powderfreak

-4.5F top of Gondola and 4.4F in the base area. What a time to be alive. A full 40F drop overnight and it’s a skating rink.

Its true, if he seeded in late February he’d probably have better luck.

Tomorrow is going to be atrocious. Like 0F to 10F on the slopes. -25F windchills. Pass.

Hit 50F in the valley and 45F at 1500ft with wall-to-wall sunshine today. I’m ready for spring. Felt glorious outside today.

Just slop this evening. Rain, sleet, wet snow. Light precip overall.

A lot of recent years on there.

Tough couple days around here. On Tuesday evening I saw Stowe Mountain Rescue running code up the road at 8:30pm and that's never a good sign. A guy in his 20s failed to meet his family for dinner and no one could get in touch with him. They pinged his cell phone and it came back to an area on Mansfield known as the Rock Garden, a relatively popular backcountry run down the Wall that exits onto Upper Perry Merrill... but is known to have a lot of large holes, spruce traps and undermined snow throughout the boulder field. They had a Guard helicopter up there relatively quickly spotlighting the area, found him prior to midnight but went back in the daylight to recover him. Here's the Stowe Mountain Rescue post and their photos from Facebook: Last night Stowe Mountain Rescue was involved in the search and recovery of a young man who died in a tragic skiing accident in backcountry terrain, accessed from Stowe Mountain Resort. As skiers ourselves, we understand the draw to explore the backcountry and we’re devastated at the senseless loss of such a beautiful, adventurous young life. Could see the blackhawk searching the area with the spotlight on the webcam.

Self-mocking humor is a great trait to have. The awareness that this whole ride of life is bigger than us. Bravo dude.

Watched her in a number of big ski films, Warren Miller tours, she was a well known name. Trauma from high speed impact with a tree, caused by an avalanche… so sad but at least it happened fast.

Was supposed to be sunny today, instead we've seen an inch of snow so far at the upper mountain snow plots.

Now that’s insane.

-4F here.

Wolfie takes the cake for that stuff… just seethes. Most of us just shrug our shoulders, like what can you do? Ha.

SnowNH’s memorable drunken rant at 2am that winter.

Picked up another 3” at home and at least 5” at the mountain last night. Good squalls. Some +SN obs at MVL.

Snowfall and snow-on-the-ground will always trump temperature departures. If it’s snowy at +10, no one cares. The minute positive departures mean rain, the vibe changes drastically.

I’ll agree… the real cold days have been about normal. Normal is pretty damn cold in January and February. But a -20F summit windchill is like what one might expect in Jan/Feb at 3k+ feet, a couple counties within the Canadian border. We averaged low single digits for a long time, even now it needs to hit 6F every night to have a shot at below normal. Its only hit 6F once in 17 days. 14 of 17 days have had mins of 12F or more when the average has been 2-6F.

It’s not great. Getting lucky this winter means closer to normal.

To me, it’s actually been an incredible winter given the departures. I don’t think most folks understand what sustained +8 is for a departure. February currently sits at +11.2 at MVL. People die in July at +11.2 and here we are running snow cover daily at a “departure torch.”

Snorkeling tours go out daily during vacation week. Hasn’t been a great winter by any means. It’s had a few periods of fun though. I guess the Mansfield Stake sitting at exactly average for this date and this graph is pretty normal.

We had about an inch and it shut off, looks like it’s right along the border from west to east.

The observations leading to the 21" total. It's important to be transparent.

It wasn’t the deepest for me, ha. Just some of the youngsters. But there’s just a certain feel when the snow is like washing over your head on every turn. Could get 100” but if it’s dense snow it doesn’t feel the same as 20+ blower. Wildest part was it even really snow a ridge over today. Sterling Ridge was in the sun today. Mansfield was getting smoked in the low topped fluff.

It was so ridiculously deep today in the woods. Just thigh deep fluff blowing overhead every turn. Picked up another 6” after 8:30am. Folks talking about the deepest day of their lives into the Notch. Was even deeper out that way, probably legit two feet. Just a screenshot of one friends photo but this is what 21” looks like. Just thigh deep trenches around the hill.

21” storm total at Mansfield’s High Road Plot over 48 hours. I’ll make a pictogram later of the 3 measurements. It’s so deep out there. The photos and videos on social media in the woods off the Gondola is just snorkeling stuff.