NNE Cold Season Thread 2025-2026

[powderfreak]

13 hours ago, bwt3650 said:

Shameless plug for my spot, but every year preseason Jay offers a deal for $199, you get 4 lessons, 4 rentals, 4 lift tix and a season pass once you complete the 4 lessons for $199. They also give away that package free to the first 50 or 100 people. And I’ve had friends who have gotten it free, so it’s not just a gimmick.
 

That's a phenomenal deal.

[WxWatcher007]

A little annoying that I can’t buy a flake with this radar, but if it were up at SLK we’d be in mod snow.  

[powderfreak]

14 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

A little annoying that I can’t buy a flake with this radar, but if it were up at SLK we’d be in mod snow.  

You’re learning a lot about NNE climate ha.

[mreaves]

Looks like about 2”

[eyewall]

This came up in my memories from 2017 today:


I am coming up for a visit in late Feb so brace yourselves for a torch lol. 

[WxWatcher007]

1 hour ago, eyewall said:

This came up in my memories from 2017 today:


I am coming up for a visit in late Feb so brace yourselves for a torch lol. 

Spectacular 

[NW_of_GYX]

Just drove back to Maine from the smuggs area The most snow on the ground by far was between Hardwick and Danville, Vermont. What’s up with that zone? A little bit of elevation?

[powderfreak]

1 hour ago, NW_of_GYX said:

Just drove back to Maine from the smuggs area The most snow on the ground by far was between Hardwick and Danville, Vermont. What’s up with that zone? A little bit of elevation?

Yeah the interior hills there.  RT 15 gets up near 2,000ft in Walden and that’s a very snowy area.  Some of those towns on the west slope of those hills like Stannard get a ton of snow and preserve it very well.

[NW_of_GYX]

21 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Yeah the interior hills there.  RT 15 gets up near 2,000ft in Walden and that’s a very snowy area.  Some of those towns on the west slope of those hills like Stannard get a ton of snow and preserve it very well.

Seems like a weenie spot, was not really aware of it until now. 

[powderfreak]

5 minutes ago, NW_of_GYX said:

Seems like a weenie spot, was not really aware of it until now. 

They often get upslope snow on the west side there that can be pretty decent too.  That whole area is very snowy just very few people around to report it.  I had a friend living at 1900ft in Stannard and he always had more snow on the ground than the Stowe base area. It’s just in the middle of nowhere where though.

[mreaves]

2 hours ago, NW_of_GYX said:

Just drove back to Maine from the smuggs area The most snow on the ground by far was between Hardwick and Danville, Vermont. What’s up with that zone? A little bit of elevation?

Walden is definitely a weenie spot. Great snowmobiling area. The pictures below are from the last couple of years. 

[NW_of_GYX]

1 hour ago, mreaves said:

Walden is definitely a weenie spot. Great snowmobiling area.

That was the only location I saw folks on sleds riding trails the whole trip.
 

Love driving across NNH, NVT to get to smuggs/Jay from western Maine in deep winter, through Crawford notch, across the CT River, then over to the northern greens- just a great, scenic winter drive every time. 

[Ginx snewx]

Great day to ski in Maine 

[powderfreak]

34 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Great day to ski in Maine 

4” new and snowing hard at 6am here.

 

[das]

3.1" Monday night here in Charlotte and 3.2" last night.  On an off flurries and light snow today.  Nice winter day.

[radarman]

Snowy up there in NNE

[dendrite]

Love the caked look.

[Boston Bulldog]

The cold trend continues at 0Z tonight for Saturday night. Net gainer for NNE at this point thanks to the emerging front ender. Don’t look at the cracked out NAM coastal run however, that seems like too much to ask for

[J.Spin]

Bolton Valley was reporting another 3-5” of snow in their morning report, and 10” in the last 48 hours, so I figured it was time to head back up to the hill to see how much progress there had been in the ski conditions. The first thing I noticed when I reached the Village was how incredibly warm temperatures in the mid to upper-20s F felt – it felt so warm that it seemed like the snow should be melting.

I started off with a ski tour on the Wilderness Uphill Route to the Wilderness Summit. Being a Wednesday, they were running the Timberline Quad instead of the Wilderness Chair, and that meant skier traffic on Wilderness was quite low. Conditions have improved quite a bit since I was last out on the mountain six days ago. Low-angle terrain has seen a full resurfacing, so unless it had been recently groomed, you were not contacting any of the underlying hard surfaces. You could actually get bottomless skiing on any pitch of terrain if it hadn’t seen skier traffic, but that was quickly lost anywhere that had seen many skiers, so we’re not talking a limitless resurfacing of all terrain.

The skiing was so good that I decided to stay around for some lift-served skiing as well. On my first ride up the Vista Quad Chair I rode with Will, another Bolton Valley regular. We wound up both skiing Cobrass, and after he told me about an adventure he’d had that brough him down the back side of the resort and required skinning back out, I showed him some of the terrain around Maria’s so that he had a good sense of how far you could go without ending up on the east side of the range.

I continued on down to Timberline, since it was my first chance this season to get in some lift-served skiing there. Not everything on Timberline is open quite yet, but skier traffic has been much lower there and fresh snow abounds. The off piste terrain in the 1,500’ - 2,000’ elevation range needs just a bit of additional base to be ready for prime time, but from ~2,000’ and above there’s plenty of snow for off piste adventures.

This most recent storm put down some fairly dense snow, and that played a big part in stepping up the conditions. My liquid analysis from the storm so far have indicated that the snow has come in right around 10% H2O. The off piste conditions are generally quite good, but there’s plenty of variability with respect to elevation, aspect, wind, and the predominant types of trees. Some areas are simply fantastic with mid-weight powder available, while others have a crust buried between layers of powder, and there’s some upside down snow spots. Wide skis are a good choice to smooth out some of those irregularities.

There was definitely deeper powder with elevation, and here’s what I generally observed for powder depths out there today:

1,500’: 5-7”

2,000’: 5-7”

2,500’: 9-10”

3,000’: 12-24”

There certainly wasn’t two feet of powder everywhere up around 3,000’ or so, but in place that had not been skied or scoured, a foot plus was the norm. I did find some areas with up to two feet of powder atop the old base however, so some spots have picked up quite a bit over the past week.