Tag: Wilderness

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Bolton Valley, VT 30NOV2025

An image of Ty telemark skiing in a few inches of powder from a couple of recent November storms at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
An image showing light snow falling in November near the Mountain Market in the Village Circle area at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Light snow falls in the Bolton Valley Village in the fading afternoon light as Ty and I finish up our ski tour today.

It was Winter Storm Bellamy that hit parts of the Midwest fairly hard yesterday to become TWC’s second named storm of the season, and then the system continued its eastward trek and started to affect our area by early this morning. Throughout the day it brought light snow to the area, and by the afternoon we’d picked up about an inch of accumulation in the valley. Coupled with the accumulations from the midweek system, I figured it would be worth a quick ski tour to see how the powder was building up in the higher elevations, so Ty and I headed up to Bolton Valley in the mid to late-afternoon.

We toured on the lower 2/3 of Wilderness and found a general 3 to 4 inches of powder coating the existing base in untracked areas. That seemed about what one might expect based on picking up a couple of inches from each of these past couple of systems, and conditions were actually a bit better than I’d expected because I was worried that the wind might have blown the snow around and left us with little powder to ski. Indeed the snow was fairly light and dry (my liquid analyses from the two storms averaged out to snow in roughly the 5% H2O range for liquid equivalent), so it was nowhere near enough for a full resurfacing, but it definitely offered up some nice turns on lower angle terrain. Most turns weren’t bottomless, but you’d get some here and there where the powder had settled in a bit deeper. This was certainly a case where denser snow would have made a huge difference in resurfacing, but there was only so much liquid equivalent with these past couple of systems in this area, so they could only do so much to cover the subsurface.

The next storm in the queue has been named Winter Storm Chan, and it looks like it could add a more substantial shot of snow to the slopes – Winter Storm Warnings and Winter Weather Advisories are going up throughout the area. So, on top of the snow that’s already fallen in the past few days, it definitely holds the potential to kick the conditions up another notch.

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Bolton Valley, VT 24NOV2025

An image of light snow accumulations from a November Alberta Clipper system in the Village area of Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
An image of heavy snow accumulations on an evergreen in November up around the 3000-foot elevation at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
We’ve had a number of winter storms so far this November, and many evergreens in the higher elevations are already holding onto heavy accumulations of snow.

The clipper system that came through the area over the past couple of days was relatively weak, but in general agreement with the forecast, we still picked up close to 2 inches of new snow at our site down in the Winooski Valley. I was up in the Bolton Valley Village yesterday, where it was snowing at a decent clip, and as of their evening snow report, they indicated that they’d already picked up 3 inches of new snow. I’m not sure how much more they picked up overnight, but at the pace the snow was falling, it seemed like it was worth taking a tour to check things out.

Valley temperatures were marginal for parts of the event, and as I headed up the Bolton Valley Access Road this morning, there weren’t any substantial signs of new snow until I’d reached roughly 1,000’ of elevation. After a couple of tours from Timberline’s lower base elevation over the past several days, it was clear that the better play with this system would be to start my tour up at the Village. The cloud ceiling as I ascended was around 1,800’, and above that point, everything was socked in with dense clouds and lightly falling snow.

An image of light snow accumulations on a vehicle and large snowbanks in the Village area after a November Alberta Clipper at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Light 1-2″ snow accumulations and huge snowbanks greeted me as I started my ski tour in the Bolton Valley Village this morning.

At ~2,000’ in the Bolton Valley Village, I found 1-2” of new snow accumulation. From my visit to the mountain on Saturday, I knew that temperatures above freezing had affected the snowpack, at least up to the 2,500’ elevation. So, the new snow from our small system certainly wasn’t going to resurface that snowpack, but I was curious about what was going on in the higher elevations.

The accumulations of new snow did increase the higher I went, but more importantly, at some point between 2,500’ and 3,000’ you reach a level where it’s clear that the temperatures haven’t gone above freezing in quite some time. The snow quality there is excellent aside from areas affected by the wind or some sort of skier of resort vehicular traffic.

I did my best to estimate the accumulations from this latest system at various elevations, but once you get up to the point where there’s no consolidated melt layer to mark the surface of the old snowpack, it becomes difficult. In any event, here are the estimates for accumulations I found from this event at various elevations in the Bolton Valley area:

340’: 0”
500’: 0”
1,000’: 0-1”
1,500’: 1”
2,000’: 1-2”
2,500’: 3-4”
3,000’: 5-6”

All the snow from these November storms has really been accumulating on the trees, and in places where it hasn’t gone above freezing to melt some of it off, it’s a lot of weight on the evergreens. In fact, I saw several evergreen trees that had recently fallen onto the trail along the Wilderness Uphill Route. There’s also a layer of ice on the trees that accumulated from whenever we had some mixed precipitation earlier in the month, and that is definitely adding to the weight the trees are bearing. While I was up at the Wilderness Summit, I watched a small section of trees on Ricker Mountain just collapse from the weight of the accumulated snow and tear away a large chunk of soil as they tumbled down the slope. In any case, many of the evergreens in the higher elevations are absolutely caked with midwinter levels of snow.

An image showing snow accumulations in the Lower Fanny Hill area at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Passing through the Lower Fanny Hill area during today’s ski tour
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Bolton Valley, VT 13NOV2025

An image of a cars in the Village covered in fresh snow from a mid-November snowstorm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
An image of a bench near the Wilderness Summit area covered in deep snow from a mid-November snowstorm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Our current winter storm has already unloaded over a foot of snow in the mountains, and it looks like this storm cycle will continue on through the end of the week.

Our current winter storm began affecting the area yesterday, and it’s been hitting us with a decent stream of moisture in the form of snow and some rain/snow in the lower elevations. We picked up less than an inch of additional snow overnight at our site in the Winooski Valley, and the total precipitation I’d recorded from the event was less than ¼” as of this morning’s CoCoRaHS submission. So, I had no idea that we’d been clobbered with snow in the higher elevations until I saw PF’s post of the accumulation at the Stowe snow cam. I immediately checked the Bolton Valley Base Area Webcam, and although I couldn’t get a good sense for how much snow had fallen there, the scene was solidly white, and in general if Stowe has done well with snowfall, then Bolton Valley has seen something similar.

An image of a cars in the Village covered in fresh snow from a mid-November snowstorm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
It was another snowy November morning up in the Bolton Valley Village

Snow cover was getting patchy this morning in many of the lower valleys, with marginal temperatures and a wet snow/rain mix, and that’s the way things stood at the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road when I headed up. Snow depths really started to pick up above 1,000’ though, and I found 6-9” of snow at the Timberline Base at 1,500’. Up in the Village at 2,000’, snow depths were in the 10-14” range, and there was steady moderate to heavy snowfall.

I was able to tour up to the Wilderness Summit at ~3,150’, where I measured total snow depths in the 15-24” range. That’s not all from this current system of course, but with the existing snowpack below and this fresh snow on top, it’s set up some very nice skiing. Steep terrain is certainly in play with the amount of snow out there right now, and Bolton Outlaw was in really good shape. I was on mid-fats, since I wasn’t sure of how much snow there was going to be, but if I’d known just how much was out there, and how good the coverage was in general, I would have gone with fatter skis. At least on piste as of this morning, fat skis were the way to go. The powder out there isn’t quite as dry as what fell from the November 5th storm, but the quality is quite good, and it has a lot of substance to it. With underlying base in place and this new medium to high density snow on top of it, there is absolutely some great coverage out there.

An image of deciduous branches covered in snow from a mid-November snowstorm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in VermontBelow is the total snow depth profile I observed this morning for various elevations in the Bolton Valley area. As usual, it’s getting harder to probe the full depth of the snow in the higher elevations where the snowpack is becoming more consolidated.

340’: T-2””
500’: 1-2”
1,000’: 2-4”
1,500’: 6-9”
2,000’: 10-14”
2,500’: 12-15”
3,000’: 15-24”

It should be interesting to see where the snowpack depth comes in with the next update from the Mt. Mansfield Stake. This system looks like it should continue to deliver snow right through the end of the week, with 8-14” of additional snow shown in the forecasts. And, temperatures are expected to cool a bit and bring snow levels back down to the lower valleys, so if the snow density drops it could set up some excellent right-side-up powder conditions.

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Bolton Valley, VT 11NOV2025

An image of four skiers heading out from the Village parking area carrying their skis as they begin a tour in snow from a November snowstorm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
An image taken from the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road in Vermont after an early November storm that brough substantial snowfall all the way down to the lower elevations of the Champlain Valley.
A view from the bottom of the Bolton Valley Access Road this morning – our most recent November snowstorm was somewhat notable in that it brought substantial snow accumulations all the way down into the Champlain Valley.

I had time for a quick ski tour up at Bolton today, so I can pass along a bit of beta with regard to this latest storm and conditions. I’d seen that with the warm front end of this storm, the snow had melted out in the lower elevations of the mountain, so the depths that are there now in the roughly 2,000’-2,500’ range are only from this latest event. Seeing that Jay Peak webcam image that Powderfreak posted in the American Weather forum, I’d say Bolton got hit just a bit better – it’s probably similar to what Smuggler’s Notch picked up. Here’s the elevation-based snow depth profile I observed this morning in the Bolton Valley area:

340’: 4”
500’: 4”
1,000’: 4”
1,200: 4”
1,500’: 4-5”
2,000’: 4-6”
2,500’: 4-6”
2,700’: 5-8”

An image of a stop sign taken from the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road in Vermont after an early November storm that brough substantial snowfall all the way down to the lower elevations of the Champlain Valley.
Even in down in the valley this morning, the trees were coated with a healthy layer of snow.

You can see what a weird snow depth profile that is compared to the usual – the snow depth even in the Village at ~2,000’ is basically that same as it is at 340’ at the base of the Bolton Valley Access Road or at our house at ~500’. I only had time to tour up to ~2,700’ this morning, but the snow depths don’t really start to increase until you get above ~2,500’ into the elevations that have pre-existing snowpack, so it looks like the snow accumulations from the front end of this system were pretty consistent over quite a broad range of elevations.

In terms of the quality of the turns, today was more like the skiing from the Halloween/November 1st system vs. the much higher quality turns from the November 5th system. This snow was drier than the Halloween/November 1st system, so it skied better in that regard, but going with meadow skipping terrain was definitely the optimal choice for fun turns. The number of folks that I saw out touring today at the resort wasn’t outrageous – the top tier of Bolton’s Village parking area was ~1/3 full, but you could tell the ski touring activity was a bit livelier than the past couple of systems with the way the lower valleys got in some substantial accumulations.

An image of a cartop storage box with stickers in the main Village parking after a November snowstorm at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
With this latest snowstorm bringing substantial snow accumulations in the Champlain Valley, a decent number of people had drive up to Bolton Valley, eager to get in some early turns.

There was a bit of a crust in the snowpack due to some mixed precipitation that fell at some point during the event. Thankfully, it was an interior layer because new snow had fallen on top of it, so it didn’t derail the turns like it might have had it been a surface crust.

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Bolton Valley, VT 06NOV2025

An image of ski tracks in powder snow after a November snowstorm below the Wilderness Double Chairlift at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
An image of ski tracks in powder snow after a November snowstorm in the Wilderness area at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Our most recent winter storm dropped notably drier powder on top of the existing base of snowpack, so it made for great turns and the best powder skiing of the season so far!

The clipper system affecting the area yesterday into today dropped another round of snow in the mountains and we even saw snow transiently accumulating in some of the lower valleys. This system was similar to the last one that affected the area on Friday into Saturday, but temperatures seemed to be a bit colder on the back side this time around. This morning when I checked the view on Bolton Valley’s Base Lodge Webcam, the accumulations appeared to be a bit more robust than last time around. Seeing that, I knew there would be plenty of snow for using skins right from the base, so I geared up for a ski tour and headed to the mountain.

While the snow line was still fairly high with this system, the local ~2,000’ peaks around us in the Winooski Valley were coated with white for their top ~300’ of vertical, so that suggested that the snow level had dipped just a bit lower than what we’d seen over the weekend. Heading up the Bolton Valley Access Road, I saw the first traces of snow around 1,200’ just like Saturday, but Timberline showed a decent covering down to its 1,500’ base, and up in the Village at 2,000’ I found 3-6” of snow, which was more than what had accumulated Saturday morning.

An image showing a wintry November view of the base area Village at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Today featured very wintry scenes in the Bolton Valley Village

Temperatures were cooler today than they were on Saturday, and even at 2,000’ the temperatures were easily below freezing. The cooler temperatures meant that the powder was of much higher quality than what we had over the weekend, and with some base snow already in place, the quality of the powder skiing took a big leap forward from where it had been. Compared to what was available on Saturday, today was simply easy breezy midwinter-style powder skiing. All you had to do was lean in and carve.

When checking snow depths today, I couldn’t really differentiate the new snow from the old snow that was already present from the last system, but the updated elevation-based snow profile is below. In the list, the first depth values are what I found on Saturday, and the second depth values are what I observed today.

Nov 1 –> Nov 6
1,000’: 0” –> 0”
1,200: T” –> T
1,500’: T-1” –> 1”
2,000’: 1-4” –> 3-6”
2,500’: 4-6” –> 5-9”
2,800’: 7-11” –> 9-12”
3,150’: 7-11” –> 10-16”

With every one of these storms that passes through and drops snow, the potential increases for this to be the start of the winter snowpack. If we continue with typical November temperatures, I wouldn’t expect the higher elevation snow to melt too quickly, so we’ll just have to see if there are any warm spells or big rainy systems in the future that might be able to put a dent in the snowpack.

An image snowing fresh November snow adorning a car protected by a car cover in one of the Village parking lots at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Fresh November snow adorns a car protected by a car cover in one of the Bolton Valley Village parking lots.
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Bolton Valley, VT 01NOV2025

An image of Dylan and his friends from UVM in the parking lot as they get ready to ski during the first substantial storm of the 2025-2026 ski season at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont.
An image of the snow depth near the Wilderness Summit on November 1st, 2025 after the first substantial snowstorm of the 2025-2026 ski season at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont.
In sheltered areas at Bolton Valley today, there was close to a foot of snow accumulation near the 3,000′ level as Vermont got hit with its first substantial winter storm of the 2025-2026 ski season.

The Vermont ski season is definitely underway! As forecast, the snow levels with this most recent storm began to drop yesterday evening, and the higher elevations picked up some decent snow accumulations by morning. The views from Bolton’s Base Lodge Webcam seemed to suggest just an inch or two of accumulation at 2,000’, and unfortunately their Vista Summit Webcam was covered in snow, but the Allyn’s Lodge Snow Stake Webcam at Sugarbush suggested that there were some decent accumulations around 3,000’. So, I decided to head up to Bolton Valley to at least get in a hike in the snow and check out the actual accumulations in person. The snow levels with this storm definitely didn’t make it down to the lower valleys, and even the local 2,000’ peaks surrounding the Winooski Valley in our area didn’t seem to have any visible accumulations.

An image of a snowy vehicle in the main Village parking area on November 1st, 2025, after the first substantial snowstorm of the 2025-2026 ski season at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont.
I found anywhere from 1 to 4 inches of snow at the Bolton Valley Village elevations today depending on each location’s exposure to the wind.

Those observations left me wondering just how high the snow levels had been, but it was clear as I ascended the Bolton Valley Access Road that the spine of the Greens had done better than some of the other surrounding areas. On my ascent toward Bolton Valley, I saw the first traces of snow around 1,200’, and up at the main base at 2,000’, accumulations were definitely more substantial than what the base area webcam had suggested. There was plenty of wind with this storm, and while exposed areas may have only accumulated an inch or two of snow, areas out of the wind held 3 to 4 inches of dense coverage.

An image from the Wilderness Summit on November 1st, 2025, after the first substantial snowstorm of the 2025-2026 ski season at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont.
A view from Bolton’s Wilderness Summit today

I started hiking the Wilderness Uphill Route with my skis on my pack, but within a couple of minutes I pulled out my skins and started skinning. It was clear that there was more than enough coverage to be skinning instead of walking if you wanted to, and there was a skin track in place as well. Snow accumulations increased all the way up to near the 3,000’ elevation range, but much like what the Sugarbush webcams had shown, where the 3,125’ stake had 5 inches of snow and the 3,900’ stake showed less than an inch of snow, accumulations sort of fell off as you hit the ridgelines above 3,000’. It must have been those winds – they really pounded and scoured the upper elevations relative to those middle elevations.

Here’s the snow accumulations profile I observed today in the Bolton Valley area during my tour in the midday period:

1,000’: 0”
1,200: T”
1,500’: T-1”
2,000’: 1-4”
2,500’: 4-6”
3,000’: 7-11”

An Uphill New England check in sign at the Wilderness Summit at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont.The forecast today suggested that at above 2,000’ the temperature was never going to go above freezing, and I’d say that’s what I observed. The temperature at 2,000’ was right around freezing and the snow there was a bit denser and softer, then in the middle elevations it was denser and colder with some upside-down consistency, and them up around 3,000’ the temperatures were well below freezing and the snow was notably drier. The snow was still a bit on the denser side, but it didn’t have that upside-down feeling of the middle elevations and turns were easier.

When I finished my ski tour and got back to my car, I saw that I’d missed a call from Dylan, so I called him back and he said that he and his crew from UVM were just at the base of the access road on their way up. So, I hung out for a bit, met them when they arrived at the base, and gave them the beta on everything I’d found on my tour. They subsequently had quite a fun tour of their own based on the video footage I saw later when they swung by the house, so it was great to see that everyone had a safe outing, and they kicked off their ski season with style!

An image of Dylan and his friends from UVM in the parking lot as they get ready to ski during the first substantial storm of the 2025-2026 ski season at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont.
Dylan and his friends from UVM also headed up to Bolton Valley today to get out into the first substantial storm of the 2025-2026 ski season in Vermont.
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Bolton Valley, VT 03FEB2025

An image of ski tracks in powder snow in the Snow Hole/White Rabbit area at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
An image of deep, drifted snow with fresh powder on top on a port of one of the condominiums in the Village area at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Snow just continues to fall, drift, settle, accumulate and get everywhere in the Bolton Valley Village as we head into February.

I headed up for some touring at Bolton Valley this morning to check out the overnight snows, and after being somewhat unimpressed with the way the powder skied on Saturday after those fresh accumulations, I was eager to see how this event affected the skiing. I’m happy to say that Sunday night’s snow led to fantastic powder skiing right from the start. The resort was indicating 4 to 6 inches of fresh snow, and that seems right in line with what I found for new accumulations on terrain that had been groomed before the storm. Liquid analyses from down at our house in the valley indicated that the overnight snow was in the 6 to 7% H2O range, so while it wasn’t super dry, it seemed dry enough to sit atop the existing snowpack and blend well with the powder to create a right-side-up gradient. Just as important in the quality of the powder skiing may have been the temperatures – unlike the single digits from Saturday or even the teens from Sunday, temperatures were in the 20s F. It had been a while since I skied in temperatures that warm, and you could definitely feel the effects of the faster, warmer snow. My skis had plenty of glide, and the powder turns immediately gave that “floating-on-a-cloud” feeling while descending in the Snow Hole area. Another enjoyable aspect of the temperatures was simply the comfort of the relative warmth. I guess it’s really only been a couple of weeks, but after a lot of cold days, I’d forgotten how enjoyable temperatures in the 20s F can be – you can ski, hang out, and do whatever, and it’s all so easy.

I toured via the Wilderness Uphill Route, and what made the session especially good was that there was so much more untracked powder than I’d expected. The Wilderness Chair still wasn’t running, so I assume it has to be down for mechanical reasons while they repair it, and having just the minimal midweek ski touring traffic on all those acres is certainly going to leave a lot of untouched snow to spare. The resort was getting pounded with upslope snow today on top of the denser snow that fell overnight, so hopefully that’s a recipe to set up many more days of quality powder skiing in the coming days.

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Bolton Valley, VT 02FEB2025

An image of an evergreen tree plastered with globs of snow at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
An image of ski tracks in powder snow in one of the off piste areas at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
We’ve had a lot of snow in the past several days, and venturing off piste at Bolton Valley was yielding a couple feet of powder for turns.

Today I was out for some lift-served skiing at Bolton Valley, and after touring for the last several ski sessions, it was actually the first time being back on the lifts since January 19th. Yesterday I decided to tour because of the temperatures, but today’s forecast suggested it would be warmer. Temperatures were definitely higher than they were yesterday, but it was still darned cold at elevation. Above 3,000’ it must have been only in the single digits F, and there was plenty of wind that made it a biting cold.

I decided take advantage of parking down at Timberline, with the intention of doing a big loop to the far end of the resort and back. My first ride on the Timberline Quad was with a group of mechanical engineering graduate students from Yale whose work is in robotics, so that was a fun conversation. One of them was also from Montana, so we were able to discuss all the ski areas out there. The temperatures felt quite comfortable down at those Timberline elevations (probably somewhere in the teens F), and there was no wind to speak of, but my next ride on the Vista Quad was frigid. So, there appeared to be quite a temperature gradient with respect to elevation, and the addition of those winds ahead of our next approaching winter system just multiplied the effect.

A view of a snow cat near the base of the Timberline area at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
A view from the base of Timberline, where I kicked off today’s ski session.

I’d actually planned to ride up the Wilderness Chair, but for some reason it wasn’t running. In any event, I was able to make my way over to the Wilderness terrain from Vista, and with the low traffic due to no direct lift service, the snow quality at Wilderness was excellent. There were certainly more tracks out there than when I’d visited on Friday, but you could tell that it was pretty much ski touring-level traffic vs. lift-served levels of traffic; the glades have plenty of fresh lines left in them. I finished out the day’s session with a ride up the Vista Quad and a hike up to The Knob, followed by assorted tree skiing in areas like the KP Glades and Corner Pocket Glades to get myself back to the Timberline Base.

With respect to the conditions I encountered, the headwall of Cobrass was really rough – it had the worst conditions I found on the day. The manmade snow was incredibly firm, and I had a hard time even getting turns in the usual strip of soft snow on the skier’s right that arises from skiers pushing the snow around. The skiers I saw in that top section of the trail during my run were often just sliding sideways and hanging on for dear life as they tried to get enough grip with their edges. It’s not as if we’ve had any sort of thaw in a long time, but that surface needs some serious work. It would do well with a good resurfacing storm or some major, deep grooming. I also skied Alta Vista though, and conditions there were much better. It still had manmade snow, but it was loose enough that plenty of snow had been pushed around and made available outside the center high traffic areas.

Thankfully, I was able to spend most of my time off piste, and as I’d hoped, the somewhat warmer temperatures and some natural settling and drying of the recent snows in last night’s very cold temperatures brought the quality of the powder up a couple of notches. In any untracked areas, there was a good couple feet of powder at all elevations – from above 3,000’ all the way down to 1,500’ at the base of Timberline. The powder is not yet super dry in the upper levels of the snowpack, but the right-side-up gradient is definitely reforming. I found that base depths were great at all elevations as well, so the past couple of weeks have really helped to get those lower Timberline elevations near midwinter form. The on-piste natural snow areas that were scoured by wind in January are still plagued by less than perfect coverage, but it looks like we’ve got a weather pattern with a series of somewhat moist systems coming through the area through about mid-month. So, as long as they don’t bring the kind of winds that many of the January systems did, those scoured areas may finally have a chance to acquire decent coverage.

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Bolton Valley, VT 31JAN2025

An image showing the layers and layers of midwinter snow from various storms sitting on surfaces of a condominium complex at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
An image of ski tracks in powder snow along the Wilderness Uphill Route during a ski tour at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Skier traffic has been reasonably light, so there’s still plenty of terrain to track up at Bolton Valley as of today.

It’s been a busy week, so I haven’t been able to get up to the mountain to check out the recent rounds of snow, but I was able to head out for some ski touring this morning. Bolton Valley was reporting 16 inches of additional snow in the past week, and while that’s probably about an average snowfall pace for the resort, the flow of moderate events that we’ve been seeing simply keeps piling on the snow. And, temperatures have been consistently wintry, so all that new snow is just encountering the usual slow midwinter consolidation.

Heading up the Bolton Valley Access Road, it was nice to see that all the recent snow seemed to be having an effect on the coverage at Timberline. The scoured areas on the lower elevation trails down by the Timberline Base were looking much better – I really had to search hard to see any areas with poor coverage as I drove by. Up at the main base area elevations in the 2,000’ to 3,000’ range, the effects of the continuing snowfall are even more pronounced. In many spots, the accumulations are taking on that deep midwinter look, with layers upon layers of snow visible on elevated surfaces from the numerous storms we’ve had over the past couple of months. Some evergreens have deep stacks of snow on them, and the ones that don’t are either in a windy location where the snow doesn’t build, or the stack just finally crashed to the ground due to its weight.

An image of an evergreen tree plastered with so much snow that it is starting to disappear from view in one of the off-piste areas at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Many evergreens are virtually disappearing into the landscape now as they become encased on snow.

I toured in the Wilderness area, ascending via the Wilderness Uphill Route and descending via a combination of glades in the Snow Hole area before reconnecting with Lower Turnpike. I couldn’t believe my eyes with respect to how little skier traffic there had been on Wilderness. Eventually I remembered that the Wilderness Chair doesn’t run on Wednesdays and Thursdays during non-holiday periods, which explained why there were hardly any tracks around on a Friday morning before the lift was running. Anyway, that meant that untracked powder was everywhere, and the quality of that powder continues to be top notch. It’s settling naturally and setting up a beautiful right-side-up gradient of bottomless snow that ranges anywhere from 1 to 3 feet deep. There is a subsurface down there, but it’s getting buried deeper and deeper with each passing storm. There’s no need for debate with the depths and quality of the powder that are out there right now – if you’re going to be touring and hitting mostly untracked snow, just bring your fattest skis; they are the right tool for the job.

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Bolton Valley, VT 19JAN2025

A posterized image of Ty Telemark skiing in powder snow in the Wilderness Woods area of Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
An image of Ty beginning the descent of a line in the Wilderness Woods area on Telemark skis during a January ski outing at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
Sunshine sets us up with some good natural lighting as Ty starts into a powdery line in the Wilderness Woods during today’s outing at Bolton Valley.

Today I headed up to Bolton Valley for a bit of afternoon lift-served skiing with E and Ty ahead of the cold temperatures that are expected to be around into the midweek period. The resort has finally shifted their attention to making snow in the Timberline area over the past week, and since it was open to lift-served skiing for the holiday weekend, we figured we’d check it out. It’s always a nice shift into the feel of Bolton’s full mid-season mode when you can start parking down at Timberline to base yourself there to ski the rest of the resort.

Midafternoon yesterday when I was heading home from backcountry skiing in the Jay Peak area, it started snowing as our Saturday system pushed into the area, but the precipitation changed to sprinkles of rain in the valleys as I headed south. We’d picked up a few hundredths of an inch of rain down in the valley at our house in Waterbury that gave a slight crust to the snowpack, so I was curious how high the snow levels had risen. I immediately checked the consistency of the snow when we arrived at the Timberline Base at 1,500’ and was happy to find that the snow was powdery without any rain crust, so even the lowest elevations of the resort had remained above the snow line.

As we ascended on the Timberline Quad, we could see that the lower Timberline trails without snowmaking still need more snow. Our long-duration storms from early January scoured a lot of the west-facing terrain, and the existing snowpack down at the Timberline elevations just wasn’t deep enough to hold up to that very well. Most of the natural snow terrain at Timberline was open, but it’s still just a bit thin to support lift-served skiing without some areas of brush and grass poking through. The areas where they’ve made snow have plentiful coverage of course, but seeing what was available, we decided to head up to the main mountain for better coverage and conditions.

The resort was reporting 4 to 6 inches of new snow in the past 24 hours, and 8 inches of new snow in the past 48 hours, so somehow the mountains just keep pulling the inches out of these minor systems that come through the area. Those snowfall numbers are definitely more reflective of the main mountain though, because accumulations down at Timberline were certainly less.

Up at the main mountain we decided to head right to Wilderness to ski the natural snow terrain, and it was indeed night and day compared to the conditions down at Timberline. There’s certainly been plenty of skier traffic at the resort since it’s a holiday weekend, but jumping off trail into the trees revealed the usual foot plus of light powder that we’ve been seeing over the past couple of weeks in untracked areas. On piste, the snow was nice packed powder wherever the winds hadn’t scoured it down, so we stuck to moderate-angle terrain below the Wilderness Mid Station and had some great runs. We even had some sun at the beginning of our session, and it was nice to have that light and a bit of extra warmth. You could tell that colder air was moving in, and temperatures were dropping through the lower 20s F, so when the clouds came back in ahead of approaching Winter Storm Demi, you could really feel the chill.

We headed back to Timberline as we finished up our afternoon session, and we did find some nice natural snow in areas like Lower Tattle Tale, but due to the shallower snowpack you had to be very selective and stick to well protected areas that hadn’t been scoured. The manmade snow on Timberline Run was definitely firm, and I’d say the disparity between the quality/firmness of the natural and manmade snow is far more than the usual at Timberline right now. The snow they made should be very resilient though.

An image showing a view of the new Miso Curry station in the Timberline Base Lodge with a customer putting in a food order at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont
A view of the new Miso Curry station in the Timberline Base Lodge as a customer puts in an order

The opening of the Timberline area means that food service is firing up there, and this year in the Timberline Base Lodge they have Miso Curry offering food. It turns out that like the Miso Toh Kome hut up at Bolton’s main base area, (and other resorts in the area) Miso Curry is another offering from the Miso Hungry chain. We didn’t know that curry was so prominent in Japanese cuisine, but we shared an order of their katsu pork curry with edamame, and it was great. We were thinking it might be a bit tough though for families if the kids want something more typical to eat, but they can always catch that at the main base lodge, and Miso Curry seems to be a great addition to the variety of food available at the resort.