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J.Spin

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Posts posted by J.Spin

  1. With the latest round of BTV NWS maps, Winter Storm Warnings have expanded all the way to the international border, and the 12-18” shading has made its way up into part of the Northern Greens, so the modeling has obviously suggested some potential in this area.  Our point forecast here at the house is in the 8-16” range for accumulations through Saturday, with a bit more after that.  There doesn’t appear to be much of an upslope signature on the back side of this storm cycle though, so I wouldn’t expect a ton of extra accumulation.  The BTV NWS forecast discussion doesn’t really suggest quite that accumulation range around here, but the modeling presumably picks up the effects of the spine and goes with that.  It’s often correct with respect to the orographic boost, but it depends on the system, and we’ll see how this one goes.  We’re sort of on the edge of the potent banding around here on some global models, but many of the mesoscale models send that heavy snow right up to the border, so we’ll see how that plays out.

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  2. We’ve recently come into a snowier stretch here in the Northern Greens; we’ve picked up accumulating snow at our house every day for the past ten days, and over two feet of new snow has fallen in the valley during that period.  The skiing has been great, but I haven’t been up to the hill since I was out on Sunday with the boys because I’ve just been a bit too busy.  Things were a little lighter today though, and with a modest system affecting the area over the past couple of days, I headed up to Timberline for a quick tour on my way in to Burlington.

    Bolton was reporting 3-4” of new snow in the past 24 hours, so I was eager to see how the powder was looking with that addition.  On my ascent, I was generally finding 4-6” of surface snow in areas that hadn’t recent been groomed, and that seemed to increase a couple more inches by the time I got up around the 2,300’ mark at the Timberline Mid Station.  I descended on Twice as Nice, where they’d groomed a strip down the middle, but left the sides untouched for powder skiing.  The powder skiing was excellent, and generally bottomless – even on mid-fat skis I only contacted the base a couple of times.  Although the lift had started right around when I began my ascent, I was actually the first one down the trail for the day, so even when I encountered the groomed snow it was pristine, deep, and skiing really well.

    As I approached the bottom ¼ of the trail I saw that there wasn’t much for powder strips on the sided of the trail with the way they’d groomed, so I cut left into Doug’s Woods to check out the snow there.  I think even the ungroomed areas I’d been skiing had been previously groomed, because off piste the surface snow was a solid foot everywhere I checked.  That skied really well.  Moreover, those conditions were all the way down at 1,500’ on western facing slopes, so I’m sure things are even better up around 3,000’.  We’ll have to see how Winter Storm Quest plays out over the next day or two, but the fact that it’s going down atop a snowpack that already has such good surface snow is a recipe for some really good conditions.

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  3. Yesterday had been looking like a good ski day for quite a while.  The cold air was moving out to bring our temperatures back up into the 20s F, and low pressure from the Ontario/Quebec border passing southeast across our region looked to bring us more fresh snow.  The models had been showing a nice shot of liquid equivalent coming into the area, and it seemed to hold some potential for a good topping off of the current powder that’s out there.

    I was working on some exam questions in the early morning in my home office and had the blinds closed, but I eventually finished off a section and decided to take a break.  I opened the blinds to find that we were getting hit with heavy snowfall made up of some massive flakes that were nearly 2 inches across at times.  The forecast did call for some snow starting around 10:00 A.M., but this was a bit early, and the intensity was impressive.  A quick measurement out back revealed that the snow was falling at a rate of around 2”/hr., and it was stacking up fast and dry with that typical consistency of upslope champagne.

    For yesterday’s ski session, the plan was to head out with my younger son and his friends, and there’s nothing like seeing the heavy snow pounding outside your window to kick the mood up a notch.  I didn’t wake my son up immediately because I wanted to make sure he had the sleep he needed, but when I did check on him a bit later it turned out he’d been up anyway.  He hadn’t opened his blinds, but he’d already gotten a text and picture from one of his ski friends; the same huge flakes had been pounding down at his place as well.

    With the new snow not coming in until mid-morning, we’d planned on a late morning start up at Bolton.  That timing worked out well, because they’d already picked up a few additional inches from the intense snowfall.  And, the snow that had just fallen was the perfect consistency to top off all the powder that was already out there – my morning liquid analyses from the house revealed that the snow came in at just 1 to 2% H2O.  So, it was incredibly dry and set up some excellent right-side-up, bottomless powder skiing.

    I had a tour planned that brought the boys around to some of the lesser used areas of the resort, so they had a great time and got to ski plenty of untracked powder.  I’d say powder depths we encountered were generally in the range of about a foot, and there’s well over an inch of liquid equivalent in that surface snow now.  With the new champagne on top, it skied quite well and was typically bottomless in the case of first tracks.  You’re still hitting bottom at times on the steepest slopes, but that old base is becoming more and more distant with every one of these storms comes through the area.  On that note, it appears as though we’ve got another storm cycle on the doorstep for tonight into tomorrow.

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  4. Yesterday the very cold air was still in place here in the Northern Greens, but we also had some fresh snow moving in with some weak upper-level vorticity pushing through the area.  Temperatures at elevation looked like they would stay in the single digits F, so ski touring once again seemed to be the call vs. riding the lifts.

    We’d picked up a half inch or so of new snow down at the house when I headed up to Bolton in the mid to late afternoon.  Flakes had been small throughout the storm, so accumulations were coming in a bit on the denser side at around 10 to 12% H2O.  I found the same type of snowfall up on the hill, although it was coming down with a bit more intensity.  You could see that vehicles had taken on some decent accumulations from the day’s snowfall up to that point.

    My ski tour was over in the Holden’s Hollow area, and my initial descent was down through some of the C Bear Woods and Holden’s Hollow West Side Glades that I’ve hit many times before.  Based on Friday’s tour, the sweet spot for best turns based on the depth and consistency of the powder seemed to be those mid-angle slopes, so that’s what I was seeking out.  I was touring at relatively low elevation in the 2,000’ to 2,500’ range, and depth measurements revealed a similar 8 to 10” of powder.  That surface snow was bolstered a bit by what was falling, but the liquid equivalent from that snow was only about a tenth of an inch, so it wasn’t a major addition.  Those mid-angle slopes delivered once again though, with generally bottomless turns on 115 mm skis.  I mixed things up a bit on the tour to explore some new terrain and continued my descent on the back side of the ridge down below the Telemark trail to the Maple Loop area.  I then joined back on to a lower part of the Telemark trail and looped back around to the Holden’s Hollow area again to finish off with a front side descent.

    Although temperatures weren’t supposed to be all that different from what they were on Friday, I think they were a few degrees warmer, and with the absence of those 30 to 50 MPH winds, the difference was dramatic.  The air was quite calm while I was touring, and the snow was falling straight down, so the overall conditions were just much more comfortable and easy to handle.

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  5. I didn’t have an opportunity to get out on the hill yesterday to ski the new snow from Winter Storm Olive, but my younger son and his friend were out at Bolton, so they filled me in and I got to see some of their GoPro footage.  It was clear from their comments and videos that as of yesterday morning, the storm certainly hadn’t put down enough liquid equivalent for a full resurfacing of the slopes.  Low to moderate-angle terrain was skiing quite well, and I saw some really nice footage of the potential for powder turns there, but it was obvious that on the steep stuff, you were quickly down to that hard subsurface, especially if there had been even a bit of preceding skier traffic.

    Our area has definitely picked up more snow since yesterday morning though.  After the lull during the middle of the day yesterday, the snow picked back up in the evening and we had continuous snowfall to varying degrees right through much of today.  There was little if any mixed precipitation that I saw at our site, although I think there was a bit of sleet in one of rounds of accumulation later in the day yesterday, because my wife said she heard some ticks on the window, and the snow was on the denser side when I ran the liquid analysis.  Here at our site, we’ve picked up over ⅔” of liquid equivalent from the storm as of this evening, and I’d say Bolton must have picked up over an inch of liquid equivalent based on the amount of new snow they’ve reported and my experience from the mountain today.  As of this morning, the Bolton Valley snow report was indicating 12” of new snow in the past 72 hours.

    When I headed up to the mountain for a tour this morning, it was snowing here at the house, but the intensity of the snowfall increased notably as I headed up in elevation.  Although the flakes were fairly small, the snowfall rate up in the Bolton Valley Village at around 2,000’ was moderate to heavy.  And, that snowfall was being driven by hefty winds.  Winds were in the 30 to 50 MPH range, certainly hitting those upper numbers in gusts when I was up on the ridgeline above 3,000’.  Temperatures were in the single digits F, so between the temperature, the winds, and the snowfall, it was downright nasty out there.  I was quite comfortable while touring, but even with my hat, I kept my hood on for much of the tour ascent, so that speaks to the effects of those low temperatures and winds.  Plenty of people were arriving in the morning to ride the lifts, but that must have been rough, and I was very happy to be down low to the ground out of the winds and generating plenty of extra heat.

    With its schedule, the Wilderness Chair hasn’t run since the storm started, so it was the obvious place to tour today for the best access to untracked snow.  Throughout my tour, surface snow depths I measured were generally in the 8-10” range, with no big changes with respect to elevation.  As of today, we’ve definitely moved beyond the level of resurfacing that my son experienced yesterday morning.  We’re well past just the low angle terrain now, and with the cold temperatures today and the increasing snow depths, low angle terrain was actually a bit slow.  Mid-angle terrain was probably the sweet spot today, and steep terrain was actually nice as well if it was untracked or had seen minimal skier traffic.  You’re not going bottomless on steep terrain that’s seen substantial skier traffic yet; we’re going to need to get more liquid equivalent down atop the snowpack before that happens.  But, the existing base is deep (depth is now 50” at the Mt. Mansfield Stake), there’s tons of terrain that was sufficiently resurfaced by this storm, and it looks like there are more potential storms in the pipeline that could affect the area as well.

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  6. 15 minutes ago, mreaves said:

    Latest from BTV

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    I received another early morning text today, this time indicating that a Winter Storm Warning had been issue for our location.  Much of the BTV NWS County Warning Area is under it according to the latest alerts map.  This latest version of the Event Total Snowfall map has a bit wider section of the 12-18” shading along the spine and over in the Adirondacks, but I’d say thus far they have been pretty consistent around here.  Our current point forecast suggests roughly 12-18” through Thursday night, which is consistent with the map shading, although the map actually indicates that it’s only covering through 1:00 P.M. Thursday.

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  7. I’ve added the updated BTV NWS maps from this afternoon below.  The Event Total Snowfall map didn’t seem to undergo any drastic changes, although they did trim the snowfall numbers down south a bit.  I assume that stems from the potential for mixed precipitation.  Our point forecast here did get a bit of a bump to 11-17” through Thursday night, so it’s fairly synched with the 12-18” shading here along the spine.  Reading the BTV NWS forecast discussion, that’s more in line with what they’re expecting for the high elevations, but the modeling sometimes puts those numbers in our area, being right along the spine.

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  8. 38 minutes ago, mreaves said:

    Winter Storm Watch hoisted by BTV.

    Expected Snowfall - Official NWS Forecast

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    Yeah, I saw that I got a text alert about the Winter Storm Watch early this morning, and it looks like it covers all the BTV NWS County Warning Area.  Graphically, it looks like we’re in the 8-12” and 12-18” zones here along the spine, and the point forecast has us at 8-14” through Thursday.  There’s more snow in the forecast for Thursday night and Friday, but they’re not putting numbers to that yet, and it’s outside the Event Total Snowfall map anyway because that ends at 4:00 P.M. Thursday.  It sounds like there are still potential adjustments to be done though, so we’ll see how the accumulations forecast changes over the next couple of days.

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  9. The back side of this most recent storm cycle seemed to show some promising potential for upslope snow in the Northern Greens, so yesterday morning I made a quick survey of the snow reports from the resorts along the northern spine to see how things had worked out.  With the Jay Peak snow report indicating 4 to 7 inches of new snow, and bwt’s measurement of 5.5 inches at 1,900’ from his place at Jay Peak, things were looking good there.  Bolton, Smugg’s, and Stowe were reporting totals in the 2 to 4-inch range, so the Jay Peak area really seemed to be a cut above the other resorts.  Temperatures rose above freezing in some areas during the middle of that storm though, so maximizing that resurfacing snow/liquid equivalent could make a substantial difference in the quality of the ski surfaces.

    My wife was heading up to Morrisville to deliver some food to a colleague and do some snowshoeing, so I decided to pop up to the Jay Peak area for a bit of touring, and we coordinated our trip.  New accumulations of snow were present everywhere from Waterbury on northward, but they really started to pick up once I got to Eden and points father north.  You could tell that the storm had hit harder up there.  With road maintenance and some sun, I was generally dealing with slushy accumulations on road surfaces, but those usual spots on Route 118 along Belvidere Pond and through the notch areas into Montgomery were wall-to-wall winter snow and required some extra caution.

    My tour was in the Big Jay Basin area that I’ve visited various times before, since it’s got convenient parking and some decent lower to moderate angle slopes along with its steeper lines.  It’s also got that leeward exposure from Jay Peak, Big Jay, and Little Jay, so it absolutely reels in the snow.  The past couple of times we’ve visited the basin, we’ve toured the terrain more toward the north side below Big Jay, but for this tour I decided to favor a bit more toward Little Jay to the south.  I’d heard good things from some of my students about the terrain there, so as skin tracks diverged on my ascent, I generally opted for those heading more southward toward Little Jay.  As I approached Little Jay, I could see that the terrain was getting steeper than I was looking for with the most recent accumulations, and slightly less pitched terrain was more prevalent off to the north, so I followed a skin track that was heading right through the terrain that looked the best for my plans.  That skin track brought me into that drainage below the col between Big Jay, and Little Jay, and the lower sections there do have some nice pitches that avoid the really steep stuff.  My goal was to get in a moderate tour’s worth of skiing and exercise with about 1,000’ of vertical, so with the trailhead elevation a bit shy of 1,600’, I was shooting to stop my ascent around 2,500-2,600’.  Once I’d hit that level, I contoured back toward the south a bit along the side of Little Jay to get into more untouched snow, and dropped in from there.

    In terms of the snow quality, it far exceeded my expectations.  Accumulations of new snow were very much as expected – I measured about 5 inches of new snow around 1,600’ at the trailhead, and that matched up perfectly with what the resort and bwt had reported in the morning.  Accumulations probably increased by another inch about 1,000’ higher, but this didn’t appear to be one of those storms with heavy snow accumulation gains as elevation increased.  What impressed me most was when I encountered at least a couple feet of bottomless powder in the drainage below the col.  In that area, there were no signs that there had been any sort of significant warmth or rain.  It was great to watch all the skiers and riders out there taking advantage of the great snow, and their whoops and hollers could be all over the place throughout the basin, just as you’d expect with great conditions.  Aspect mattered in terms of snow quality though.  The farther I wrapped around Little Jay toward southern exposure, the more I was skiing on just the new snow, and there was actually a detectable layer atop the old snowpack.  Seeing this, I moved back toward the north as I descended in order to get into the best snow.  I just found it surprising that it was really only southern aspects where the snowpack had consolidated, because that would represent more effects from sun vs. general warmth.  Whatever the case, non-southerly aspects held some excellent bottomless powder out there. 

    Temperatures on the day were perfect, with mid to upper 20s F keeping the snowpack wintry.  Skies were clear and sunny though, and you could tell that the mid-February sun was trying to work on that powder on southern exposures.  Temperatures seemed just cold enough, and/or the air was just dry enough, to keep that from happening.

    It looks like we might have a system coming through the area tomorrow night that could do something similar to what the back side of this system did, so we’ll see if that adds another few inches to freshen things up again.

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  10. 6 hours ago, borderwx said:

    Curious to see what tonight brings for the Mts

     

    4 hours ago, bwt3650 said:

    So if I’m reading this right….almost a half inch of liquid, good flow for the northern greens and a decent burst between midnight and dawn…6” would fix a lot of damage and make for a good weekend. Wind probably dumps most of that into the trees.

    Since the snow surfaces will certainly tighten up with the way temperatures recently went above freezing, it seemed like this would be a weekend off the slopes, but the models suggest the Northern Greens have the potential to do their thing, so that could make a difference.  I’m getting questions from students about the mountain forecasts they’re seeing from the resorts, so it prompted me to look.  The BTV NWS isn’t seeing anything outrageous, although the discussion does mention how they flirted with the idea of a Winter Weather Advisory, but felt it wasn’t needed because the more substantial accumulations would be above 1,500’.

    …some spots could pick up over 4 inches, but given the 4 inch coverage is mainly confined to above 1500 ft and over a 12 to 24 hour period, opted against issuing a Winter Weather Advisory.

     I’m seeing 4-8” for some of the mountain point forecasts and a quick run through the models shows liquid equivalents from about 0.3” to as much as 1.0” on the CMC.  It looks like the location of where that modeled streamer sets up will dictate who gets into the higher tier liquid. Even a third to half an inch of L.E. would set things up fine for low and moderate angle terrain, so it should be fun to see what the snow reports say.  It’s intriguing enough that I’ll probably get the gear ready.

  11. On 2/5/2023 at 12:22 PM, powderfreak said:

    Recovered up to 25F in the valley.  Feels glorious.  Great ski day.

    PF is right on with that one; yesterday was fantastic, both in terms of the temperatures and the snowpack/snow quality.  Temperatures were in the 25-30 F range when I hit the mountain yesterday afternoon, which was perfect for comfortable skiing while retaining soft, midwinter snow surfaces.

    I hadn’t been out for any turns since last Sunday when I toured in the Nebraska Valley, so I was eager to see what the mountains had to offer yesterday once the arctic cold departed.  At the end of my tour last weekend, temperatures had risen above freezing in the lower elevations, and then we had those potent winds with the arctic front, both of which could have been insults to the quality of the snow surfaces.

    Yesterday I was keeping it fairly simple and close to home and decided to tour on the Bolton Valley Nordic and Backcountry Network.  I figured I’d tour up to Bryant Cabin, check out the snow quality, and decide from there if I was going to go any farther.  I was brining minimal camera gear for this outing, so I borrowed my younger son’s backcountry ski pack instead of my larger one, and I opted for mid-fat Teles instead of going with full fats.  I was definitely feeling light and fast with that setup, and hit Bryant Cabin in under 30 minutes, so I felt that I easily had time to extend my tour.  In addition, the quality of the snow was far better than I’d expected.  We haven’t had a major storm cycle since Winter Storm Kassandra about a week ago, so I didn’t really expect the powder to be all that fresh.  Those concerns were sidelined right at the start of my tour though – I did numerous depth checks on my ascent, and even down at 2,000’, the surface snow was 15-20” deep above the base.  Whatever warming had taken place last weekend was clearly below the 2,000’ elevation range.  I’d heard secondhand that the freezing level was somewhere down around the Timberline Base (1,500’), and I guess it never rose much higher than that.  The other concern about the snow had been the effects of the wind, but any drifting and wind crusts were few and far between on the terrain I covered up to Bryant Cabin and beyond.  I ran into many areas where the trees were just caked and choked with upslope snow clinging to every branch at various crazy angles, and snow doesn’t stay like that when it’s been hit by heavy winds.

    Finding the snow quality so impressive, I actually decided to continue my tour all the way up to the top of the Catamount Trail Glades around 3,000’ and the powder just kept getting deeper.  Estimates of surface snow depths that I found on my tour were as follows:

    2,000’: 15-20”

    2,500’: ~20”

    3,000’: 20-25”

    Untracked areas up in the Catamount Trail Glades were two feet of bottomless powder, and you could easily be fooled into thinking we’d just had a major storm cycle in the past couple of days, not a week ago.  For the rest of my descent I headed down past Bryant Cabin along Gardiner’s Lane and North Slope, and finished off with a connect onto Wilderness via Alchemist.  The conditions on Alchemist were perhaps the biggest testament to the quality of the snow, because it’s got a hard core southerly exposure, and things have to be pretty prime to get real quality powder turns there.  I’d say I encountered some of the best conditions I’ve ever seen on Alchemist, so the snow over the past week or so has been extremely well preserved.

    It was hard to get a sense for the total snowpack depth while I was out on my tour because it’s getting too deep to probe easily, but the Mansfield snowpack at the stake is at 42”, so the snowpack depth is probably just a bit less than that as you drop to around 3,000’.  While that Mansfield snowpack is a foot below average, we’re getting to the point in the season where being below average is less and less relevant in terms of off piste coverage and skiing quality.  We’re past that 40” mark at the stake, and all the terrain I encountered yesterday was game on, regardless of pitch or obstacles.  I ran the snowpack liquid analysis this morning down at our site in the valley for CoCoRaHS, and there’s 3 inches of liquid equivalent in our snow.  The local mountains probably have double that amount at elevation, so it’s easy to see why the off piste skiing is so good.  If you’ve got 6 inches of liquid equivalent under your feet, that’s going to take care of a lot of terrain, even pretty steep terrain.

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  12. On 2/2/2023 at 9:21 PM, Redmorninglight said:

    I’ll be up at my camp in the Adirondacks this weekend. Considering headed to Bolton Valley Sunday for a split board rental —earn your turns session. I have been reading @J.Spin ‘s posts about their non-lift served terrain. Anybody have any advice on how all this works? I’m looking at a 2.5 hour drive early Sunday morning and wanted to be sure I have all the details.
    Thanks.
    Jeff

     

    On 2/2/2023 at 9:32 PM, dmcginvt said:

    Best of luck Jeff, Bolton sounds like a good plan and it will be warming up Sunday which like eternal enlightment on your deathbed from the dalai lama, you have that going for you.  I cant speak to it like Jspin can so I'll defer to him.

    You’ve probably already seen it on the Bolton Valley website if you’ve been there, but with the parking, glade maintenance, patrol services, connection to the Nordic trails, etc., Bolton does require skiers on their backcountry network to have a Nordic/Backcountry/Uphill pass.  The website indicates that those passes are $17 midweek/$25 weekend, and since they haven’t updated their pricing page since last season, it appears that their prices are the same this season:

    https://www.boltonvalley.com/winter/tickets-passes/nordic-backcountry-uphill-passes/

    If it’s your first time exploring the area, a solid introduction to the network is to park in one of the lower parking lots down by the Nordic/Sports Center (most people want to park higher up closer to the lift access, so these areas are used less) and jump on the Broadway Trail. From there, connect to the Bryant Trail and head up toward Bryant Cabin.  The Bryant Trail is also the Catamount Trail during that stretch, so it’s very well maintained, it’s wide, well packed, and has a nice pitch for very comfortable skinning.  I’d say the Bryant/Catamount trail is the backbone for the area.  Simply looping around Bryant Cabin onto Gardiner’s Lane/North Slope will give quick access to all the glades that descend from there (see the map I attached), and it makes for very convenient laps.  The map I attached shows some of the most popular marked glades in yellow.  There are of course many more glades that aren’t marked on the map, and beyond that you can simply explore and ski wherever you want and have fun turns where the forest is naturally open enough on its own.

    For more reference on the area, I’ve got dozens and dozens of trip reports with Google Earth maps on the backcountry page of our website:

    http://jandeproductions.com/backcountry/

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  13. With the strong snowpack in the area now, I decided to head out to the Nebraska Valley for some ski touring today.  The last time I toured in the Nebraska Valley I was on the valley’s north side, but I’ve now heard from multiple students of mine that the south side of the valley offers some great skiing off the Catamount Trail.  I didn’t have too much information beyond the fact that you can just use the Catamount Trail as a collector trail for the terrain in the area, but it sounded pretty straightforward, fun, and convenient.

    I was able to park right at the Catamount Trail parking area on the south side of Nebraska Valley Road, so the trail access was very easy.  It had started snowing around midday, and there was steady snowfall through much of my tour in the afternoon.  Following the Catamount Trail southward, the options for great backcountry skiing are indeed very obvious.  From the trailhead at an elevation of ~1,000’, the trail rises at a moderate grade for about 400 feet of vertical over the course of perhaps ¾ of a mile, and then the terrain flattens out into a relatively broad valley with the main drainage on your left, and steep slopes rising up to your right.  The slopes consist of very open hardwood forest throughout, with tree spacing in many areas as much as 20 or 30 feet.  I couldn’t see all the way to the top of the terrain, but there must be hundreds of acres there with very obvious ski lines, and the fact that there were tracks coming down out of this terrain suggested that it held good potential.  At around a mile from the trailhead I came to the first obvious skin track that headed up off the Catamount Trail into these slopes, so using that was a clear option for some great runs.

    I just happened to run into one of my students descending on the Catamount Trail as he and his group were finishing up their session for the day, and he said that if I had the time, I should head higher up because the snow was better.  Being my first time in the area, I did want to take a long enough tour to get the lay of the land, so I continued another mile or so and toured up to around 2,400’.  The snow was indeed even better higher up, but the tree lines weren’t as open as the beautiful looking terrain I’d seen lower down.  The terrain higher up was plenty steep, and certainly offered decent skiing, but I’d say those initial slopes rising from the valley at around 1,500’ are the best bang for your buck as long as the snowpack and snow quality are good at those elevations.

    It was snowing quite hard up at 2,400’ when I began my descent, hard enough that I would have been worried about being out there in such weather if I didn’t know the forecast wasn’t calling for sustained accumulations.  The snow had added another couple of inches to top off the snowpack, which certainly helped make the powder even a bit fresher.  Temperatures had been cold much of the afternoon, but on my descent I quickly realized that the freezing level had risen.  I descended out of the heavy snowfall down into mixed precipitation by ~1,500’, and just sprinklings of rain down at the trailhead elevations of ~1,000’.  I was glad that I’d finished my tour by that point because the lower elevation snow was definitely getting sticky and more difficult to ski.

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  14. 33 minutes ago, borderwx said:

    Surprised to come home to 4”
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    J,
    Made it to Bolton today, an Indy pass exploration, great hill you have down there!

    Excellent - so great to hear that you got out to BV for some exploration.  Hopefully conditions stayed OK - I was ski touring in the Nebraska Valley today, and later in the afternoon the freezing levels came up.  We were snow all the way down into the valleys, through about midafternoon, but they seemed to rise up to at least 1,000' -1,500' later.

  15. Yesterday was the much anticipated season opening of Bolton’s Timberline area, and as announced, they livened things up a bit for the event with free coffee, and a visit from the El Gato Food Truck.  Bolton fans were of course excited to get the last main pod of the resort open for the season, shifting the alpine trail network up to its full speed, but even more exciting was the fact that the snow has simply been sitting there and accumulating over the course of these last several storm cycles.  There’s been some ski touring traffic in the area, but the Timberline Uphill Route hasn’t officially been open, so the visitation hasn’t been all that heavy.  All this, combined with the fact that the back side of Winter Storm Kassandra finally put some of that classic Northern Greens upslope fluff in place to top off the snowpack, meant that some fantastic powder skiing awaited the visitors.

    My wife and I headed up for the anticipated 9:00 A.M. opening of the Timberline Quad, and when we got into the lineup around 8:45 A.M., there were only about a dozen of us there.  The lift opening went off without a hitch, and from then on, Timberline was a lift-served powder playground.  There was a mid-morning rush where the lift queue grew large, but before that point it was minimal to nonexistent.  We had light to moderate snowfall for a good part of the morning when one of the small waves of low pressure in the area pushed through, and temperatures were about as perfect as you could want – they were on the mild side, but stayed below freeing to avoid any disruption to the quality of the powder.  The conditions were certainly nothing in the realm of all-time by Northern Greens standards, but it was great, right-side-up bottomless powder everywhere we went, and even down to the 1,500’ elevation, the base depths are good for just about all the terrain.  A couple more solid storm cycles would push it to that next level for hitting bigger features, but the snowpack is certainly in midwinter form.

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  16. I was too busy yesterday to hit the slopes and check out the new snow from Winter Storm Kassandra, but my younger son was out at Bolton and said the skiing was excellent.  He told me that he and his friend got third tracks down Preacher, which must have been pretty amazing.  The snowfall continued right through the day on Thursday though, and there was a decent signal for upslope snow on the back side of the storm cycle, so it seemed like Friday held some promise for great turns as well.  My drive home from Burlington on Thursday evening went from partly cloudy conditions in the Champlain Valley, to gradually increasing snowfall as I pushed farther into the mountains, to a pounding of huge flakes by the time I got home.  The roads were snowy, but the visibility was the tougher part of the drive.  When I measured the snowfall rate at our house that evening, it was up in the 2 to 3-inch per hour range for a while, so the flakes were stacking up quickly.  And not surprisingly, those huge flakes were stacking up with impressive loft.  When I ran a snow analysis at midnight, the stack came in at 2.3% H2O.  We haven’t really had a lot of upslope on the back side of storm cycles this season, but we got some this time, and it suggested good things for Friday morning.

    This morning I was on my way up to earn some morning turns at Wilderness, when I passed by Timberline and realized the timing was right for the Timberline Uphill Route to be open.  The snowpack has thus far been thin down at those lower elevations, but Kassandra definitely seemed to push it over the top and I had my first Timberline outing of the season.  We had some outstanding powder skiing around here in mid-December, but I think today’s turns might have just edged out that period to set the new bar for the season.  The snowpack was surprisingly robust during that December stretch, but the fact that we’ve now had multiple winter storm cycles, multiple inches of liquid equivalent going into the snowpack, and a skiable snowpack that reaches down even to the Timberline elevations means a lot.  The turns today were so very bottomless and effortless with all the new champagne on top, so it was certainly one of the top days of the season thus far.  Bolton is planning to run the Timberline Quad tomorrow for the first time this season, so that’s a sign that the season is really moving into prime time.  They’re also planning on some nice additions to celebrate the day like free coffee, and a visit from the El Gato Food Truck, so it should be a fun way to get Timberline rolling for the season.

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  17. 3 hours ago, mreaves said:

    Latest map from BTV.  Sounds like other areas of NNE have trended worse.  BTV is keeping a steady hand.

    I haven’t really seen much change in the projections for this system over the past few days; the models seemed to have been pretty locked in on the track, but maybe it has changed outside of our area.  Yesterday morning I received a text alert that we’d been put under a Winter Storm Watch, and yesterday afternoon I got another one indicated that we were under a Winter Storm Warning, so that proceeded pretty quickly.  Consistent with the lack of notable changes you noted, the Event Total Snowfall map doesn’t seem to have changed in the past couple of cycles.  They’ve got that 12-18” shading along the spine in the Bolton through Smugg’s stretch, and while that initially didn’t seem to jive with the mountain point forecasts, it seems like it does now – the Mansfield point forecast tops out around 18” through Thursday night.

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  18. I headed up to the mountain yesterday morning to catch a quick ski tour and check out the snow we’d received from Winter Storm Jimenez up to that point.  Bolton was indicating 4 to 5 inches of new snow as of the morning report, and that’s what I found fairly consistently in touring from 2,100’ up to around 2,700’ on terrain that had previously been packed.  Turns were generally bottomless with 115 mm width skis on low and moderate angle terrain, but the quality of the turns was bolstered by the fact that the subsurface continues to improve with each storm.  That dense mid-month storm really substantiated the base, and Winter Storm Izzy added some drier snow atop that, so the depth and quality of the snowpack is improving by leaps and bounds.  There have been additional accumulations today from a strong cold front passing through the area, and the next synoptic system in the queue is expected to impact the area tomorrow night and has been named Winter Storm Kassandra.  That system seems to have a bit more potential for some upslope snow on the back side, and I’ve seen storm total estimates as high as 12 to 18 inches for the local mountains, which would represent another great addition to the snowpack.

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  19. As expected, Winter Storm Iggy came through and transformed the ski conditions in the local mountains this weekend.  A survey of the Vermont ski area snow reports revealed surprisingly consistent storm totals running around 10 inches up and down the spine of the Central and Northern Greens, with lower amounts down at the southern resorts due to an influx of some mixed precipitation.

    My older son was coming home from NVU Lyndon for the weekend, and with Iggy starting up Thursday evening, my wife was able to pick him up late that afternoon because he didn’t have any Friday classes.  The timing was perfect because they got home just ahead of when the flakes started falling, and it was a great example of the utility of accurate winter weather forecasting.

    My younger son and his friend only have one early class on Fridays, so after they were done with class, my older son joined them and the three of them headed up to Bolton for some turns.  They scored quite a day with the fresh snow and minimal midweek visitors on the slopes.  They had such a blast that after coming home, eating dinner, and watching some GoPro videos from the day, they switched up to some different gear and went back out for night skiing until last chair.

    I didn’t have a chance to head out earlier in the day on Friday, but I did get up to the mountain with about an hour of light left, so went for a tour on Wilderness to check out all the new snow.  The storm was still ongoing, but at that point I found the following surface snow depths:

    2,000’: 6”

    2,500’: 7-8”

    2,800’: 8-9”

    I decided not to tour all the way to the Wilderness Summit because I was losing daylight, but the quality of the powder I encountered was excellent.  I was surprised to find that I could feel a difference in snow density below about 2,500’, but it was fairly subtle and the turns were really great from top to bottom.  All in all I’d describe the turns as mostly bottomless, quite surfy, and that powder was all atop that bomber base that was present from the previous storm cycle, so you could really have confidence in what was below the new snow.

    In a discussion with one of my colleagues at work on Friday, I learned that plans were in place to open the Wilderness Chair for the first time this season on Saturday, so my older son and I headed up Saturday morning for a session.  We didn’t really rush out to the mountain, arriving at about 9:30 A.M. for the scheduled 10:00 A.M. opening of the Wilderness Chair, but it turns out that was a bit too late.  People were already having to park at Timberline and since the Timberline Quad isn’t running yet, you had to take the shuttle up to the main mountain.  With the first notable weekend day with fresh snow in at least a couple of weeks, it seemed like everyone in the state was excited to get out.

    I learned that the Wilderness Chair actually had actually halted operations for a bit due to a mechanical issue, but that timing worked out pretty well for us – by the time we took one run on Vista to get us over toward Wilderness, the lift was running.  We spent much of our time on Wilderness, exploring various tree skiing lines between Snow Hole and the Nordic/backcountry network, and the powder skiing was great.  We could use a couple more feet of base to cover up some of the usual obstacles and really get the off piste skiing into prime time, but everywhere we went it was pretty much good to go.

    We wrapped up the session in the midafternoon with a run back to our car at the base of Timberline, and while having to shuttle up to the main mountain at the start of the day wasn’t our first choice, the run back to the car through endless powder was more than worth it.  It doesn’t look like the Timberline Uphill Route is officially open yet, but we saw a number of skiers ascending there when we were waiting for the shuttle.  Practically speaking, the snow at Timberline is good to go with respect to ski touring, so it will be interesting to see if the resort officially opens that uphill route soon.  They resort is making snow down at Timberline to presumably open it up for lift-served skiing before long, and if these next couple of winter storms deliver like Winter Storm Iggy did, they’ll probably be able to open it up even before all the snowmaking is done.  This next system has earned the name Winter Storm Jimenez due to its anticipated impacts, so we’ll see what it delivers over the next couple of days.

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  20. I got a text alert yesterday afternoon that we’d been put under a Winter Weather Advisory for Winter Storm Iggy that is expected to affect the area in the coming days.  I’ve got the progression of the BTV NWS maps over the past couple of update cycles, and as noted in the recent forecast discussions, some areas that weren’t initially under advisories have now been incorporated.  The projected accumulations have been bumped a bit as is often the case as the potential event draws close and confidence increases.

    The current BTV NWS point forecast for our site suggests accumulations in the 6 to 12-inch range through Friday night, and the current projected Event Total Snowfall map has us in the 6 to 10-inch range though midday Friday, so those sources both seem quite consistent.  Snow ratios can sometimes be lower with these types of events, so the lower end of that range may be more appropriate, but it will also depend on how much falls in the later portion of the storm cycle when ratios will likely increase.  I’m seeing about 0.70” of liquid projected in our point forecast, which would be 7” of snow if the ratio averages out at a 10:1 SLR for the storm as a whole.

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  21. After getting out to the hill on Saturday, to check out the snow conditions, I hadn’t really planned to ski any other days over the weekend – the conditions on the groomed terrain were fine, but definitely on the firm side.  And the off piste just isn’t very viable at the moment, because while the snow from this most recent storm contributed a fantastic addition to the base snowpack, it needs another good round of snow on top of it or else you’re just skiing on a dense, crusty moonscape.  But, a couple of my students alerted me that they’d be up at Bolton Valley yesterday morning and asked if I wanted to join them, so I said I catch up with them for some turns.  My wife had the holiday off and joined me, and we met up with them in the late morning period and had a great time catching up after the holiday break.  Light snow fell much of the time from the system off the coast, and it certainly made the mood even more wintry, even if it didn’t add much in terms of accumulation.

    We’d had a little light snow from that coastal system over the previous day or so, but ski conditions weren’t really all that different from what I’d experienced on Saturday.  Groomed terrain with manmade snow had some bright spots (like Alta Vista again), but most was fairly firm as it had been before.  One very notable positive change that took place over the course of the weekend was that the resort had opened a lot more terrain.  A little (like Hard Luck I believe) was due to snowmaking, but the vast majority was simply natural snow terrain that patrol had been able to check and mark.  They opened all the lower Wilderness terrain that is accessible from the Vista Quad, as one would expect, but I couldn’t believe that even Cobrass was open.  It’s quite steep in spots, has a decent amount of southern exposure, and seemed to be mostly operating on natural snow.

    All the natural snow terrain they opened is just a testament to how durable a resurfacing this most recent winter storm was.  The only thing holding back the off piste skiing (although some folks were jumping into the woods in areas) is just the crusty, dense nature of the snow.  It’s simply not all that much fun right now because it’s a bit upside down and crunchy, but boy are both the on piste and off piste areas going to be ready to go with just one decent storm.  With three possible winter storms in the queue over the next six days, ski conditions are really set to take a quantum leap if the accumulations come through as the modeling currently suggests.  The snowpack is there.  At least based on what I saw at Bolton over the weekend, if these storms deliver even half of the snow that’s currently modeled, lift and trail counts are likely to explode over the course of the next week.

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  22. I hadn’t been up to the mountain since that fantastic period of skiing from mid-December through the holidays; no major winter storms had come through the area since Winter Storm Elliot, and the skiing just hadn’t seemed good enough to pull me away from other things.  That changed with this most recent storm though – Bolton’s snow report from yesterday morning indicated that they’d picked up half foot of new snow in the past couple of days.  Although the storm did contain mixed precipitation, it delivered 1.33” of liquid equivalent down here at our site in the valley, with most of that as snow/frozen.  Assuming the local mountains exceeded that as they usually do, that’s a storm cycle that has all the makings of a solid resurfacing/base building event.

    With this latest storm, Bolton Valley indicated that the Wilderness Uphill Route was officially open again, which is a good sign that there had been a substantial addition to the snowpack.  My observations from yesterday while I was out touring definitely reinforced that notion.  With the effects of this most recent storm, the base snow is actually so dense that I couldn’t do any depth checks, but I’d say you’re looking at probably a foot of base depth at the 2,000’ level.  If the snow density is that same as what I’ve cored down here at our site in the valley, that would have about 2 inches of liquid equivalent in it.  Since the snowpack is just too dense to do any easy depth readings, I don’t have an estimate for the increases of snowpack depth with elevation.  The Mt. Mansfield Stake up at 3,700’ is indicating a snowpack depth of 20 inches as of today though, so I’d assume you’re looking at something in that range once you’re up at the local summit elevations above 3,000’.

    In terms of the skiing, I wasn’t really expecting much real powder with how dense the snowfall was from this past storm; my tour was really a chance to get out for some exercise and see how the off piste snowpack and snow surfaces were looking.  I only found about an inch or so of lighter snow above the base, and that was pretty consistent at all elevations in the 2,000’ to 3,000’ range.  Snow coverage of the natural terrain is actually quite good though with that impressively dense base, and Lower Turnpike with a good amount of skier-packed areas has great wall-to-wall coverage.  Steeper terrain with ledges, obstacles, and wind scouring/drifting is not as consistent in its coverage, but the base snow is just so dense that most of the natural terrain is going to be good to go with the next decent storm.  The best snow quality I found was actually natural snow areas that had been skier packed, since areas of undisturbed snow still held the potential to punch through the uppermost layers of the base.  On my descent I definitely employed a mix of alpine and Telemark turns, and the safety of alpine turns with that full width of surface area for both skis in the center was the way to go when navigating snow that hadn’t been packed by skiers.

    I stuck around for some lift-served skiing since I’d seen that Alta Vista had been opened, and I think it had seen some of the more recent snowmaking, because it had some of the best conditions I found.  The best snow by far was what people had pushed to the side, but the main surface was better than elsewhere.  Most of the on piste surfaces were typical of what you’d expect for manmade snow that had seen lift-served skier traffic, so really nothing to note in terms of quality.  When I got home and my son asked me about the conditions, I gave the typical on piste conditions a rating of 2 on a 0 to 10 scale, but I have pretty high snow quality standards, so he knows where a value of 2 would stand.  Even without any big storms over the past couple of weeks, the resort has been expanding their terrain with runs like Spillway, and they were blowing snow on Hard Luck as well.  The recent snow was substantial enough that even some natural snow terrain had been opened.  Surprisingly, they don’t have to lower areas of Wilderness open yet to lift-served access, which is pretty typical under these conditions, but they would need to groom it first, so that may take some extra time.

    Even if the snow quality isn’t there yet in terms of typical Northern Greens surfaces, it was definitely nice to get back on the slopes after the break.  We had light snow falling during the morning with some blue skies, and some nice snow/rime on the trees.  With that base in place, terrain is likely to expand heavily if these next couple of potential systems in the coming week deliver any substantial snow.

     

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