Angus

So, a quick recap of the ski season while I ride the train from Zermatt to Geneva. On my fourth day of skiing at Snowbird in early February, I had freak accident which hobbled me. Instead of a glorious ski tour thru UT, CO and CA, I ended up only skiing about half of the days in the month and most of those were half days as I tried to rehab myself. Arriving back in Boston in early March, I had 2 ½ weeks to get myself back in working order before heading to Europe. Arriving in Courmayeur Italy on March 22, I skied one day each in Courmayeur, Pila and Le Thuile. The Aosta Valley of Italy - just on the other side of the Mount Blanc tunnel - was a revelation. If you don't mind driving a bit, it has some wonderful ski areas and is a spectacular area. I plan to come back. It was amazing to find Spring in the valleys and full winter 1,000m higher. In the city of Aosta, there is a gondola right in the city. You get on in a green valley and 20 minutes later you are in the ski area with feet of snow. From Courmayeur, we went back through the tunnel to Chamonix where again Spring was in the town but a gondola ride up found winter in Grand Montets, Le Tour and Brevent/Flegere ski areas. Grand Montets is the the real deal - holy smokes talk about thousands of meters of sustained pitch. Unfortunately, like most of the skiing throughout the trip, conditions required staying on-piste due to lack of recent snows. After five days in Chamonix, my friends and I started the 6 day/5 night Le Haute tour. Essentially, a ski tour/mountaineering trip from Chamonix to Zermatt where you travel across glaciers, up and down couloirs and stay at high elevation huts. The scenery is crazy beautiful and breathtaking. This was also the most physically difficult thing I've done in my life. I had somehow deluded myself into thinking that my lack of training in the preceding 7 weeks wouldn't matter. Hats off to an amazing Swiss guide for getting me to Zermatt. It was so bad that on the sixth day I got sunburn on my upper gums because my head was down and I was gritting my teeth the whole day! We had started this final 11 hour day at 430am ski traversing in a no-fall zone to a glacier where we skinned up a mountain pass for two hours. If anyone has any questions or is considering this tour, send me a message. I'm happy to answer any questions. It was a fantastic experience but requires a ton of fitness and alpine skills, the least of which is downhill skiing. After a day in Zermatt resting, I've spent the last 4 ½ days skiing in Zermatt and Cervinia/Valtournenche (Italian side linked together with Zermatt). Again due to conditions, the skiing was all on piste but the Matterhorn and glaciers covering the Monte Rosa massif are an amazing backdrop that has you stopping to take pictures all the time.

'78 was awesome. Freshman in HS. Living in Norwell. Took a few days for my street to be cleared by a front end loader. No school for two weeks. People have previously mentioned that we had a big big storm in January but it had all melted /washed away but February stayed cold and we played in the snow all month. I remember we still had pack in the 2nd week of March. Over the years, I had older colleagues who would regale us at work about their car getting stuck on 128 or southeast expressway and walking into a neighborhood and just knocking on the door and living with strangers for a few days. Stories of fans trappped in the old Boston Garden after the Beanpot are epic.

Cousin just sent me this...arrived at snowbird this afternoon -45 degrees at the base!

yup here in concord ma too. strongest one I've ever felt in the boston area.

Taos rocks but snow can be an issue. I'm actually surprised to see that much snow up on Highline Ridge. The tree skiing there (and Ski Santa Fe is otherworldly IMO). Headed out west for the month of February - Utah, Colorado and California - plan to ski almost everyday. Had considered stopping at Taos but won't given snow situation. Then headed to Chamonix and Zermatt for 3 weeks in March/April including 6 day Le Haute route tour. I've been skinning WaWa in the mornings some and doing circles at the Weston ski track with a few days of lift-served skiing in VT last week. Thank goodness for snowmaking and cold temperatures! This past Saturday I was at the Green Woodlands in NH - place rocks and there was probably 12-15" of natural snow on the ground which surprised me.

rain and thunder have arrived in Concord MA.

Two great days at the camp on Winnisquam. I can't remember the water temps ever being this warm on Memorial Day weekend.

I may be done for the season but still holding out hope. Just looking wistfully at the SLoaf webcam and looks beautiful. They are still skiing with close to 100 trails. On a SLoaf chatboard I read occasionally, there was a discussion of this season's snowfall - 171" with almost no snow falling from January 18 to March 9 - a person posted the following...

Easter Sunday was the 18th and remember being at my grandmother's house in Boston and the heat was intolerable inside. I remember talking about how the heat would affect the marathoners the next day.

@LaGrangewxare you working out there? how did you find a rental (I assume). Thinking about a winter long trip in western US and Canada next year.

@HIPPYVALLEYre: Iceland. I looked at the map of totality - the pictures below are from the area (westfjords) in northwestern corner of iceland in July 2017. Barren and beautiful. We took a ferry from Stykkishólmur, arrived in Brjánslækur and drove a big clockwise loop back to Stykkishólmur - literally 20 hour day if I recall. Most of the roads (or all) were gravel/dirt. I remember us laughing that the scenery was so beautiful that it got to be ho-hum. This was the most spectacular area we visited IMO.

as @ariofmentioned, half the fun was navigating the traffic. We hiked off of little Bigelow (3.5-4 miles) while my boss with young family departed from Eustis Ridge immediately after the event. He got home to Milford MA area about 11:20 while I arrived in Concord MA at midnight. Heck, we stopped for a quick pizza in Portland at 930! My big decision was going west on rt 2 at Norridgewock versus going to Waterville and getting on 95 and from there to 295. I didn't get on 295 until below the Gardiner tolls on 295. The Sugarloaf area is constrained by rivers and therefore bridges - there aren't many bridges so those became choke points. @HIPPYVALLEY did Iceland in 2017 during summer months - such a different landscape - would be very cool.

won't be going into the ravine this year. given the late February/early march warm up I'm not confident in the snow. Skied Saddleback on Sunday and it was ... outstanding. Mostly stuck to the terrain off the Kennebago lift. if you skied the sides of trails, there was lots of loose fresh snow. A few runs in the trees including chute 3 and 4 in Casablanca were great. The pack is not super deep - stumps and rocks protruding from the steep entry sections of Supervisor, Black Beauty and Warden's Worry but easily avoided. Day started with upper parts of mountain obscured by clouds, ended with blue skies. Not sure if that was it for me this season - really hoping for one more day - but if not, my best day of spring skiing will have been Killington in early February!

at the recommendation of @tamarack climbed Little Bigelow Mountain which looks south and west towards Sugarloaf and the Crockers. Excellent choice and thank you so much. There was something like 3 dozen people up there with my party of six including two guys from Franklin county search and rescue who stayed up and were going to do a sweep after everyone had gone down. They also packed out the trail on Sunday which was pretty awesome. We got up about an hour before totality and everyone was in a festive mood - families, some students, a large crew from Ashbury Park NJ??? Watching the darkness move across the valley floor towards us was pretty spectacular. The winds really increased substantially and it got very cool. Just an awesome experience. Traffic getting through Madison and Norridgewock was hilarious - to experience a one mile backup in those towns is a once in a lifetime experience too! Route 16/27 and the area around Sugarloaf access road was all time from what I have been told. Without and with light!

April 1987 must have been crazy to see. I was living in Austin Texas but my grandmother sent me all the local newspapers. I think I still have them somewhere.

Yeah, my son just texted from NYC and then I swear I felt something here in metrowest boston. Crazy.

I was living in Waterville and I have no recollection of this storm. It's kind of strange. I remember running I think the day after the Boston Marathon either in '82 or '83 in heavy snow - somewhere across the river in Winslow.

@markO I posted earlier that I was in Oxford in 1999. We were 99% sun blocked and it was like a really dark cloud moving over the sun. I didn't have glasses so didn't look at the sun directly.

Use to go there for work - it's actually a nice college town. Was there in 2013 - Memorial Day week when Superior was still iced in.

Still not convinced but I'm chuckling b/c a member of my family will be joining their cousins in Hill county for the eclipse while I'm planning to be in NW Maine on a mountain and as of right now, I'll have the better show! Not what we were expecting.

I skied (ski) SLoaf from mid-late March until mid-late April regularly. Last year I skied April 10-12, there were bumps everywhere. Ripsaw, Winters Way, White Nitro, Bubblecuffer, Misery Whip, Sheer Boom, Skidder, Double Bitter are places to go standardly. SLoaf has so much terrain open during spring time.

I referenced in a previous post the backup on 93 getting off at the Lincoln exit Sunday morning. I got caught in a similar backup - thankfully I was off the highway - on 112 over MLK weekend. From the off-ramp to the main entrance is almost 3 miles and it took us at least 30 minutes to get by there. When we passed by, they were turning cars around b/c the parking was full. I would have been ballistic as a customer.

Skied today at Cannon. It was a zoo getting into the parking lot. They announced they sold out. The line of cars at the exit to Loon was more than 1/2 mile down 93... Basically, Cannon was one big bump run at the end of day. Ton of fun but exhausting skiing like that on back-to-back days. They opened everything including DJs - which IMO is nuts. After two days of skiing this stuff, I'm whipped.

I skied at WV yesterday - last night drove from Meredith to Sunapee for an event and then back. It was raining on the lake when I left, by the time I got to Franklin, it was frozen rain and then by Andover near white out conditions. Crazy driving. The snow rates were crazy. Back at the lake, I'm guestimating we added nearly a foot from 6 to 11 last night

From the SR report this AM We received almost 2' of snow yesterday during our open hours, and over a foot fell through the night. That brings us to a whopping 36" of snow for this March snowstorm. It's the fluffy stuff, too @NW_of_GYX