J.Spin

Indeed, that looks nice – there are plenty of skiable lines throughout the resort. Although they don’t get the snowfall numbers that the Northern Greens do, I think the temperature regime/snow retention is similar in the Sunday River/Sugarloaf region. Sugarloaf seems to have some of the best spring snow retention anywhere in NNE. I don’t think Wildcat does quite as well as Sugarloaf, and somehow I get the impression that Cannon is notably worse with snow retention vs. those others despite being at fairly high elevation up there in the mountains of New Hampshire.

From my office the other day I saw that there was quite a bit of white still visible on the slopes of Bolton Valley, so I headed up for a ski tour on Thursday and can pass along the beta on the snowpack. The first signs of snow along the Bolton Valley Access Road, are at 1,500’ near the base of the Timberline area, and there are even skiable lines farther up on Timberline. Up at the main mountain, continuous snowpack starts right at the base at around 2,100’. Multiple trails on the upper mountain have skiable snow, and the Bear Run/Sprig O’ Pine area on the lower mountain has quite solid coverage. Descending from up near 3,000’ on Spillway, I was able to ski almost continuous snow to the main base. There were a few small breaks in the snowpack, but nothing that required taking off my skis. The level of coverage they have right now wouldn’t be too surprising on the eastern slopes of the Greens this time of year, but that’s quite impressive for the western slopes. I’m not sure if it was the hearty snowpack we had this winter, the amount of snow the resort made, the lack of any hot spells this spring, or a combination of these factors, but Bolton definitely has a solid amount of snow on the ground for this far into May. A few shots from the tour:

We should probably give PF a hard time for starting the warm season thread a bit too soon. Cold/snow/ski season is essentially October through May – the beautiful image in his opening post clearly speaks to that. Those “other” four months of the year are the warm season around here – although you never know with June and September… and even August, especially later August can start the slide some years. I guess that leaves July. …and there’s an old saying somewhere along those lines.