powderfreak

Crazy looking through my photos though of how much green was around on the trees. Most trees had small leaves at least.... this year absolutely nothing. Barely getting a red haze of buds on some of the canopy. Like in that photo look at the trees behind that house, the crowns have some leaves. But yeah it wasn't paste, all those trees are still standing even with snow on them. We are still stick season in full this year.

Remembering 10 years ago.... biggest event of the winter I think for a bunch of folks up here. Even BTV pulled 5.5" down at pretty much sea level, lol. 700-800ft had 18". Still had snow cover on May 1st, ha.

Florida is f*cked in that case.

Yup, this weekend looks cold enough up north to keep it icy and firm. Today may have been the worst day of the season with the solidly below freezing temps after rain and warmth. The top snow layer has melted back to the glacial base (still very deep, but it's packed ice essentially) and there isn't much groomers can do with that when its 15-25F. This weekend with more rain coming Friday and then colder weather Saturday/Sunday that won't break freezing in the Northern Greens will lead to some real rugged skiing. We are at the point where the temperature needs to be above freezing for it to be worth skiing, unless it snows, which doesn't look likely anytime soon.

Still finding fresh untracked lines at Stowe despite the holiday week crowds. Anyone telling you that you can't find fresh lines hasn't looked hard enough

Wind-blown chalky snow up here. Base is solid and snow is fun but those 80-100mph winds did some wind-packing for sure. Blew a lot of the snow out of the trees too. From looking at the Mansfield Chin, the wind really scoured things and moved that snow down into the snowfields. Nice lower elevation transport in this wind.

Nice shot there @ChasingFlakes! Here's one from Stowe yesterday. The Northern Greens have been showing off with this past storm cycle.

Ha they try to drive up here all the time. Last year we had someone under the influence try to go up and get stuck axle deep next to the Mountain Ops building. I saw two cars stuck on New Years morning trying to go up the Cat Road here. One made it all the way to the bridge before starting the climb to Spruce.

Just an amazing powder cycle from this latest storm.

Most of that was untouched from this week’s snow... so they are turning in about 12-18” of consolidated powder. Plenty deep! We just finished a nice run of 19” in 5 days. Hunt the untracked and it skied like over a foot. But yeah, the speed at which these guys ski the woods is what makes photos. Fluffy snow and high rates of speed make that stuff explode.

Haven't posted some photos in a while... here's the past two days on Mansfield:

Pure butter (or buttah as they say) this morning with above freezing temps and thick high ratio snow groomed out... I love this surface condition. GP crushing it down Gondolier today. 3-6" or 4-7" type event coming up for the hill from noon Saturday to noon Sunday IMO.

A light resurfacing. This should groom in nicely.

Sunny Spruce Quad opens tomorrow with more terrain but I don’t think they dropped any other major ropes today. Got 1-2” throughout the day and still snowing this evening.

Great stuff out there today on Mansfield. The upslope machine brought 6" to the mountain throughout the day and while cold powder, it had some density to it. A lot of small flakes and even graupel at times. Patrol was dropping ropes throughout the day. The base from the November snow set-up perfectly and despite nothing exciting for snow depths, it skied really good. Someone else caught a rare photo of myself heading down to set-up for a photo from below. The natural snow pitch of the Upper National Headwall is one long sustained ramp and it was so fun to just crush it in huge GS turns on an all-natural snow base. We completely missed the big storm but man was this some good skiing. Upslope "bread and butter" snow came through.

A couple shots from the hill today... Good to stretch, don't want to pull a hammy.

Good quality snow out there today... cold but no wind and full sunshine...felt warmer than the temperature said.

Cold smoke season can't come soon enough!

2002-2003 winter in Albany, NY... glad to experience that one before heading north. 100+ inches of snow and two 18"+ events and another couple 12"+ events. For that Hudson Valley climate location, it was a fun final winter living there.

Bolton Valley is the snowiest small ski area in New England...or I should rephrase that, one of the snowiest ski areas in New England regardless of size. Plenty of powder days, active winter weather, and N.Greens snowpack leads to some great skiing.

Ha! I was just coming here to post this link... mostly because I'm pretty sure that's @J.Spin's family in the lead cover photo. Nice work J.

Magic Mountain is now the tallest ski area in the East. Well done Magic.

Some stoke... relaxed powder turns on a storm day through the Mansfield hardwoods.

Ski The East had a similar post, used a photo of mine from a past October I think. I love this time of year through November... the ski stoke slowly builds until mountains open.

84 hours of snowfall now... gonna be hard to top this one for duration. What a freakin' storm.