suggests we’ve got a small system coming in to the area tonight, and then another couple of larger systems in the coming week, so folks should be alert for more potential powder turns in the near future.

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Bolton Valley, VT 10MAR2018

An image of E and Dylan in the car at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
An image of Ty skiing powder in the Villager Trees area of Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont
Snowfall over the past few days has built up some great powder at Bolton Valley, and today was a day for getting out and finding it!

Although Bolton Valley was only reporting an inch of new snow in this morning’s report, they’ve picked up more than a foot of snow in the past couple of days from Winter Storm Quinn.  Combined with modest midweek skier traffic, that was already a recipe for some great skiing today, but even more snow was expected to arrive as the day wore on to further freshen up the slopes.

E and Dylan had some obligations in the morning, but Ty and I were free to ski and had plans to meet up with Stephen at the resort.  We parked at Timberline, alerted Stephen with a text, and headed up the Timberline Quad for a run.  Although I couldn’t find any slopes that hadn’t been thoroughly resurfaced at the resort during yesterday’s outing, I can finally say that I found at least one today.  I figured we could try a run on Lost Girlz, which would be a really tough test of the resurfacing.  Unfortunately, the combination of dense evergreen canopy above, and very steep pitch were too much; the coverage just wasn’t enough.  So, we high tailed it over to Tattle Tale for a run.  The snow was certainly good there, but in general it had seen much more traffic than usual because the Tattle Tale headwall was open.

An image of Ty skiing in the Villager Trees area of Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont
Fun in the Villager Trees

We met up with Stephen and did a full run of Tattle Tale so that we could really take in the headwall experience.  It was a bit windblown at the very top, but coverage was quite good overall and it was definitely worth the trip. 

An image of Stephen skiing in the Villager Trees area of Bolton Valley Resort in Vermont
Stephen getting just what he was looking for today… powder for his fat skis!

The rest of the morning was dedicated to getting Stephen some deep untracked powder, and that we delivered in spades with trips to The Crack, Villager Trees, and White Rabbit.  Stephen seemed quite happy floating around on his fat alpine touring skis.  The powder was easily a foot or more in untracked areas, and it was definitely delivering great turns with that right-side-up density gradient that Winter Storm Quinn had set up.  In addition, new snowfall was ramping right up as we approached midday due to an incoming mountain upslope snow event that’s developing in the area.

An image of a water bottle and some ski gloves at the Fireside Flatbread bar at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in VermontThe three of us headed to Fireside Flatbread for some lunch, and E and Dylan joined us for a bite once they arrived at the resort.  We all did a Cobrass/Five Corners run together before Stephen had to head back to pick up Johannes, and the rest of us finished off the day with some Timberline runs.  E and Dylan had skied Spell Binder earlier and it got a great recommendation.  It lived up to the expectations, especially that skier’s left that Dylan enjoyed ripping up so much.

“As mentioned earlier, the big weather news in the coming days is the mountain upslope snow event that’s poised to bring another hefty shot of snow to the area.”

As mentioned earlier, the big weather news in the coming days is the mountain upslope snow event that’s poised to bring another hefty shot of snow to the area.  There’s a vertically stacked low pressure sitting in Northern Maine, and that’s typically a great setup for snowfall in the Northern Greens when the low pressure wraps in deep moisture from the Atlantic.  You know there’s some potential for continued snowfall when the National Weather Service in Burlington speaks about difficulty in finding the off switch for the snowfall in their forecast discussion:

“Another good problem to have is trying to find the off switch to the upslope snow machine…looks like a brief break develops Sunday afternoon into Monday…before more accumulating snowfall for Tuesday into Weds.”

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Bolton Valley, VT 19FEB2018

An image of a ski track in powder snow in the White Rabbit area of Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
An image of the Glades Right area at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
The excellent snow conditions were still out there today at Bolton Valley, as were a lot of untracked areas of powder.

Although today really was the President’s Day holiday, it didn’t feel like it to me because everyone seemed to have to go to school or work anyway.  My plan was to head to the office as well, but being a holiday, it seemed silly to miss out on the fantastic ski conditions that are out there, so I had to stop in at Bolton Valley for a few runs en route.

Today was the third in a string of really nice ski days featuring soft, midwinter snow conditions and temperatures in the upper 20s F at elevation.  You really couldn’t ask for much better timing for all the visitors to the resort over this long holiday weekend.  Figuring that the powder from our recent storms would be pretty tracked out by the plentiful skier traffic from the big weekend, my plan was to just work the legs a bit with a few on piste Telemark runs. 

“…Only at Bolton Valley are you going to be able to find such a ridiculous amount of untracked powder after a busy holiday weekend.”

But, as soon as I started down Vermont 200 I started began to look off piste and saw that there was simply too much good snow out there to resist.  Once I got into the trees I was finding untracked lines everywhere, and that pretty much set the tone for the rest of my ski session today.

An image of the upper White Rabbit area at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Catching a beautiful untracked line through conifers in the upper part of White Rabbit.

I visited a number of spots that I hadn’t been in quite a while, including places like Glades Right, Snow Hole, and White Rabbit, and the skiing was so good that I had to visit some of them more than once.  I was amazed at how little traffic those places had seen as I glided my way through the powder and thought, “Only at Bolton Valley are you going to be able to find such a ridiculous amount of untracked powder after a busy holiday weekend.”  That’s of course one of the things that makes the mountain so great.