Bolton Valley, VT 20MAR2024

An image of a ski track in deep powder after a mid-March snowstorm brought over a foot of new snow to Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
An image of heavy snowfall at the Wilderness Summit area during a mid-March snowstorm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Solidly heavy snowfall at the Bolton Valley base area elevations today gave way to very heavy snowfall coming down at over 2 inches per hour in the summit areas

In Bolton Valley’s lift rotation schedule, today was the first time the Wilderness Chair would be running since the weekend, so it was a good place to be to get in on all the snow that’s fallen in the past couple of days. So, after ski touring yesterday, today seemed like a good opportunity for some lift-served turns with Wilderness thrown in.

It was snowing all the way down to the valleys this morning, but not necessarily accumulating too efficiently in the lower elevations. Up above 2,000’ in the Village though, snow was accumulating easily. Snowfall was moderate and steady in roughly the ½” to 1”/hr. range when I first arrived, but by the time I’d made my first run and worked my way over to Wilderness, it had picked up substantially to somewhere in the 2”/hr. range. It was the type of snowfall that covers you in white flakes in mere moments if you aren’t moving around on the lift enough to shake it off.

An image of the Valley Road area with powder ski tracks in additional snow that had fallen after grooming during a mid-March snowstorm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Even areas that had been groomed were taking on additional snow and had seen a solid resurfacing from all the recent snows.

As might be expected with substantial snow falling day after day, the ski conditions are excellent out there right now. There’s still firm snow that you can find on piste in high traffic areas and steeper slopes, but just head off to untracked or lightly tracked areas, and you won’t really be interacting at all with the old base. I found that even well-groomed areas could be really nice – my first run down Alta Vista was on the groomed surface, but it hadn’t seen much skier traffic at all, and there had been at least another couple of inches of snow since it was groomed, so the turns were all silky smooth with no noise anywhere. Off piste I found about a foot of powder up in the 3,000’ range, and slightly less down around 2,000’, but there’s enough liquid equivalent in all the new snow now that it will support bottomless turns throughout that elevation range.

Wilderness was skiing really well thanks to the especially low skier traffic in recent days, and they had Bolton Outlaw open, which I hadn’t skied in quite a while. It’s steep enough and has probably seen enough traffic from ski touring that I was still contacting the old base, but I was able to cut over to the steep terrain of the Wilderness Liftline Headwall, and that was nearly untracked and yielded excellent turns. The Wilderness Chair stopped three times in fairly short order when I was nearing the Wilderness Summit on one of my runs, and I thought that it might be due to wind issues, but the lift operator at the base let me know that it was just issues with people loading – apparently they were still working out the shape of the loading ramp there. All that new snow can bring about complications that I never would have thought of.

An image of evergreens coated with fresh snow during an ongoing mid-March snowstorm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Evergreens around the mountain today bore the fruits of continued rounds of recent snowfall.

The snowpack in the Northern Greens is in good shape – the depth at the Mt. Mansfield Stake passed 80 inches today, so these recent storms have helped it cruise right above average for this time of year. There’s still more snow in the forecast right through the weekend, so it wouldn’t be surprising if the snowpack depth increased further in the coming days.

A weather alert map from the National Weather Service office in Burlington Vermont  showing a Snow Squall Warning for the western slopes of the Northern Green Mountains during a mid-March period of repeated snowfall events
The rounds of snow just keep rolling through the area, and the Snow Squall Warning put out by the National Weather Service Office in Burlington is just what you’d expect as the heavy snow hits the western slopes of the Northern Greens

Bolton Valley, VT 17JAN2024

An image of a sign reading "DO NOT PILE SNOW HERE" amongst plentiful snow from Winter Storm Heather around some of the condominiums in the Village area at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
An image from the White Rabbit area in the sidecountry/backcountry terrain of Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont during the back side of Winter Storm Heather
This morning’s ski session was a mix of a little ski touring followed by some lift-served Wilderness turns, and the conditions in the frontcountry and sidecountry I explored are simply fantastic.

By observations time early this morning, the backside snows of Winter Storm Heather had departed and skies here at the house were partly cloudy. The clear skies didn’t really seem to jive with the imminent snow I saw in the forecast, but sure enough, clouds soon began to roll in, and within an hour, flakes were flying.

I decided to get in a quick morning session up at the mountain, and the snowfall continued to intensify as I ascended the Bolton Valley Access Road. Up in the Village there was steady snowfall, and while it wasn’t the pounding 1-2”/hour snowfall of yesterday, visibility dropped substantially and it felt like we were right back in the meat of the storm. It looks like today’s snow was rolling in from the lake effect snow event off to the west, so we thank our big friend Lake Ontario for that.

An image of moderately heavy snowfall coming down in front of some of the condominiums in the Village area of Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont thanks to some Ontario lake-effect moisture after the departure of Winter Storm Heather
Winter Storm Heather recently finished up, but today we were right back into the snows thanks to some extra moisture from our good friend Lake Ontario.

Wilderness was the hot ticket for skiing today, since the Wilderness Double Chair doesn’t run on Mondays and Tuesdays, and this was the first chance for lift-served access to all the recent snowfall from Winter Storm Heather. I decided to start off with a short workout ski tour using the Wilderness Uphill Route, then stuck around for a bit of lift-served skiing after that.

It’s getting a bit tougher to discern how much powder came specifically from Winter Storm Heather, since it’s just blending in with the layers below it as the subsurface is buried deeper and deeper, but the approximate powder depths I found today were as follows:

2,000’: 6-8”
2,500’: 8-10”
3,000’: 10-12”

There was definitely a bump in powder depths even compared to what we skied yesterday thanks to the additional overnight snow and the new snow that was falling. One obvious clue that depths had increased was the fact that the snow was now getting a bit too deep for low-angle terrain. Moderate angle and steeper terrain are now providing the best powder turns. I had a feeling we’d be getting to that point today, and indeed while I’d been on mid-fats for the past few days, today I bumped up to the fat skis and that was the correct call as long as you were skiing untracked snow.

Bolton Valley is indicating that they’ve picked up roughly 60 inches of snow since the start of the year, which is very solid snowfall total for the first half of the month. Heck, 60 inches of snow is respectable even for a full month’s total at many resorts.

An image of some condominiums with snow on the roof and more snow falling as moisture from Lake Ontario helps to reinvigorate snowfall up at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
We’re only halfway through the month, but Bolton Valley has already recorded 60 inches of snow this January, and Mother Nature seems to just want to keep the snow falling at every opportunity.