J.Spin

When I left home Friday morning, I’d packed an assortment of skis on the roof rack because I wanted to be ready to roll with whatever Winter Storm Tormund decided to throw at us for the next rounds of snowfall. Full fat Teles were definitely the call for ski touring at Timberline in the morning, and with the snowfall continuing throughout the day, stopping off for some lift-served turns later in the day seemed like a good way to mix things up and take advantage of the nicely shifted schedule that Bolton is now offering. In the afternoon before heading home from Burlington, I sent out a text to the family letting them know that I was heading to the mountain, and to try to catch up for some turns if anyone else was going to be there. My wife had let me know that my younger son might be heading up for some Friday afternoon turns, so I’d been watching my phone for an update about his plans. Low and behold, just as I’m heading down French Hill on I-89 in Williston, a red Subaru with a bunch of gear on the ski rack passes by on the left. It looked suspiciously like my son’s car, and before I knew it, I got a text indicating that he and his friends were right in front of me. Well, that settled that with respect to whether or not I’d be able to meet up for turns! It was raining fairly steadily as we drove through the lower valleys on our way to the mountain, and naturally we hoped that meant there was some nice snowfall occurring at elevation. Indeed, the snow line was pretty low, switching quickly to snow before we even hit 1,000’ on the Bolton Valley Access Road. Up in the Village, it was snowing pretty hard – much harder than what I’d encountered with I’d been out ski touring in the morning. The resort was busy with visitors, but there were enough people coming and going in the afternoon that we were quickly able to get a couple of parking spots right near each other in the top row of the main lot. Based on what I was expecting in terms of conditions, I grabbed my fat alpine boards for the session, since I knew we’d be encountering a lot more tracked conditions in all the dense new snow, and I figured we’d take full advantage of the opportunities the resurfacing would give us to jump into steep terrain. Main lift service for the afternoon was off the Vista Quad, so we hit a bunch of fun, steeper terrain like Vista Glades and Vermont 200 that made good use the resurfacing. Vista Glades was excellent, with all its stumps, rocks, ledges, bumps, and whatever other obstacles it contains well buried under a deep base and the thick layers of fresh snow. It offered lots of swooping and rolling terrain that made for a great ride. Even at higher elevations, the snow was a bit denser than what I’d encountered in my morning tour due to the warming of the day. Now that we were rolling into the second day of the storm cycle, plenty of folks had obviously been out enjoying the systems bounty, so we were mostly skiing tracked and packed snow, but it was skiing beautifully. The higher you went, the drier the snow was, but it was still quite decent down to even 2,000’. We did jump into some untracked areas as well, and that snow was certainly skiing denser than it had in the morning, but it was still plenty dry for some nice powder turns.

With Winter Storm Tormund still churning out the snow on Friday, I decided to head up to the mountain for some turns in the morning. For Bolton’s schedule at this time of year, the lifts don’t start running until noon on weekdays, so ski touring was the natural choice for morning turns. I was initially undecided about whether I was going to tour at Wilderness or on the Backcountry Network, but I ultimately didn’t end up touring in either place. On my way up the Bolton Valley Access Road, I was passing by Timberline and suddenly realized… duh, that was the place to tour! I’ve been touring almost exclusively out of Bolton’s main base area this season because of the access to the superior snowpack depth and snow quality provided by being able to start above the 2,000’ elevation. The snow depth and quality down at the base of Timberline at 1,500’ just hasn’t been there until very recently, and it had been so long since I toured down there, I’d almost forgotten it existed. But when the snow is good, you can’t beat the convenience of ski touring at Timberline with its shorter drive and immediate access to nicely pitched terrain, so once I was reminded, I jumped at the chance to start my tour there. Skier traffic was fairly light, with about a half dozen cars or so in the parking areas. There was some snow falling, but we were in a rather light phase of the ongoing storm cycle. I took depth measurements of the accumulations right at the Timberline Lodge as I was just beginning my ascent, and settled snow depths were right around 18 inches. From there, it seemed to increase by a couple of inches for each 500 feet of vertical gained. The resort was reporting 26 inches for a storm total at that point, and that would make sense for accumulations up around 3,000’ based on my measurements from those slightly lower elevations. Temperatures had cooled off overnight, so the most recent accumulations were drier and knocked the skiing up a notch relative to what I’d found on Thursday afternoon. Overall, it was still a moderately dense accumulation of new snow, but it had a little better gradient of density for powder turns. As I ascending the Timberline skin track on Twice as Nice, I was gauging my options for the descent. Even with the slightly drier snow topping off the ongoing accumulations, I knew from yesterday that having enough pitch was still going to be important for optimal power turns. I was leaning toward descending on Twice as Nice itself, since it has one of the most consistent pitches among the trail selections – it doesn’t have any heavy steeps, but it also doesn’t have the required compensatory flatter sections. My leaning changed when I watched a snowboard descending the trail with his dog, and I saw that he was bogged down and coming to a near standstill in one of the lower pitched areas. That was enough to convince me to head toward Spell Binder, where I knew I would at least get to sample the steep headwall section for some solid turns. As expected, the headwall of Spell Binder absolutely delivered. The turns were surfy and buoyant in the roughly two feet of fresh powder, and I could definitely feel the improvement that had come with that most recent drier snow topping off the rest of the accumulation. Just like Thursday afternoon, it was another session of plowing into the powder as deeply and aggressively as you wanted, and you were still nowhere near the subsurface. As a bonus, even the powder in the lower pitched areas skied fine, and I didn’t have any issues with speed. Either my 115 mm boards had surface area to spare for my weight relative to the snowboarder I’d seen, or he had some other issue (wax, etc.) keeping him from planing on those lower pitches. It was a great powder session to kick off the day, and with the storm continuing to roll along, it looked like there would be more fresh snow sessions on the way as we moved toward the weekend.

Since things have cleared out today, it looks like Winter Storm Tormund is final over in the area, so I’ve put together the north to south storm totals that I could find from the Vermont ski areas. A number of areas aren’t providing storm totals in their summaries today, but it looks like snowfall topped around 2 to 3 feet in the Central/Northern Greens. Jay Peak: 37” Stowe: 26” Bolton Valley: 32” Pico: 27” Killington: 27” Bromley: 22” Magic Mountain: 21” Stratton: 15” Mount Snow: 16”

I was too busy to get up to the mountain for turns this morning, but in terms of lift-served skiing at Bolton, that’s not an issue because their current midweek lift schedule is 12:00 P.M. to 7:00 P.M. It’s pretty cool that they shifted to that schedule, and they aren’t even using the lights for it because daylight simply lasts so long, and their expansive western exposure really plays into that. I did have time to get out for turns this afternoon though, and despite the substantial snows that are being deposited in the mountains and even all the way down to the lowest valleys, the road conditions have been quite nice with April sun intensity and temperatures near the freeing mark. It wasn’t until I was up around 2,000’ on the Bolton Valley Access Road that the road held any snow, and even then it was just a bit of slush with the help of plowing and salting, etc. It was snowing hard when I arrived at the mountain, probably in the inch per hour range, but nothing too outrageous, then it lightened up a bit as the afternoon wore on. There was some wind at times, but at other points it would be nearly calm, even up to elevations just below the ridgeline. Temperatures were in the upper 20 s F, or maybe a little lower than that in the summit areas, but it was definitely comfortable. And the skiing… wow… what a resurfacing. I’m starting to lose count of the number of huge resurfacing storms we’ve had up here in the Northern Greens this season, but a quick look through my storm data from here at my site suggests the mountains have had at least 10 of them with an inch or more of liquid equivalent. That’s pretty impressive for a season that has been struggling to reach average snowfall around here, and it really gets one thinking about what an above average season can produce, since I don’t think we’ve had a solidly above average one since ’18-’19. In any event, I guess average to even a bit below average snowfall is certainly appreciated when it delivers like this. So we’ve had a decent number of these resurfacing storms this season, but this one… Winter Storm Tormund, it really put down a shellacking of the slopes. As soon as I dropped into my first few turns off the Vista Summit, I knew; there had to be at least two inches of liquid equivalent in that snow. This wasn’t just your typical “nice, this is definitely keeping me off the subsurface” type of snowfall, this was on that next level. This snow laughed at the thought of you getting anywhere near the subsurface. We’ve had about an inch and a half of liquid equivalent in the snow thus far down here at the house, and with the way that snow skied on the mountain this afternoon, they’re obviously well above that. The early morning report from the resort was 6 to 8 inches of new snow, so I was surprised with how deep it was when I was up there this afternoon. I routinely measured 16 to 20 inches off the Vista trails, with 24 inches common in some areas. I even got some 30 inch measurements, although those could easily have been in hollows or due to a little drifting. Bolton is reporting 24 inches as their top measurement as of this afternoon, and I’d say that’s right in line with what I found out there. The snow isn’t wet, nor is it super dense, but it’s dense enough that you are well protected from hitting anything below. As is typical with this type of snow, the best powder skiing required substantial pitch, and this type of resurfacing just begs for you to ski the steep stuff anyway, so I obliged and hit the really steep lines off Vista. The super steep sections of Devil’s Playground were a hoot – I always forget just how steep they are, but with this snow you can simply drop in and fly with reckless abandon. With the amount of liquid that’s already gone into the snowpack with this storm cycle, this is a major boost for the spring skiing season – at least with respect to the natural snow trails. The snowmaking terrain always lasts no matter what we get for spring storms, but having storms like these just opens up more natural snow options for much longer. And Winter Storm Tormund isn’t over yet according to the forecasts - it looks like it continues right into the weekend, so the storm totals and contribution to the snowpack will hopefully increase further over the next couple of days. Bolton was at 324 inches of snowfall on the season as of this afternoon, so it’s at least shaping up to be in the average range at this point.

Below is the north to south listing of available snowfall totals from the Vermont ski areas that I’ve seen posted for Winter Storm Tormund thus far for resorts that made midday/afternoon updates today. There are ups and downs along the spine, with no overt trends, but it looks like there was a relative max in the Bolton to Stowe stretch of the spine, and totals fell off a bit in the far north and far south. Magic’s 20” is standing out a bit from what Bromley and Stratton are reporting for being so close together in the magic triangle, but the Magic report is indicated as being from 8:00 P.M. this evening. Jay Peak: 18” Smuggler’s Notch: 15” Stowe: 20” Bolton Valley: 24” Mad River Glen: 18” Sugarbush: 15” Pico: 19” Killington: 19” Bromley: 15” Magic Mountain: 20” Stratton: 14” Mount Snow: 14”

Some of the Winter Storm Watches put out by the BTV NWS have been converted to Winter Storm Warnings as confidence in the next storm system grows. Coverage of the 12-18” shading along the Greens on the Storm Total Snowfall Forecast Map has also expanded out farther into the lower valleys.

Here are the updated BTV NWS maps from overnight for the upcoming storm system. There’s definitely been an expansion of the area of Winter Storm Watches and the area of 12-18” shading along the spine of the Greens.

There’s lots of great discussion about the upcoming system in the BTV NWS AFD. The section below is pretty neat – it’s like they hired PF to write it: Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Burlington VT 1007 AM EDT Tue Apr 2 2024 As of 1006 AM EDT Tuesday...All things considered, a better proxy for this upcoming late season winter storm is the positive snow depth change. While far from perfect, it should provide better context on what would most likely occur compared to low probability worst case scenarios depicted by straight 10:1 or kuchera snowfall outputs.

We were recently put under a Winter Storm Watch for a potential storm coming into the area in the midweek timeframe. There isn’t a headline snowfall map posted yet, but there is a preliminary map that includes some of the anticipated snowfall on the BTV NWS Winter Weather site. The current map only goes out to 8:00 A.M. Thursday, and the modeling suggests the storm won’t wind down until the weekend, so I’m sure the maps will be updated as we get closer to the event.

It’s been a busy week, so I haven’t been able to get out any pictures from last Sunday at Bolton Valley, but I didn’t ski this weekend so I had some time to catch up. Last weekend was an interesting dichotomy of days with Winter Storm Ronnie coming through – Saturday was an absolute blitz of a storm day as the pictures above indicate, but the storm had departed by Sunday and it was just one of those clear, calm, quiet, midwinter days with perfect temperatures that were just a bit below freezing. I used the term “quiet” to describe the weather, but that in no way described the number of visitors to the mountain. We arrived right around the opening time for Timberline, and the cars were already pouring into the resort. I’m not sure about the lore behind nobody skiing after President’s week, but the number of people out on Sunday clearly revealed that such an idea is a crock. People continued to come to the resort all morning, and by the time we left in the late morning period, Bolton had an employee stationed at the bottom of the Bolton Valley Access Road and cars were backed up onto Route 2. I’ve seen them station someone at the bottom of the road when it’s really bad or the resort is not running the lifts due to power/storm issues, but that wasn’t the case this time – there were just so many people coming to the resort that the parking was bursting at the seams. To punctuate just how many people were skiing around here, my friend Dave even came up from Boston to crash overnight Saturday at our place because he was skiing Sugarbush on Sunday. Apparently, everyone wanted to ski after Winter Storm Ronnie. In any event, the skiing was great, but the only thing that really stood out as exceptional was the weather. The snow had dried out and potentially consolidated in its lower levels somewhat overnight, and a bit of lighter snow had fallen as the storm departed, so the powder was not nearly as upside down as it had been on Saturday. The resurfacing had mostly been completed by the end of the day on Saturday, but by Sunday Bolton was reporting a storm total of 16 inches, and based on my analyses the were 1 to 2 inches of liquid equivalent in there. I’ve definitely been hearing talk of it being the best day of the season, but that was mostly hyperbole with respect to conditions around here in the Northern Greens. If you just went by the snow quality and powder skiing, it probably sneaks into the top 10 in terms of great days because of the weather factor, but it really doesn’t come anywhere near the top five. Even this season, which seems to be running a bit below average in terms of snowfall, there have just been too many storm cycles that finished off with quality champagne over a substantial based and a good front end of dense snow that knock last Sunday down several spots in terms of the powder skiing. It was still and excellent day to be out on the slopes though; it’s not every storm that we get that sort of weather right as the system departs.

A few more snowy Saturday shots from Bolton:

It’s been a few days of great skiing, so I’m only now catching up with reports from our recent sessions up on the mountain. On Saturday, Winter Storm Ronnie had begun delivering snow in the wee hours of the morning, and once things got going, heavy snowfall pounded the mountains all day. In our area, the flakes were relatively small, and my early morning liquid analyses from the snow revealed that it was a fairly synoptic-like 12.0 to 1 ratio. That ratio actually dropped as the storm continued through the day, with a 10.6 to 1 ratio for my afternoon analysis, and an 8.4 to 1 ratio for my evening analysis. Despite the relatively small flakes, the snowfall was still in the inch per hour range or more, so there was a lot of liquid coming out of the sky. The very heavy snowfall and small flakes made for some very tough photography out on the mountain, but we still fired away to get what we could. Although the storm was still in progress and we’d only received a portion of the anticipated accumulation by the time the lifts started running at Bolton, we still kicked things off with an early start. We were worried about the ascent of the Bolton Valley Access Road, but an uphill plow run had been done fairly recently, so it was actually quick and painless getting up to the Timberline Base. We quickly met up with one of my colleagues from work and his son, and my younger son and one of his friends from college as well, so we had a party of six exploring the mountain. There didn’t appear to be much elevation dependence with the snowfall, so we were happy to hang down at the relatively lower elevations of Timberline and make use of the great terrain there. While there hadn’t been a call for much wind with this storm, it was still blowing quite hard, and that was another incentive to stay down at the Timberline elevations for a while. We eventually did move up to the main mountain, skiing both Wilderness and Vista, and even by the summits up above 3,000’ the wind was similar to what we’d experienced down at Timberline. As the morning moved on, the wind decreased substantially to the point where it wasn’t even a factor. In terms of the ski conditions, the moderately dense snow had already put down an excellent resurfacing even for the first runs in the morning. The new snow was atop recent rounds of snow from previous storms, so that presumably helped, and with snowfall continuing all day at around an inch per hour, the trails were constantly getting refreshed. The resurfacing made the quality of the on piste turns really good aside from scoured over very high traffic areas, but the powder skiing off piste left something to be desired. With the dense snow falling, the powder was somewhat upside down, and its density allowed you to easily get bogged down on anything but steep terrain. That’s not to say that the powder skiing wasn’t still tons of fun, but you could tell it wasn’t up to the typical standards of a storm cycle in the Northern Greens where the snow gradually lightens into upslope fluff and really sets up some top notch powder. All in all though, it was an excellent session of storm day skiing at the resort. We stopped in for lunch with my son and his friend at Fireside Flatbread and had some excellent pizza – I got to try their barbeque chicken bacon ranch pizza that my son has been raving about. There weren’t any substantial lift queues to speak of, and it was likely that the ongoing storm kept some people from venturing out to the mountains. The drive down the access road was fairly tough when we finally left in the afternoon, so I can understand why that would keep some folks home, perhaps hoping to come out on Sunday when the storm had wound down.

Thanks, I updated it. I figured that 20" number was off, it was the 72-hour total and seemed to be the closest option available. The 24-hour total wasn’t appropriate because there had clearly been some snowfall before opening yesterday, and for some reason there was no mention of the actual storm total or a 48-hour total when I checked the report (most resorts were at least giving one of those). I see there is a 48-hour total listed on the Stowe website now though, and even though there’s no actual mention of the storm total, 48 hour totals this morning are a decent fit for storm totals.

The system that just came through the area was Winter Storm Ronnie, and the north to south listing of available storm totals from the Vermont ski areas is listed below. It looks like the storm totals peaked near Southern Vermont, but started to fall off approaching the Massachusetts state line where presumably some mixed precipitation came into play. Jay Peak: 18” Burke: 18” Smuggler’s Notch: 13” Stowe: 11” Bolton Valley: 16” Mad River Glen: 18” Sugarbush: 17” Middlebury: 18” Pico: 24” Killington: 24” Okemo: 25” Bromley: 30” Magic Mountain: 30” Stratton: 28” Mount Snow: 16”

The Winter Storm Watches were converted over to Winter Storm Warnings around here, which is of course a good sign that the pros at the BTV NWS are confident in several inches of snow. Indeed, the totals on the latest BTV NWS Event Total Snowfall map were bumped up, with that area of 12”-18” shading expanded substantially, and areas of the 18”-24” shading appearing along the spine of the Central/Northern Greens.

Yeah, as the BTV NWS typically does, they’ve generally bumped the accumulations up as their confidence in the forecast increases. That area of 12-18” shading in the Bolton-Stowe-Smugg’s region of the spine has expanded substantially to include the spine of the Central and Northern Greens, and off into the NEK. They’ve kept the Winter Storm Watches in place for now, and their forecast discussion nicely lays out their thinking.

I happened to have my phone near me last night and woke up at 3:23 A.M. to a text about the Winter Storm Watch. I wasn’t sure if this storm was going to warrant any substantial alerts up here, but looking at the models, I guess it could. I see they’ve put the watch up for all the counties in the state that are in the BTV NWS forecast area. The latest GFS run that just came in looks fairly decent for up here, so we’ll see where they go with the afternoon update.

In Bolton Valley’s lift rotation schedule, today was the first time the Wilderness Chair would be running since the weekend, so it was a good place to be to get in on all the snow that’s fallen in the past couple of days. So, after ski touring yesterday, today seemed like a good opportunity for some lift-served turns with Wilderness thrown in. It was snowing all the way down to the valleys this morning, but not necessarily accumulating too efficiently in the lower elevations. Up above 2,000’ in the Village though, snow was accumulating easily. Snowfall was moderate and steady in roughly the ½” to 1”/hr. range when I first arrived, but by the time I’d made my first run and worked my way over to Wilderness, it had picked up substantially to somewhere in the 2”/hr. range. It was the type of snowfall that covers you in white flakes in mere moments if you aren’t moving around on the lift enough to shake it off. As might be expected with substantial snow falling day after day, the ski conditions are excellent out there right now. There’s still firm snow that you can find on piste in high traffic areas and steeper slopes, but just head off to untracked or lightly tracked areas, and you won’t really be interacting at all with the old base. I found that even well-groomed areas could be really nice – my first run down Alta Vista was on the groomed surface, but it hadn’t seen much skier traffic at all, and there had been at least another couple of inches of snow since it was groomed, so the turns were all silky smooth with no noise anywhere. Off piste I found about a foot of powder up in the 3,000’ range, and slightly less down around 2,000’, but there’s enough liquid equivalent in all the new snow now that it will support bottomless turns throughout that elevation range. Wilderness was skiing really well thanks to the especially low skier traffic in recent days, and they had Bolton Outlaw open, which I hadn’t skied in quite a while. It’s steep enough and has probably seen enough traffic from ski touring that I was still contacting the old base, but I was able to cut over to the steep terrain of the Wilderness Liftline Headwall, and that was nearly untracked and yielded excellent turns. The Wilderness Chair stopped three times in fairly short order when I was nearing the Wilderness Summit on one of my runs, and I thought that it might be due to wind issues, but the lift operator at the base let me know that it was just issues with people loading – apparently they were still working out the shape of the loading ramp there. All that new snow can bring about complications as well I guess. The snowpack in the Northern Greens is in good shape – the depth at the Mt. Mansfield Stake passed 80 inches today, so these recent storms have helped it cruise right above average for this time of year. There’s still more snow in the forecast right through the weekend, so it wouldn’t be surprising if the snowpack depth increased further in the coming days.

As I see Ginx noted above - the BTV NWS has a Snow Squall Warning out for the Champlain Valley out toward the western slopes – we’ve definitely been getting hit by heavy snowfall here in BTV. Unless this fades when it hits the mountains, the spine will probably get crushed with more heavy snowfall.

The system that’s been affecting our area over the past day or so really started to crank up yesterday evening, delivering some periods of heavy snowfall up in the 1”/hr. range with large flakes. By this morning we’d picked up about a half foot of snow from the system here at our site in the valley, so that obviously called for a check on the Bolton Valley snow report, and I wasn’t surprised to learn that they were reporting 10 inches of accumulation. I was busy in the morning, but I was able to head up to the resort in the afternoon for some turns. The precipitation was snow all the way down to the valley floors, but afternoon temperatures were in the 30s F, so it wasn’t really accumulating until up in the resort elevations where the temperatures were below freezing. Being a Tuesday, the Wilderness Chair wasn’t running, so I was torn between touring on Wilderness or in the Bryant Trail area. When I arrived up in the Village to find that people were parking even in the lower tiers of the main lot, it was obvious that a lot of folks were interested in getting out for afternoon and evening turns on the lift-served terrain, so I figured the backcountry network was the best bet. Just as I was heading out toward the Bryant Trail on my tour, I saw a group of 6 to 8 skiers returning from a tour of their own, and one of the guys spoke to me as he passed. He said, “Have fun, it’s amazing out there!” That’s probably a good omen at the start of a tour, and of course, his words were 100% on point. Ascending the Bryant Trail, it was immediately obvious that the powder was in fantastic shape. The only blemishes I could really detect were a couple of areas with a bit of sun crust that must have been in very exposed spots. Other than that, it was hard to find any fault with the quality of the powder or its ability to cover the subsurface. The snow is midwinter dry, but indeed as PF mentioned, there’s enough substance to it to provide a nice resurfacing. I toured up to about 2,800’ on Heavenly Highway, and here are the depths of new, settled powder that I measured above the old base: 2,000’: 7-9” 2,400’: 8-10” 2,800’: 10-12” The powder skiing was fantastic, with a very good right-side-up deposition, and bottomless turns aside from the occasional touch of the subsurface in a few spots. Temperatures were probably in the upper 20s F, so it was very comfortable. I’d describe the powder as “fast”, because it just was. I hadn’t waxed my skis or anything, but either the structure of the crystals, or the temperature close to freezing, just seemed to produce less resistance than usual. This was great for turns, but it was a little frustrating in any rolling terrain where I’d be traversing slightly uphill to another line. I would have loved a bit of stickiness in the snow for those section, but it was super slick and you had to earn every step you took without skins. Most glades had only a couple of tracks in them, even Big Blue, which is very popular, so I took a run through that area and had 100% untracked powder turns throughout the descent. I see that with today’s additional snowfall, the resort is now reporting 13 inches in the past 48 hours. The next system in the queue is right on our doorstep this evening though, so we’ll see if this one can bring us anything like what the last one did.

I’m glad folks are enjoying the reports! Being able to quickly get out and experience the winter weather and recreation that’s going on here in the Northern Greens is obviously fun on my end, but it’s also a chance to help others make optimal use of our local resources. Ideally, I’d like to always get the reports out as soon as I get back from the mountain to give people the most timely updates possible for their decisions about heading out for their own turns or other snow activities, but work, family, etc. slow it down sometimes. I figure every little bit helps though. With the temperatures dropping this evening, the snow is actually accumulating better down here in the valley now, so the higher elevations are likely getting another good round of these bread and butter accumulations.

I’d seen that the potential for more snowfall was in forecast today based on the weather modeling, and it looked like the afternoon period might be the best bet for catching some turns in fresh snow. The BTV NWS forecast discussions have been noting that there’s no large, defined system in our area today though, we’re just moving into a general period of unsettled weather. With nothing really going on at the house other than cloudy conditions around midday today, I was surprised when I checked the Bolton Valley Base Area Webcam and saw that the there was very low visibility up there due to heavy snowfall. It was surprising to see such a disparity between the weather on the mountain and the weather at our house, but then I checked the radar and saw what was going on. The precipitation was very convective/cellular in nature, so the mountain happened to be under one of those rather localized, intense areas of snowfall. In another 10 minutes or so, the snowfall began to wind down, but the radar of to the east was riddled with similar pockets of precipitation all across the North Country that were heading toward the spine of the Northern Greens. I suspected the mountain would see additional episodes of snowfall throughout the afternoon, so I decided I’d head up for turns once I finished up some work I had to get done. Later in the afternoon when I was getting ready to pop up to the mountain, I checked the webcam again and they were getting hit by another round of snowfall. The early morning snow report from the resort indicated that they’d picked up a fresh inch of snow before opening, and with the way the afternoon had gone, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d picked up another inch or two. We were even getting some rain in the valley with that round of snow, and as I headed up the Bolton Valley Access Road, the precipitation switched over to snow a bit below 1,500’. When I’d headed up to the mountain on Friday, the snow level was around 2,000’, so it was definitely lower today. I can’t say what the snow was like earlier in the day today, but what I found in the later afternoon was a very fun mix of different conditions that all skied quite well. The mountains have been in that temperate March/April mode over the last few days where we’ve got some fresh snow accumulations, temperatures in the upper 20s to 30s F, some sun, some clouds, semi-cycled snow depending on elevation, and probably whatever else you can think of that this time of year has to offer in the higher elevations. Descending from above 3,000’ on Wilderness, I found wintry conditions with some dense powder that was blended into the old snowpack in untouched areas, with wintry wet pack on the groomed/traveled areas that had firmed up somewhat with temperatures below freezing. By the time I descended to 2,000’ I encountered areas of semi-corn, soft packed snow on piste, and denser wet snow off piste. I didn’t ski down below 2,000’ to Timberline, but the conditions would likely have transitioned to even more spring-like. Areas that had direct sun definitely had the softest snow. In any event, it all skied really well, with nothing overly sticky or firm. I had waxed my skis in preparation for any potentially sticky conditions, so that probably helped keep things extra smooth for me, but I didn’t see anyone else struggling with apparent stickiness either. Temperatures did seem to be dropping as the afternoon came to a close, so the sub-freezing conditions were falling to 2,000’ and below. Being later on a Sunday afternoon in March, skier traffic was quite low when I was on the mountain, and I was coming upon trail areas where there were literally just two or three tracks in the fresh snow and I’d basically have the run of it with respect to laying down my own tracks. I see that the mountain is indicating 3 inches of new snow in the past 48 hours, so that seems about right based on the untouched areas I skied, and it’s generally dense so it does a great job of providing floatation above the base. The weather models are still suggesting that we’ve got more snow chances continuing right through to the end of the month, so we’ll look forward to what are hopefully additional days of these fun winter/spring conditions atop a snowpack that is probably slightly below average, but not bad. Average snowpack this time of year is nearing peak anyway, so even if we’re off from that a bit, it’s still quite plentiful.

This morning I was seeing reports of 2 to 5 inches of new snow for the resorts of the Central and Northern Greens. Snow levels were relatively high, thus the accumulations were likely to be fairly dense, but that would mean the liquid equivalent could be there for some decent resurfacing of the slopes. I wasn’t actually sure how much resurfacing would be needed, but the past couple of days have had some spring-like warmth and sun at times, and I haven’t been up to the hill during that time, so there would be plenty for me to discover about the state of the snowpack. Heading up to Bolton, light rain in the valley didn’t actually change over to snow until just below 2,000’, so indeed snow levels were relatively high as expected. With the anticipated snow levels, I’d planned to ski out of the main base area, and the elevation of the snow line confirmed that I likely wouldn’t be heading down to the Timberline elevations for my outing. The resort only indicated a couple inches of new accumulation in their early morning report, but that was either very early and/or from the base elevations, because I definitely found more than that up high. I started off with an Alta Vista run, and I’m not sure when it was groomed, but I’d say 2 to 3 inches of dense powder atop the groomed surface would be a good description of what I found there. Turns there in the untracked snow above the groomed surface were ~75% bottomless on 86 mm mid-fats, so I was occasionally touching down to the firmer surface below, but overall it was quite a pleasant and surfy experience. Off piste, things were a bit different. At the Wilderness Summit above 3,000’ I measured what seemed to be 5 to 6 inches of new snow, but it was a little challenging to get exact numbers. In many areas off piste, especially up high, the new dense snow has simply bonded into the underlying snowpack and you can’t find an interface. I can’t say exactly at what elevation that changes, but it’s most pronounced up high where the snowpack presumably has seen fewer or less intense freeze-thaw processes over the past couple of days. Off piste turns were especially good up in those high elevation areas, but in general I found that everything off piste in all but the lowest areas of the main mountain delivered consistent bottomless turns thanks to the dense snow. The freezing line seem to sit right around 2,200’ for most of the morning while I was there, and that was based on the fact that the snow got sticky for roughly the last 100’ of vertical on my runs. As midday approached, the freezing line seemed like it began to rise because on my last run I’d say the stickiness of the snow started to appear about 200’ above the base. It was really quiet at the resort this morning, being a random March Friday without a major publicized snowstorm, but I did ride the Vista Quad with a guy who had come up from Northampton, Massachusetts. He’s and Indy Pass owner, his home mountain is Berkshire East, and with Bolton Valley being on the Indy Pass as well, it was a perfect fit for a trip. He said it’s been a rough season down there at Berkshire East, at least in terms of natural snow. Thankfully they were able to get by fine on manmade terrain, but he was blown away by the natural snowpack at Bolton. From about Mid Mountain on up during our lift ride, when the surroundings really started to get white, he could not stop talking about all the snow. He said he really needed this trip for his overall state of mind because it’s been so long since he’s seen snow around his area, and from looking at the Berkshire East Webcams, I can see what he means. He’s really lamenting that fact that he thinks this is only going to continue to get worse with climate change. With the way the last couple of seasons have gone with regard to snowfall down in Southern New England, I can understand why it’s so depressing. He’s a passionate backcountry skier as well, and I definitely wanted to ask if he’d considered the idea of relocating to somewhere like NNE or the Rockies etc. with more reliable snowfall, but I didn’t get a chance to go there before our lift ride ended. Looking ahead on the weather models, it seems like we’ll have snow chances right on through to the end of the month and beyond. That’s typically par for the course during March and April, but getting snow becomes more fickle toward the end of the season, and sometimes the supply of new snow just shuts off due to above average temperatures.

I see that the BTV NWS created a final storm total map for the system earlier in the week – it seems like a decent match with their Event Total Snowfall map in many areas. It was certainly on track around here at the spine of the Northern Greens.

As our most recent storm cycle progressed into its second half on Monday, it brought prodigious upslope snowfall, but heavy winds also pounded the upper mountain areas at Bolton Valley. That meant that the Vista Quad Chair never ran on Monday, so all that fresh snow would still be sitting there for Tuesday. For my older son, Tuesday was one of his days off from work, so the two of us headed up to the mountain for a ski session. At this point in the ski season we’re well past President’s Day and school vacation week, it’s mid-March, and yesterday was just a random midweek Tuesday - we didn’t expect a lot of visitors to the mountain. Apparently nobody told the skiers about that though – we arrived up in the Village within a half hour of lift opening, and we were already having to park all the way down by the Sports Center, in an impromptu middle lane of cars. Where did all these people come from? What we eventually discovered was that every parent in the state had decided to pull their kids out of school for the day to get in some skiing. On our Vista lift rides, we literally paired up with multiple dads and their kids who had done this, so apparently it was the thing to do! The weather yesterday was absolutely clear with brilliant March sunshine, so it was quite a contrast to Monday’s snowy maelstrom, but winds were still brisk near the summits. Despite the bit of remaining wind, overall yesterday had that “day after” the storm feel. The new snow from the storm had been pounded and scoured in exposed areas like the tops of trails near the Vista Summit, but thankfully most terrain was protected enough to hold onto quite an excellent bounty of soft accumulations from the storm. There was a bit of wind crust in areas depending on exposure, but nothing that ruined the skiing aside from reducing the explosiveness of the powder relative to Monday’s consistency in the more exposed areas. My snow depth checks revealed the same roughly two feet of accumulation that I’d found near the middle of day on Monday, so there was probably some additional accumulation and continued settling that left things about where they were. We prioritized hitting some of the steepest terrain to really make use of the resurfacing that the storm brought us, so we visited areas like Devil’s Playground and the Vista Glades, which I hadn’t yet visited at all this season. There were still a lot of nice areas of untracked snow, but areas that had seen skier traffic still provided top notch conditions. The storm was so potent that even the steepest terrain has the coverage to keep you from encountering the old base snow, so you can just drop into anything and anticipate your edges biting into packed powder without the worry of touching the crusty stuff underneath. Along with the steeps, we also visited some of our favorite areas for powder turns, and as long as the snow was protected from the winds, it was still delivering that cold smoke that we enjoyed on Monday.