powderfreak

This is incredible. Like old times in N.VT. It is just nuking snow at Mansfield in these 30+ DBZ.

Good snow out there today. Buddy's birthday and a great crew. Awesome snow conditions. Paper cups of 1874 whiskey in the parking lot to celebrate. 3-4" of new snow on the mountain in a consistent snow globe. Life is good up north.

We've had sparkling dust the past couple hours. MVL ASOS saw a couple hour period of like 5-8 mile visibility obs, and it keeps bouncing around below 10 mile max. Nothing on radar but it's like crystals forming just overhead in the cold and floating down. Very low level stuff in this cold. The snow growth layer of -12C to -18C is so low right now, pretty much at the surface. Any moisture is condensing into flakes.

It hasn’t rained up here since the Grinch Storm I think, at least at elevation. We had that one wet snow event that was paste above 1,000ft and white rain (but always wet flakes) below in January. But this 4+ week run without rain or even much above freezing at all has been very fun. Will have to check the stats on the temps though.

That second pic is awesome. Great to see widespread deep winter vibes.

It's for safety for sure, but also for the guest experience given other capacity restrictions. Lodges have a sharply reduced capacity per square footage and the time limits set at 30 minutes inside... but the big reason for the limitations are the lift lines. Uphill capacity has been severely restricted and to be honest, it's keep the conditions much better and given me a lot more access to untracked powder. I'm getting less runs for sure, but they are quality runs. From my observations, the FourRunner Quad averages around 2 people per chair as singles will often be ok with doubling up. Sometimes you get a group of 3 or 4 to even it out. These are state guidelines too, not ski area ones. It's the same at all resorts, with no more than 2 singles on a Quad and 1 single on a triple, double or enclosed Gondola. The Gondola at Stowe actually averages less than 2 passengers per 8-person cabin. The uphill capacity of the Gondola is somewhere between the MRG single and a double chair this season. I still remember when it hit me that uphill capacity was at like 20% of a normal season. In front of me it often takes like 6 cabins to get 8 people up the mountain, because if you are a single you ride alone and there are a lot of singles.... when a normal season those same 6 cabins could carry 48 people in line and we would regularly do it, the lifties stuffing singles into every empty seat. So by my estimates, the FourRunner has been running 50% normal uphill capacity and the Gondola at around 20%. That is just crazy, but the benefit is the run down is just a lot of powder. The groomers just don't get skied off like they used to, you can find corduroy late in the morning and packed powder all day long. A recently powder morning this week had me counting the chair capacity in the photos. Despite a full coral, the seats are only 56% filled in this photo. A group of 4 really skews the numbers, those are very rare these days. But it keeps the powder around a lot longer.

Unfortunately you just have to pound the refresh button on the reservation page. They won't be releasing more spots, but people do cancel. I know folks who have been able to get one during the holiday weekends so far by checking religiously. Unfortunately the most likely time to find an opening is usually the morning of, almost like going to a sold out sporting event but waiting outside the gates to scalp a ticket. It's been a weird winter and as someone who has access to and reads as many guest surveys as possible (the written comments are telling), I know that whenever you hit capacity/sell out (Christmas holiday period, MLK, powder Saturday's this last month and now President's weekend) there are people angry that the capacity limit isn't lower... and there are people very unhappy that they can't ski. It's one or the other depending on the person's experience. You are right, that unfortunately President's Weekend can often be the #1 weekend of the season for visitation... depending on how MLK weekend or the Christmas period went. This year the snow is definitely the best it's been all winter long and heading into one of the big three weekends. Good luck dude, I wish I could help ya out more.

That's what I've always preached. People don't understand what a couple inches of sparkling powder on top of the snowpack every day or every other day does, aside from the wintry vibe of flakes falling. It just makes the whole pack look "fresh" like the whole thing might've just fallen today, even if it's only a couple cosmetic inches on top. The trick is keeping the snow looking like it all just fell recently, all winter long.

2.3” up here at 750ft. Around 4” at 3000ft.

2.3” at home for this little event. 3.5-4” at the Mtn.

3-4” at the ski area. Awesome snowy day.

Ski area approaching 3". About to head out for an afternoon of some pow turns.

Snowing pretty good out there. I was surprised with this one and the vis is staying pretty low at MVL. Might be 2" soon? Down to 0.50sm moderate snow and has been hanging around 1 mile vis past several hours.

1/2sm moderate snow at the ASOS now. Winter as it should be with cold baking soda falling. KMVL 091554Z AUTO 17003KT 1/2SM SN FZFG VV016 M10/M12

Very cold snowfall too. 3/4sm vis snow at 8F to start, but now up to 13F.

Over an inch so far, keeping the wintry vibe with every little tree branch white. -SN

3-6” SNE and 2-4” NNE. Little refresh event in an active pattern. Another day of watching flakes fall. Crazy that there’s a shortwave every 48 hours it seems.

Read this on the avalanche advisory.... do you do into the backcountry? I think there are safer BC routes out there but seems like a good time for some resort skiing in the west, if possible. Description Dangerous avalanches 2-5' deep, and hundreds of feet wide are still possible on steep mid and upper elevation slopes. These conditions will be most pronounced on steep west to southeast facing slopes. If an area has any signs of wind loading, we could see even deeper avalanches breaking, up to 5-10' deep, that initially fail in the wind drifted snow and step down into the weak faceted snow near the ground. Either way, these avalanches are likely to be unsurvivable.

Oh yeah for sure, just sharing another pic of a different slide. I think an airbag definitely gives you a chance if you survive without trauma (not getting strained through trees or something). I'd have an airbag for sure given the current weaknesses in the snowpack. The CO gully one, yeah that's like getting buried in the concrete pillars of a parking garage or something. I'd be walking on eggshells out there.

Check out this crown line between Canyons and Park City in Utah. Natural slide from a cornice failure but holy crap at that crown. That's an incredible amount of dense, concrete like snow to slide.

That is an absolute monster slide... into a terrain trap that must hold snow into August from the slide action. It would be tough to go into the western US backcountry and ski anything steeper than 30 degrees at this point, or even wander near one. That weak layer isn't going anywhere...no matter how much it snows now, that will be lurking underneath. " The crown face of the avalanche was two to three feet deep and over five feet at the deepest point. The avalanche was up to 1000 feet wide and ran 1500 vertical feet."

This one in Utah is terrifying. The snowpack out there is just a complete disaster. When multiple groups are getting caught on skin tracks (which are normally set in what are thought of as lower risk areas).... yikes. This one buried 6 and killed 4. Look at how big that is! It's even ripping out in the woods, well down ridge.

Moved my avalanche replies out of the main Feb thread as that discussion is much more relevant to this thread... didn't want to clutter the main pattern thread up.

Yeah it’s not newbies getting killed, it’s very experienced people. Out west has one of the worst/most dangerous snowpacks they have seen in a very long time. And many of the deaths lately have been from exiting the ski area boundaries.... so doubt it’s from folks avoiding ski areas. It’s more that right outside the ski area boundaries it is extremely dangerous and in every one of these (like those snowmobilers in that video) they say “we’ve done this hundreds of times” or something like that. The slides just outside Park City and outside Vail this week were very knowledgeable locals who got caught in climax slides, basically the entire hillside fell down on them. Large unsurvivable avalanches. I’d be terrified out west, even the ski areas are bombing the crap out of everything and ski patrols are being very conservative with openings.

That photo doesn’t even do it justice. But he was buried by a smaller slide and then a massive slide after death it seems covered him in most of the snow after that big storm. So sad Ian got caught in a freak accident on a low avie danger day. That is *so far down*. Also as a rescuer... any other slide, even minor buries all three of those guys easily. It's hard to comprehend being that far under snow, even if it was a second slide that topped it off. Sad, sad stuff... RIP Skiin’ Ian.