J.Spin

Yeah, it’s absolutely a complement to lift-served, it’s not really meant to fully replace it for most of us. With that said, I’m big on snow quality, so I’ll happily ski one run of quality powder (or even quality corn snow in the spring) that required skinning vs. four runs of lift-served chattery ice. I’m like PF in that I’ll typically do one run via skinning, especially on Mansfield where you’re looking at 2,000’+ of vertical in one run, or nearly 3,000’ of vertical if you’re going all the way up to The Chin. Sometimes I’ll do a run and a half if there’s fresh snow that’s good only from a certain elevation on up. Or at Bolton, I might tour around and do a few half runs if I’m exploring across the mountain and hitting different pods that don’t require full descents in between. You can think of it very much as a way of exercising with a free ski run at the end. Skis with skins on them are very efficient mechanism for moving about on the snow. It’s not as if it has to be arduous – you can pick whatever pitch you want for an ascent, and it can literally be the same amount of effort as going out for a walk or a gentle hike if desired. I typically enjoy the up as much as the down, and I generally take a nice pace on the way up that’s comfortable, but gets the heart rate up if I want it to. It all depends on if I’m looking for the up to be a leisurely stroll, or if I’m feeling like I want to put in a bit more effort and get more exercise out of it on any given day. As long as the up isn’t arduous, it’s just a great overall experience because you’re out on the mountain, often alone or with some friends/family, enjoying the scenery at a much slower and quieter pace than lift-served skiing. In the winter it’s fun to ascend and watch the fresh snow get deeper and deeper the more you climb, and all the while, you know you don’t even have to hike down because you’re going to just take off your skins and get a free ski run out of the deal.

You couldn’t be more on the mark with this one - when I saw your nice picture of the last push of the season at Spruce, my immediate thought was “Woo! Skinning time at Spruce!” Would I probably do some lift-served skiing at one of the late-season resorts if I had a season’s pass there, sure, but in heading off to other areas, there are some pretty large thresholds to overcome to top just skinning for turns at a local resort. Do I really want to travel an hour plus down to Killington, pay ~$100 for a ticket, and deal with potential crowds to ski, or do I want to travel less than 30 minutes, pay nothing, have less skier traffic, and get in my cardio for the day? It’s not as if I’m interested in skiing anything near bell-to-bell anyway, I just want to get out for a couple of runs, get some turns, get some exercise, enjoy the nice snow and weather, and then have the rest of the day to do whatever else I want to do. I mean one has to sort of LOL at the thought of paying $400 to bring the family for lift-served turns for a day when there’s a free alternative that’s closer and has so many other perks as well. It’s not that I’m at all opposed to heading down to Killington for some great spring turns on Superstar, but they’ll have to get well into those reduced spring ticket prices if they want to compete against tickets that are priced at $0.

PF, did our early April snowstorm count, or is there a higher threshold required to satisfy your prediction?

As of this morning’s CoCoRaHS report, there’s no snow left on our property, so April 4th was the last day with continuous winter snowpack here for this season. This year’s snowpack start date was on December 6th, which is 4 days later than the mean, and it ran continuously through yesterday, which was 10 days ahead of the mean. So the overall run was 120 days, which is about two weeks less than normal due to the slightly late start and early finish. This season was on the lower end, but there are three seasons in my data set with shorter snowpack durations: ‘09-‘10 with 119 days, ’15-‘16 with 103 days, and ’11-‘12 with 90 days.

After finding such nice conditions yesterday, my wife and I headed up for another session at Bolton this morning. Based on the forecasts I saw, those temperatures and humidity should have preserved everything – and they definitely did. The powder was just as good as yesterday – it seemed to have settled a touch, but the L.E. was all still there, so it skied just as nicely. The groomed terrain on the upper mountain that had been blasted by the wind yesterday was much improved today, I guess due to another round of the groomers pulverizing it with the new snow mixed in, and this time without the winds scouring it away. We were talking about how the resort’s essentially come full circle on the season as it often does, and we’re back to the way it can be in November and early December when the focus is on the main mountain, but the other pods that aren’t open have enough snow to ski. All you have to do is traverse out to the powder. We both remarked at what a fantastic late winter day it was, with the powder, the Colorado blue skies, and humidity to match. We were just starting to find a few spots in the direct sun where the powder was starting to get sun-affected around midday when we were leaving, but it really was holding up quite well with these humidity levels. A few shots from today:

March Totals Days with new snow: 15 Accumulating Storms: 7 Snowfall: 14.1” Liquid Equivalent: 1.98” SDD: 275.5 I’ve put together my numbers for March, and it was certainly on the lean side with snowfall running about half of our average. It’s interesting to note that we still had more snow than last March, and three other Marches in my data set as well, so it’s certainly at least a tier above the basement in terms of snowfall. Liquid equivalent was also about half our average as well, and it’s not too surprising that snowfall and L.E. would run somewhat in sync. The other parameters are reasonably below average too, due to the greater than average amount of benign weather days. Number of storms and days with snow are probably not as far off the mark, but I’d have to run the averages on those parameters to know.

It’s interesting to hear that about Mansfield – when I was out today at Bolton I saw that the front face trails on Vista had been absolutely hammered by the wind, which is not surprising with the way they face west, but apparently even areas of the east side got hit pretty hard as well. Timberline is usually a nice place to go to get away from the wind, but it’s not open right now because coverage just isn’t great down that low, but lower Wilderness is another good option for sheltered terrain, and that was serving up some great powder. I headed up not too long after opening today, and it was really dumping when I arrived thanks to that push of moisture that hit in the morning. The old base is just so consolidated and hard after a couple weeks of spring weather and no new snow, that I didn’t really find any of the steep groomed terrain that had really improved. Either the wind had blown everything away, or it was exposed enough to the wind that the groomers couldn’t do much with it. Low and moderate angle groomers on the bottom half of the mountain seemed to have incorporated the snow nicely though – turns were nice and quiet, so the new snow must have stayed put and been churned in by the groomers. Low and moderate angle powder terrain was the way to go though. I’d thrown both fats and midfats on the car today, and ended up using the midfats and found they had plenty of float. There’s was definitely enough L.E. in the snow to set up everything below black diamond pitch. A few shots from today’s outing in the Village and on the mountain:

Event totals: 2.1” Snow/0.58” L.E. We picked up a final tenth of an inch of accumulation today, and I assume the above totals are the final numbers for this storm at our site since it seems like we’re clearing out. Details from the 6:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.1 inches New Liquid: Trace Temperature: 27.0 F Sky: Mostly Clear Snow at the stake: Trace

Here’s the north to south listing of available snowfall totals I’ve seen from the Vermont ski areas along the spine for this event. The focus for this storm was certainly the Northern Greens, with lesser amounts in the Central Greens, and not much reported out of the Southern Greens. Jay Peak: 12” Smuggler’s Notch: 9” Stowe: 7” Bolton Valley: 9” Sugarbush: 3” Pico: 3” Killington: 3” Okemo: 0” Stratton: 0” Mount Snow: 1”

I stopped off at Bolton today for some turns, and here are the general accumulations I found from this latest storm starting from near the Bottom of the Bolton Valley Access Road: 500’: 0.5” 1,000’: 2” 1,500’: 5” 2,000’: 7” 2,500’: 8” 3.000’: 9” The biggest jumps in accumulation appear to be in the 1,000’ to 2,000’ elevation band. The resort is reporting 9” in the past 48 hours on their snow report, so that seems in synch with what I found up at the main mountain.

Event totals: 2.0” Snow/0.58” L.E. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.6 inches New Liquid: 0.01 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 60.0 Snow Density: 1.7% H2O Temperature: 22.8 F Sky: Flurries Snow at the stake: 0.5 inches

Event totals: 0.8” Snow/0.56” L.E. Frozen precipitation began to mix in at our site not too long after midnight last night, and it was obvious because I could hear the sleet hitting off the windows and checked outside to see what was up. I suspect it stayed mixed like that much of the night because there was nothing more than a trace of frozen accumulation this morning at observations time. Looking up into the local hills, the accumulating snow line seemed to be around 1,000’ or so. The precipitation changed over to snow not long after observations time, and it snowed all the way in to Burlington today. The snowfall intensity actually kept increasing as I headed into the Champlain Valley, but temperatures were a few degrees above freezing so the roads just stayed wet. During the day today in Burlington we had some periods of heavy snow with huge flakes during that banding, and it accumulated to an inch or two. At the house it continued to snow, but outside the band the snowfall intensity was just too light to accumulate to more than a tenth of an inch at valley elevations in our area. We picked up most of our snow at the house with that next round of precipitation that came through in the afternoon, and we’ve been having another round of that around here this evening as well. Details from the 6:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.7 inches New Liquid: 0.04 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 17.5 Snow Density: 5.7% H2O Temperature: 33.1 F Sky: Flurries Snow at the stake: Trace

As suggested, the Winter Storm Watches from the BTV NWS have been converted over to Winter Storm Warnings and Winter Weather Advisories. Updated maps are below:

Whether it falls as 6”, 7”, or 10”, the most important aspect is how much of the L.E. falls as frozen as we discussed the other day. Whatever falls is going to be going to be atop a very old and consolidated spring snowpack subsurface, so we’re going to want some substantial density on the front end of the storm cycle anyway. Topping it off with some drier upslope on the back side of the story cycle as bwt mentions would be a nice way to enhance the overall turns with respect to the gradient of snow density if that’s the way it plays out. I’m still seeing numbers topping out around ~1.5” L.E. on most of the models, so a substantial percentage of that as frozen has the potential to set up some nice turns in the elevations of the Northern Greens.

I just stopped in at the BTV NWS site and saw that the Winter Storm Watches have been extended into NVT, and projected accumulations have been bumped, presumably based on what they’ve seen from the midday guidance. Elevations along the spine of the Northern Greens have been bumped up from the 6-8” tier into the 8-12" tier. Updated maps are below:

I heard on VPR this morning that there was a Winter Storm Watch up in the Adirondacks, so it was clear that there was something going on with respect to this upcoming storm. I’ve added the current BTV NWS maps below – it looks like over here in the Northern Greens they’ve got things topping out in the 6-8” range at the summits, which is right in line with what you had mentioned above.

Yeah, we’re still ~48 hours out from the onset of precipitation, so we’ll have to see how everything shifts around, but it’s hard to think the storm is just going to go “poof” into nothing with all those various models suggesting something is afoot. It’s the mountains of NNE, so it’s hard to imagine those elevations can’t pull at least some snow out of this system. Along with PF’s input, we’ll start to get a sense for whatever potential there might be as the BTV NWS experts begin to digest it and weigh in – the ‘dacks and Northern Greens are literally right in their wheelhouse.

Regarding bwt’s inquiry, I guess it all depends on anticipated frozen L.E. with this system. That’s really what will dictate the additional terrain/turn options that will be available. Something in the 0.50” frozen L.E. range would get low angle terrain into the mix, even if it had fully melted out, as long as the new stuff is dense (which I don’t think should be a problem). I’d say you’d want at least 1.00 frozen L.E. to get mid-angle terrain going, and then up near 2.00” frozen L.E. to get the steep stuff going. For terrain with existing snowpack, you can obviously get by on less than those numbers. On the 12Z GFS I’m seeing total liquid through Saturday of ~1.25” – 2.00” in the Northern Greens from south to north, with the 2.00” L.E. up by Jay Peak. The CMC looks similar, and the ICON is in that range as well, but with the highest L.E. in the Central Greens. The ECMWF seems little lower in the 1.0 – 1.5” total L.E. range, and the UKMET seems to like the western slopes with ~2.0” L.E. I guess it will come down to how much of that L.E. is frozen, but even if you get 75% of those numbers in solid form, with that typical heftiness of the base from the rain to snow transition, you’d have a lot in play up by Jay Peak. Even 50% of those numbers as frozen would make for fine turns. There’s also a follow up system with some potential additional precipitation on Saturday night into Sunday on some of the models.

I hadn’t immediately remembered that storm just based on the date, but then I went to my web page and found my storm report/trip report from 4/10/12, and I quickly saw which event it was. Looks like it was 1.69” storm total liquid at our site, very similar to what you noted for Stowe. The full report on the storm is linked above, but I added some images below:

Event totals: 1.3” Snow/0.53” L.E. We’ve mostly cleared out now, so it looks like the totals above are the final numbers for this storm at our site. Details from the 6:00 P.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.8 inches New Liquid: 0.05 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 16.0 Snow Density: 6.3% H2O Temperature: 38.5 F Sky: Mostly Clear Snow at the stake: Trace

Event totals: 0.5” Snow/0.48” L.E. Details from the 6:00 A.M. Waterbury observations: New Snow: 0.5 inches New Liquid: 0.02 inches Snow/Water Ratio: 25.0 Snow Density: 4.0% H2O Temperature: 33.1 F Sky: Snow (2 to 20 mm flakes) Snow at the stake: 0.5 inches

There was no accumulation to report down at our elevation at this morning’s observations, but indeed the snow line looked like it was down close to 1,000’ around here in our local hills. I’m not seeing any significant accumulations reported yet by Bolton Valley this morning, but there’s definitely new accumulation visible on the live webcam at the main base.

It’s obviously tough when it’s only your first full season up here and you don’t have a wealth of perspective Phin, but what folks provided above were some great examples of seasons that could be placed in that D/F range of quality – ‘05/’06, ’11-‘12 (115.3” of total snow at our site), and ’15-‘16 (72.2” of total snow at our site). I was still out west in ‘05/’06, so I can’t say from firsthand experience, but I hadn’t heard great things. For some reason, I have ‘09-‘10 (127.7” of snow at our site) in my memory banks as well as a poor season, but maybe it’s not quite down in that D/F area for the slopes? And remember, even those poorest of ski seasons can have some bright spots, like big storms, decent stretches, good ski weather, etc. As you can see from the comments, this ski season just doesn’t “feel” like it’s down in the basement with those. You can certainly grade a “winter” on just seasonal snowfall and snowpack depth as you mentioned, but realistically, for a “ski season”, it’s a bit more complicated because there are factors like powder days, snow surface quality, preservation, consistency, comfortable temperatures, etc. Think about well-known ski areas like Sun Valley in Idaho, which averages ~200” of snow a season, or Lake Louise in Alberta, which averages ~140” of snow a season. Those places average roughly half the annual snowfall that some of our local places out here in the Northern Greens do, but their average season is still pretty darned nice because of their great snow preservation. So that’s just one of those “other” factors that really needs to be put into the equation for an overall ski season, and it’s definitely one that had an impact on this one around here. Remember, I’m personally still giving this ski season a C- at this point here in the Northern Greens, which is slightly below average, so it’s not as if this has been a season that knocked it out of the park or anything. But one has to remember that slightly below average here in the Northern Greens is still a pretty darned good season from most people’s perspectives. And I’m not just talking about a Northeast perspective; my perspective is framed by many years living and skiing out in the Rockies. No, the Northern Greens are not going to outperform the top tier snow places in the country like Alta, or spots in the Sierra or Cascades that simply get incredible snowfall, but I can tell you from years of experience that they stack up quite well against a lot of the mid-tier resorts in the Rockies for conditions if there hasn’t been some sort of big thaw. People “ooh and ahh” a bit more at the scenery and terrain out there in the Rockies of course, but because we get such frequent snowfall up here in the Northern Greens, the snow surfaces can often be really good – even in a national sense. I just wanted to give you that context in that my grade on the season has that perspective in place; it’s not simply based on some comparison to Northeastern U.S. ski conditions, which are generally considered pretty subpar on a national scale. It was interesting to hear Alex’s perspective on this when he left NNE and headed farther south for some skiing. There are a couple of final notes of caution I’ll mention with respect to simply using raw snowpack numbers as a quality gauge for the ski season. There’s no doubt that more is better, so if the snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield Stake is at 8 or 9 feet this time of year, that’s generally great news. But there’s a degree of threshold effect for the parameter as well. An average season at elevation here in the Northern Greens has more than enough snowpack for typical off piste skiing. That’s why we talk about that “40-inch rule” around here, in that once you get to that depth at the stake, the off piste skiing is pretty much in play. So if you have 6 feet of snow at the stake, which would be something fairly typical for this time of year, it doesn’t mean that the off piste skiing is only “half as good” or something like that if there’s only 3 feet of snow at the stake. You’re still pretty close to that off piste threshold and there could be plenty of off piste terrain in play at elevation. I also recall PF saying that this season had a smaller base depth differential than usual between the high and low elevations on Mansfield, which is going to further mitigate any natural base depth issues. And finally, remember that the natural snow depth is entirely moot for many people’s ski experience because they’re sticking to trails with manmade snow, which is set up to ensure sufficient base for skiing no matter what’s going on with the natural snowpack.

I was flipping past the Weather Channel and saw that things were changing over on the radar. It prompted me to look at the thermometer and I see we’re dropping through the 30s now here at our site. There’s not really any accumulation expected down at this elevation with this system based on our point forecast, but the models have been snowing snow chances around here from the next three to five projected systems. It seems like a more typical, active March/April pattern vs. one of those sunny/mild ones.

I’m not sure what to tell you Phin, it feels like you want the sky to have fallen at some point to knock the overall ski season in NNE into the gutter, but it just really… didn’t. Constantly pining for a big synoptic storm over your way may have gotten to you, but it really wasn’t that bad of a ski season. It had a slow start in November and December, but a very solid two months in the middle with impressive retention and great, consistent, midwinter conditions. We had more snows and powder days through the first half of March, and since then it’s been nice, warm spring skiing. Overall snowfall in the mountains around here was certainly on the low side, but that was reasonably offset by the above average midwinter snow preservation. An outstandingly wintry March and April could certainly have kicked it up a notch in my book, but many recreational skiers don’t want that – they want nice warm days in the spring vs. more snows intermixed with gray, firm conditions. Overall I’d rate it at a C- at this point, with C being average. PF and I have been through some clunkers, and the middle of this season was just too consistent and good to really put this it in that neighborhood. At least that’s how I’d describe it over here in the Northern Greens. We’re sort of lucky in that an “average” season over here is typically above average for much of the region, so maybe it was different over there in NNH. PF is a very straight shooter on this sort of stuff, and he’s literally out on the mountain just about every day throughout the ski season, so he has a very good feel for the tenor of a season. If he says it’s been a well below average ski season in terms of quality, then I’d believe him.