J.Spin

I received a text early this morning that we’d been put under a Winter Weather Advisory for the system expected to come into the area this evening (Winter Storm Garnett). The point forecast around here suggests accumulations in the 4-9” range, which is in line with the northern areas of the yellow 6-8” shading on the Event Total Snowfall map.

That just kept rolling along all night – at observations time this morning it was light snow with fairly large flakes up to 15 mm here at our place. In their forecast discussion, the BTV NWS says it’s shortwave energy with a pocket of mid-level moisture and northwest flow.

I didn’t have time to get out for turns this morning, so on the way home from Burlington I headed up for some afternoon/evening skiing at Bolton Valley to check out what the new snow had done for the slopes. I hadn’t been up to the mountain since Wednesday, so that mean all the snow from Winter Storm Freya yesterday, including the intense backside squalls this morning, had recently been added. It often gets cold quickly as the sun goes down, but with temperatures in the upper 20s F today in the Champlain Valley, I figured it was a decent one for reasonable evening temperatures on the mountain. It was in the upper teens F when I arrived at the Village, which wasn’t bad, but there was also quite a brisk wind from the west that bit right into you while descending the trails. At least it was at your back while riding the lifts. In terms of the ski conditions, you could tell that the mountain had received a decent shot of new snow for the slopes. Down at out house in the valley, Winter Storm Freya brought over a half inch of liquid equivalent, so the mountain should have picked up between a half inch and an inch of liquid from the storm. The only issue is that there appears to have been a lot of wind during various parts of the storm, so in the most exposed areas, much of that new snow had been scoured away. I could feel the extra coverage on the groomed slopes in protected areas though, and that would change quickly when you came to a windy spot, so you had to be on your guard and ready to lose some grip in those areas. Overall, though, there was some nice carving on the terrain I hit on the lower mountain off the Mid Mountain and Snowflake chairs this evening.

Yesterday morning I headed up to the mountain for a quick ski tour via the Wilderness Uphill Route to check on the round of upslope snow that had fallen during the overnight. Our winter weather pattern over the past week has been a bit of a whirlwind to keep track of, with another system coming through every day or two. In any event, Bolton Valley is reporting over two feet of snow in the past week, and this stretch has also driven their season snowfall total past the 200-inch mark. In the Village and all across the resort, the layers and layers of snow just keep stacking up to create a deep snowpack and some picturesque winter scenes. We’re pushing farther into February now, but yesterday morning still featured some of that January cold, with lows in the single digits F. In fact, the Village was just barely in the positive digits F when I arrived. Thankfully, there wasn’t much wind at the base area elevations, and the clear skies and February sun were helping to take the edge off the chill. There weren’t any issues to worry about with respect to the new upslope snow disturbing the right-side-up gradient in the powder – my liquid analyses from the house indicated that the snow was super dry, coming in with ratios in the 2 to 3 % H2O range. The cold temperatures did make the snow somewhat slow though, and that was definitely felt on lower angle slopes. I only toured up to the 2,500’ elevation mark, so the effects of wind weren’t too apparent, but you could see that the new snow had been pushed around and settled a bit from its initial ultra-low density. The forecast says we’re moving into a slightly warmer weather pattern now though, and even at relatively high elevations in the Northern Greens, we’re not expected to have any more of those days with high in the single digits F for the foreseeable future. The first system in this pattern is Winter Storm Freya that is passing through the area now, and these upcoming storms look like they’ll have some decent moisture for resurfacing the on-piste areas at the resorts.

I hadn’t had a chance to check out the BTV NWS maps for our current storm (Winter Storm Freya), but now I’ve seen their thoughts. The advisories map is fairly straightforward with Winter Weather Advisories across the board. Our point forecast in the valley calls for 2 to 4 inches of snow from the storm, with 1 to 3 of that during the day today, but it looks like we’ll easily surpass the 3 inches today since we’re already beyond that point. In general, that seems to align with the Storm Total Snowfall Forecast map with areas of 3-4” and 4-6” shading in the Northern Greens.

I headed up for some touring at Bolton Valley yesterday morning to check out the overnight snows, and after being somewhat unimpressed with the way the powder skied on Saturday with those fresh accumulations, I was eager to see how this event affected the skiing. I’m happy to say that Sunday night’s snow led to fantastic powder skiing right from the start. The resort was indicating 4 to 6 inches of fresh snow, and that seems right in line with what I found for new accumulations on terrain that had been groomed before the storm. Liquid analyses from down at our house in the valley indicated that the overnight snow was in the 6 to 7% H2O range, so while it wasn’t super dry, it seemed dry enough to sit atop the existing snowpack and blend well with the powder to create a right-side-up gradient. Just as important in the quality of the powder skiing may have been the temperatures – unlike the single digits from Saturday or even the teens from Sunday, temperatures were in the 20s F. It had been a while since I skied in temperatures that warm, and you could definitely feel the effects of the faster, warmer snow. My skis had plenty of glide, and the powder turns immediately gave that “floating-on-a-cloud” feeling while descending in the Snow Hole area. Another enjoyable aspect of the temperatures were simply the relative warmth. I guess it’s really only been a couple of weeks, but after a lot of cold days, I’d forgotten how enjoyable temperatures in the 20s F can be – you can ski, hang out, and do whatever, and it’s all so comfortable. I toured via the Wilderness Uphill Route, and what made the session especially good was that there was so much more untracked powder than I’d expected. The Wilderness Chair still wasn’t running, so I assume it has to be down for mechanical reasons while they repair it, and having just the minimal midweek ski touring traffic on all those acres is certainly going to leave a lot of untouched snow to spare. They were getting pounded with upslope snow today on top of the denser snow that fell overnight, so hopefully that’s a recipe to set up more days of quality powder skiing.

I just checked that radar, and what a classic look of the spine getting lit up with that northwest flow:

I didn’t get a chance to post the BTV NWS maps earlier, but the storm train is rolling on and Winter Weather Advisories have been up in the Northern Greens. I’m seeing projected accumulations of 4-8” for the local mountains, and our point forecast down here in the valley has 2-4”.

Conditions update/report from yesterday afternoon: Today I was out for some lift-served skiing at Bolton Valley, and after touring for the last several sessions, it was actually the first time being back on the lifts since January 19th. Yesterday I decided to tour because of the temperatures, but today’s forecast suggested it would be warmer. Temperatures were definitely higher than they were yesterday, but it was still darned cold at elevation. Up above 3,000’ it must have been only in the single digits F, and there was plenty of wind that made it a biting cold. I decided take advantage of parking down at Timberline, with the intention of doing a big loop to the far end of the resort and back. My first ride on the Timberline Quad was with a group of mechanical engineering graduate students from Yale whose work is in robotics, so that was a fun conversation. One of them was also from Montana, so we were able to discuss all the ski areas out there. The temperatures felt quite comfortable down at those Timberline elevations (probably somewhere in the teens F), and there was no wind to speak of, but my next ride on the Vista Quad was frigid. So, there appeared to be quite a temperature gradient with respect to elevation, and the addition of those winds ahead of our next approaching winter system just multiplied the effect. I’d actually planned to ride up the Wilderness Chair, but for some reason it wasn’t running. In any event, I was able to make my way over to the Wilderness terrain from Vista, and with the low traffic due to no direct lift service, the snow quality at Wilderness was excellent. There were certainly more tracks out there than when I’d visited on Friday, but you could tell that it was pretty much ski touring-level traffic vs. lift-served levels of traffic. The glades have plenty of fresh lines left in them. I finished out the day’s session with a ride up the Vista Quad and a hike up to The Knob, followed by assorted tree skiing in areas like the KP Glades and Corner Pocket Glades to get myself back to the Timberline Base. With respect to the conditions I encountered, the headwall of Cobrass was really rough – it had the worst conditions I found on the day. The manmade snow was incredibly firm, and I had a hard time even getting turns in the usual strip of soft snow on the skier’s right that arises from skiers pushing the snow around. The skiers I saw in that top section of the trail during my run were often just sliding sideways and hanging on for dear life as they tried to get enough grip with their edges. It’s not as if we’ve had any sort of thaw in a long time, but that surface needs some serious work. It would do well with a good resurfacing storm or some major, deep grooming. I also skied Alta Vista though, and conditions there were much better. It still had manmade snow, but it was loose enough that plenty of snow had been pushed around and made available outside the center high traffic areas. Thankfully, I was able to spend most of my time off piste, and as I’d hoped, the somewhat warmer temperatures and some natural settling and drying of the recent now snows in last night’s very cold temperatures brought the quality of the powder up a couple of notches. In any untracked areas, there was a good couple of feet of powder at all elevations – from above 3,000’ all the way down to 1,500’ at the base of Timberline. The powder is not yet super dry in the upper levels of the snowpack, but the right-side-up gradient is definitely reforming. I found that base depths were great at all elevations as well, so the past couple of weeks have really helped to get those lower Timberline elevations near midwinter form. The on-piste natural snow areas that were scoured by wind in January are still plagued by less than perfect coverage, but it looks like we’ve got a weather pattern with a series of somewhat moist systems coming through the area through about mid-month. So, as long as they don’t bring the kind of winds that many of the January systems did, those scoured areas may finally have a chance to acquire decent coverage.

This trip/conditions report is from yesterday, but I didn't get a chance to post it until this morning... The weak area of low pressure that passed through the area last night brought 5 to 7 inches of snow accumulation to Bolton Valley as of their morning report. That was definitely enough to make it worth checking out some lift-served, on piste skiing. Unfortunately, high temperatures were expected to be in the single digits F, and with some wind around as well, that really didn’t lend itself to sitting on the lifts. Tomorrow’s forecast is looking much better, so I figured ski touring was ultimately the best call for today. I haven’t been up to the Buchanan Shelter area of the Bolton Valley Nordic & Backcountry Network yet this season, because I’ve been waiting for the lower elevation snowpack to get to the point where it was viable for touring without worrying about coverage. I typically start tours to the Buchanan Shelter at the Catamount Trail parking area on the Bolton Valley Access Road, which is down around 1,200’, so you want a decent snowpack down to at least that level. Even with settling, we’ve finally got a snowpack of more than a foot down at our house in the Winooski Valley at the 500’ elevation, so that had me confident that the snowpack at 1,200’ was ready. The starting point there at the Catamount Trail parking area would definitely be the lowest elevation ski touring I’ve done yet this season, but with the cold temperatures getting worse at higher elevations, being at some of those lower elevations was a good thing. I headed up to the trailhead around midday, and was worried that parking might be tight, but there was only one other car in the parking lot, and it looked like it had been sitting there for a while – it had about 4 inches of fresh snow on it from the most recent storm. When I’d check the midmorning temperature up at Bolton Valley, they were reporting a temperature of 1 F, so I knew it was going to be cold out there. As I started my tour though, especially with the bright sun, it really felt more like “February” cold, vs, December or January cold. That sunlight definitely make a difference in taking off some of the chill. The first big chunk of my ascent up the Catamount Trail was out of the wind, so it really was quite comfortable, but I was quickly reminded of just how cold it was when I hit Caribou’s Corner and got into those open, exposed areas by the beaver ponds. Beyond Caribou’s Corner, I also started to get into some drifted snow, and that required occasionally breaking trail through 1 to 2 feet of powder. Skier traffic was incredibly light today in that area of the network, but thankfully I was able to make use of at least a few tracks of Nordic skiers in the lower and middle elevations of the approach. Where trails hadn’t been broken though, I was typically having to break trail myself through about 4 to 10 inches of powder where snow hadn’t drifted. Once I reached the Upper Beaver Pond Trail, all bets were off though. Nobody had broken trail there, and the best help I could get were the vestiges of where someone had set a track several storms ago. That helped at least a little, but that faint memory of a track disappeared in many places due to drifted snow, so I was left breaking trail up the steepest part of the ascent through a foot or two of powder. I did have my 115 mm fat skis on, and at least they were a saving grace with respect to floatation for breaking trail. While fatter skis do add a bit more weight on your feet, there’s no doubt that they more than made up for that in deep snow with respect to how much higher they kept me up and out of the snow while breaking trail. For the typical descent on these tours, I head southward or southeastward right from the Buchanan Shelter area, and I know that ski terrain is great, but I had the time and figure I’d mix things up with a bit more exploring today to see what else might be available. So, instead of descending from the Buchanan Shelter, I continued on up the spur trail that leads from the shelter toward the Long Trail, then cut eastward to catch the high ridge that juts out southeastward off the main Oxbow Ridge/North Ridge area. I could see that the top of that ridge I was targeting was hitting the evergreen tree line, and it looked like the vegetation would be too tight for skiing its steep slopes, so I cut through the col separating that ridge from the Oxbow Ridge/North Ridge. From the col, I headed out along the ridge itself to check for ski terrain, but as I’d expected, it was fairly dense with evergreens, and the south face was quite steep and rife with ledges as well. Descending the east side of the ridge, I just continued to traverse left until the vegetation became more of a hardwood/evergreen mix. I ended up descending through a gully in the Goat Path area, although I never actually connected with the Goat Path trail itself. I wrapped back around the ridge and finally connected back to the trail Network at Maple Loop. From there, I was able to easily head back to the parking area via Broadway and the Catamount Trail. My descent through the gully was fine, and there were some nice steep, skiable lines, but I’d actually say the standard terrain down below the Buchanan Shelter offers better skiing, so the extra effort required to head to the east side of that ridge isn’t worth it unless you really just want to explore that rarely visited part of the network. I can’t throw out huge accolades with respect to the quality of the powder skiing on today’s tour though. It was extremely good yesterday, but it really seems to have taken a step back today. I’d say the drop in the quality of the powder was due to a combination of the new snow, which really wasn’t incredibly dry (up in the range of 8% H2O according to my analyses down at the house), and the cold temperatures making for poor gliding. The powder was just sort of slow and clunky, and it lost that perfect right-side-up nature that it had yesterday. Low and even moderate angle terrain just didn’t provide enough speed for turns, and even steep terrain was just so-so. I bet the powder will improve a lot even by tomorrow though – it’s supposed to be substantially warmer, which will help with some glide, and some of the snow’s natural setting and drying will probably start to reset the density gradient. For those considering lower-elevation tours in the near future, base depths were fine throughout today’s route in the Bolton Valley area. I’d say there was a minimum of 12 to 18 inches down at 1,200’, which is fine as long at you’re on the low angle terrain that is typical of the starting points for many routes. My tour topped out around 2,400’ today, and up there I was getting snowpack depths of 30 to 35 inches. There’s a substantial base to that snowpack, and it’s well-settled snow aside from the surface 1 to 2 feet of powder, so it offered plenty of coverage for even the steepest pitches that I encountered.

The month of January finished up yesterday, and we’re right around the halfway point of winter, so it seems like a good time for the next update on the season’s snowfall progression. January snowfall here at our site was just shy of 60 inches, which was the snowiest January we’ve had in a few years. One has to go back to January 2019 with 66.5 inches to find the most recent better performance. So, with 45 inches of snow in December, and now 60 inches of snow for January, both came in above average. The data say it’s not that easy around here to get above average snowfall back-to-back in both December and January – it’s been over a decade since that happened back in the 2010-2011 season. Both December and January had 14 storms each, so they were very similar in that regard, but January has had the larger storms. In terms of snowfall, January claimed the largest storm of the season thus far with 22.7 inches from the January 6th storm. The month also featured the second largest storm with 9.1 inches from the January 1st storm, and the January 28th storm was tied for third with the December 6th storm at 8.2 inches each. Not surprisingly, with both December and January brining above average snowfall, the season snowfall progression continues to be above average. As the cumulative snowfall plot shows, the strong first 10 days of the month were followed by a period of slower, albeit still quite decent, pace of snowfall for much of the middle of the month, with a sharp uptick again at the end of the month as the most recent bread and butter pattern resumed in the area.

It’s been a busy week, so I haven’t been able to get up to the mountain to check out the recent rounds of snow, but I was able to head out for some ski touring yesterday morning. Bolton Valley was reporting 16 inches of additional snow in the past week, and while that’s probably about an average snowfall pace for the resort, the flow of moderate events that we’ve been seeing simply keeps piling on the snow. And, temperatures have been consistently wintry, so all that new snow is just encountering the usual slow midwinter consolidation. Heading up the Bolton Valley Access Road, it was nice to see that all the recent snow seemed to be having an effect on the coverage at Timberline. The scoured areas on the lower elevation trails down by the Timberline Base were looking much better – I really had to search hard to see any areas with poor coverage as I drove by. Up at the main base area elevations in the 2,000’ to 3,000’ range, the effects of the continuing snowfall are even more pronounced. In many spots, the accumulations are taking on that deep midwinter look, with layers upon layers of snow visible on elevated surfaces from the numerous storms we’ve had over the past couple of months. Some evergreens have deep stacks of snow on them, and the ones that don’t are either in a windy location where the snow doesn’t build, or the stack just finally crashed to the ground due to its weight. I toured in the Wilderness area, ascending via the Wilderness Uphill Route and descending via a combination of glades in the Snow Hole area before reconnecting with Lower Turnpike. I couldn’t believe my eyes with respect to how little skier traffic there had been on Wilderness. Eventually I remembered that the Wilderness Chair doesn’t run on Wednesdays and Thursdays during non-holiday periods, which explained why there were hardly any tracks around on a Friday morning before the lift was running. Anyway, that meant that untracked powder was everywhere, and the quality of that powder continues to be top notch. It’s settling naturally and setting up a beautiful right-side-up gradient of bottomless snow that ranges anywhere from 1 to 3 feet deep. There is a subsurface down there, but it’s getting buried deeper and deeper with each passing storm. There’s no need for debate with the depths and quality of the powder that are out there right now – if you’re going to be touring and hitting mostly untracked snow, just bring your fattest skis; they are the right tool for the job.

I didn’t see any major changes in the BTV NWS advisories map as of the overnight update, but it looks like they did bump up the Event Total Snowfall map a bit to have a more extensive area of the 6-8” shading here along the spine of the Greens. That seems a bit more in line with the associated point forecasts they have for those areas.

I see that there are a bunch of Winter Weather Advisories and Winter Storm Warnings up around the area. The point forecast here suggests 4-8”, with a bit more for the local mountains, and as much as 7-15” in the southern part of the state. That seems generally in line although perhaps slightly above the look of the Event Total Snowfall Map around here, but the BTV NWS forecast discussion does indicate that they expect locally 6-9” in parts of the Green Mountains. BTV NWS maps are below:

A cold front moved through the area in the late morning period today, and whiteout conditions were encountered in numerous spots. With snow moving back into the area over the past couple of days, Bolton Valley was reporting an additional 2 to 3 inches in their 24-hour total, and my liquid analyses from down at the house indicated that it was indeed very dry snow – down around 2% H2O. This isn’t the kind of snow that is going to quickly build the snowpack, but it is the kind of snow that compliments the powder that is already in place. And the mountain snowpack is doing fine for this time of year anyway – as of today’s report, the snow depth at the Mt. Mansfield Stake is almost 60 inches. My ski tour from yesterday revealed that the powder out there is in absolutely fantastic shape, so I decided to head out for another tour today. Temperatures were up today – well up into the 20s F in the mountains, but the wind had picked up as well. Skies were cloudy as the snow pulled out but quickly shifted to partly cloudy conditions with bright sun at times. I toured on the west side of the Bolton Valley Nordic & Backcountry Network yesterday through elevations in roughly the 2,000’-2,400’ range, but today I toured on some of the more traditional Bryant Trail terrain and topped out around 2,800’. I toured up and around Bryant Cabin, then continued on up to the Not a Trail traverse and descended from there. I hit the Gun Sight area, which I’d yet to visit this season, and then continued my descent through a collection of lower-elevation glades. Similar to yesterday, the main lines of most glades have seen plenty of skier traffic, but all you have to do is head off into the surrounding trees and the snow is untracked and bottomless. Even in the dense evergreen areas the snowpack is deep – it was at least 30 to 40 inches when I checked at the 2,800’ level, but I can’t tell if I was actually probing all the way down to ground level. Today must not have been as busy at the resort as yesterday, because when I headed up the afternoon there was no sign at Timberline about the upper parking areas being full. Bolton has definitely been checking people’s passes for Nordic & Backcountry Network access this weekend. Yesterday on my way up the Bryant Trail I had to show a patroller my pass, and today they had an employee stationed at the Nordic Hut at the base of the Bryant Trail. I showed her my pass, but she wanted me to get one of the new blue arm bands that the resort is requiring for trail network use this season. I’d read about the arm bands on the resort’s website but hadn’t seen them in practice. It looks like they’re fully implementing them now, but now that I’ve picked mine up, it’s good for the whole season. In the Nordic & Backcountry Center they said that you can just keep it on your backcountry pack, since people are finding them a bit small to go on the arm. I was planning to visit the Nordic & Backcountry Center anyway, because I wanted to check out its new location. It’s moved from down at Ralph’s Rec Center to one of the buildings on the west side of the Village Circle. This is a better location with respect to backcountry access, especially for those using the Wilderness Uphill Route since it’s so close, but it seems to be a little less convenient for Nordic skiers that might be starting out on the Broadway Trail.

The pace of snowfall slowed down a bit over the past few days here in the Northern Greens, so heading into the backcountry seemed like today’s call for good access to untracked powder. It was a sunny midwinter day, so my my wife and I went snowshoeing in Morrisville in the morning, but I had time to head up to the Bolton Valley area in the afternoon for some ski touring. I haven’t really done any ski touring west of the Bryant Trail yet this season, so I decided to head out to the Prayer Flag area on today’s tour. Although the main lines of Prayer Flag had seen a decent amount of skier traffic, the natural glades surrounding the area were nearly untracked. As Prayer Flag began to narrow and dive down to Brook Run, I traversed to the right through the trees toward the Holden’s Hollow Glades. The main lines there were well tracked as I’d expected, so I continued on into the surrounding trees to finish my run down to the Joiner Brook bridge. I felt like extending my tour a bit, so I skinned back up and did a run down the Cup Runneth Over glade before heading back to the car. Although we didn’t get a ton of new snow this week, what we did get over the past couple of days was incredibly dry, so it topped off the existing powder quite well. We’ve also had the type of cold, dry weather this week that has allowed the powder to settle and dry to enhance its right-side-up density gradient and improve with age. The quality of the powder out there today was excellent, and the density gradient was such that it skied well on any pitch. In terms of depths, my measurements at the 2,000’ level revealed 17 to 18 inches above the subsurface, and at 2,400’ I found 22 to 24 inches of depth. In general I found that the main lines of most glades had seen a decent amount of skier traffic, and that’s not surprising without much fresh snow this week, but snow is in the forecast in the coming days to hopefully help reset the powder in those areas.

It’s nice to see January snowfall picking back up, in a month that has actually been pretty solid for snow anyway. It wasn’t until the 21st of the month that we even had our first day without snowfall, and thanks to the resumption of the northern stream systems coming through and some tapping of Lake Ontario moisture, Tuesday through Thursday this week have been the only days so far this month without new snow. Yesterday’s system seemed to be the first in this upcoming stretch, and a quick look at the GFS (and other modes are similar, which gives more confidence) suggests the following timing for storms: 1 Yesterday’s shortwave 2 Tomorrow into Monday 3 Tuesday 4 Wednesday/Thursday The latter ones look a bit more robust, so we’ll see if the track/modeling changes and what the mountains do with them. Whatever happens with snowfall for the rest of the January, it’s gravy from a monthly standpoint. We’d already attained average snowfall by mid-month, and the snow surfaces/snowpack are in decent shape, so these potential snows are just what’s needed to continue to build the snowpack and freshen things up.

There’s no doubt about that – I skied at both ends of the Northern Greens over the long weekend, and the off-piste conditions are excellent, just like you’d expect them to be at this time of year. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve found that the balance of snow accumulations and settling is generally yielding powder depths of 1 to 2 feet, and base depths at elevation are 40 inches or so. Snowpack at the Mt. Mansfield Stake is at 56 inches, which is only a foot above average, but the consistent snowfall and cold temperatures have kept the conditions in prime form. January’s snowfall has been decent thus far, helping to keep us on the high side of average pace as the updated plot for our site shows below. It looks like snowfall slows down a bit over the next couple of days, but the GFS has more of northern stream bread and butter look with Clippers as we head into the weekend and on into next week.

We were back to highs in the single digits F yesterday, and I’d certainly call those touring temperatures. With the cold weather, I wasn’t sure if I was going to head out for turns yesterday, but with snow quality this good and snowpack this deep, it’s easy to tip the scales toward skiing vs. doing something else for exercise. Bolton Valley was also reporting another 2 to 3 inches of fresh snow from Winter Storm Demi, so the January snowfall just keeps piling up, inch by inch. There are a number of main sectors of the Bolton Valley Nordic & Backcountry Network that I haven’t visited yet this season, and with the current snowpack essentially everything is in play, so it was difficult to choose where to go. I ultimately decided on a loop up to Bryant Cabin and a descent in the Gotham City area, since I hadn’t been out there yet this season. Indeed, the afternoon temperatures were in the single digits F in the mountains yesterday like we had back at the beginning of the month, but it was sunny, and there was little wind, so that made it feel noticeably different from the snowy, windy single-digit temperatures we had before. It was really quite comfortable out on the ascent, and I was cruising up the Bryant Trail, it was feeling so nice that I decided to extend my tour a bit higher. I stopped briefly at Bryant Cabin for a drink and some photos, then continued on up Heavenly Highway to the Not a Trail area at around the 2,800’ elevation. I did some checks on the snowpack depth and was typically getting numbers in the range of 35 to 45 inches. I think I was getting to the bottom of the snowpack when probing with my ski pole, but it’s hard to know for sure without digging a pit. When I was out in the Jay Peak backcountry touring the west face of the Gilpin Mountain/Domey’s Dome range on Saturday, snowpack probing at similar elevations was typically giving me depths of 45 to 50 inches. So, as one might expect with the snowfall the Jay Peak area has seen thus far this season (a bit over 200 inches), the snowpack seems to be a bit deeper there at equivalent elevations. For my descent, I skied a bit of Not a Trail, took the Not a Trail high traverse, then dropped into a nice line that brought me across North Slope and down to Gardiner’s Lane. From there I headed to Gotham City, and since the weather has been so cold and snow preservation so solid, I decided to check out the south-facing Alchemist glade. That area typically suffers from coverage in sunny and warm conditions, but we haven’t had much of that lately, and coverage was excellent. Since our most recent snow, there were only a couple of new tracks in the main Alchemist lines, but there were a number of older tracks that had packed the snow down a bit more, so I ended up heading off to some ancillary lines on the left. I found acres of terrain over there that was virtually untracked, and it was so good that I put my skins back on and made a quick second ascent via one of the tracks on Alchemist for another run. If one wants to split hairs, I’d say that the new snow that fell from Winter Storm Demi may have knocked the quality of the powder skiing down just a touch. Up here in the Northern Greens we weren’t in any of the heavier snowfall banding from the storm, so snowfall rates were modest, and flake sizes were as well. My liquid analyses from down in the valley indicated that the powder came in at 8.6% H2O, so getting up there toward the density of standard 10% H2O synoptic snow. That was probably a bit denser than the powder that was sitting on the surface before it fell, so it altered the developing right-side-up density gradient in the surface snow just a touch. Also, the snow skis a bit slower in single-digit temperatures, so the combination meant that turns were a bit sluggish on lower-angle terrain. Moderate-angle and steep terrain skied great though, and remember, we’re talking about the finer details of powder quality here, so it comes down to the difference between maybe a point on a 10-piont scale. As mentioned, as soon as I reached the bottom my run, I turned around and skinned up for another go, so that tells you how good the skiing was. With the low temperatures and dry air we’re expected to have over the next couple of days, and indeed all the way into next weekend, I wouldn’t be surprised to find the top layers of the powder drying out and the density gradient gradually resetting itself for even better powder quality as time goes on. That’s actually happened a decent amount over the past few weeks, which is one of the benefits of consistently cold temperatures and very low humidity. There aren’t any major systems expected to hit the area in the next couple of days, so the only potential snow during the midweek period would be if any of the moisture from Lake Ontario makes it over here to the Northern Greens. There’s not much expected, but there were a few radar echoes approaching the area in the evening, so the mountains may have pulled a few flakes out of that. Anything we get from lake moisture would be very dry snow, so it would top off the powder nicely in terms of the density gradient. Once we get out toward Friday and the weekend, there may be a couple chances for Clipper systems to affect the area.

Yesterday I headed up to Bolton Valley for a bit of afternoon lift-served skiing with my wife and our older son ahead of the cold temperatures that are expected to be around into the midweek period. The resort has finally shifted their attention to making snow in the Timberline area over the past week, and since it was open to lift-served skiing for the holiday weekend, we figured we’d check it out. It’s always a nice shift into the feel of Bolton’s full mid-season mode when you can start parking down at Timberline to base yourself there to ski the rest of the resort. Midafternoon yesterday when I was heading home from backcountry skiing in the Jay Peak area, it started snowing as our Saturday system pushed into the area, but the precipitation changed to sprinkles of rain in the valleys as I headed south. We’d picked up a few hundredths of an inch of rain down in the valley at our house in Waterbury that gave a slight crust to the snowpack, so I was curious how high the snow levels had risen. I immediately checked the consistency of the snow when we arrived at the Timberline Base at 1,500’ and was happy to find that the snow was powdery without any rain crust, so even the lowest elevations of the resort had remained above the snow line. As we ascended on the Timberline Quad, we could see that the lower Timberline trails without snowmaking still need more snow. Our long-duration storms from early January scoured a lot of the west-facing terrain, and the existing snowpack down at the Timberline elevations just wasn’t deep enough to hold up to that very well. Most of the natural snow terrain at Timberline was open, but it’s still just a bit thin to support lift-served skiing without some areas of brush and grass poking through. The areas where they’ve made snow have plentiful coverage of course, but seeing what was available, we decided to head up to the main mountain for better coverage and conditions. The resort was reporting 4 to 6 inches of new snow in the past 24 hours, and 8 inches of new snow in he past 48 hours, so somehow the mountains just keep pulling the inches out of these minor systems that come through the area. Those snowfall numbers are definitely more reflective of the main mountain though, because accumulations down at Timberline were certainly less. Up at the main mountain we decided to head right to Wilderness to ski the natural snow terrain, and it was indeed night and day compared to the conditions down at Timberline. There’s certainly been plenty of skier traffic at the resort since it’s a holiday weekend, but jumping off trail into the trees revealed the usual foot plus of light powder that we’ve been seeing over the past couple of weeks in untracked areas. On piste, the snow was nice packed powder wherever the winds hadn’t scoured it down, so we stuck to moderate-angle terrain below the Wilderness Mid Station and had some great runs. We even had some sun at the beginning of our session, and it was nice to have that light and a bit of extra warmth. You could tell that colder air was moving in, and temperatures were dropping through the lower 20s F, so when the clouds came back in ahead of approaching Winter Storm Demi, you could really feel the chill. We headed back to Timberline as we finished up our afternoon session, and we did find some nice natural snow in areas like Lower Tattle Tale, but due to the shallower snowpack you had to be very selective and stick to well protected areas that hadn’t been scoured. The manmade snow on Timberline Run was definitely firm, and I’d say the disparity between the quality/firmness of the natural and manmade snow is far more than the usual at Timberline right now. The snow they made should be very resilient though. The opening of the Timberline area means that food service is firing up there, and this year in the Timberline Base Lodge they have Miso Curry offering food. It turns out that like the Miso Toh Kome hut up at Bolton’s main base area, (and other resorts in the area) Miso Curry is another offering from the Miso Hungry chain. We didn’t know that curry was so prominent in Japanese cuisine, but we shared an order of their katsu pork curry with edamame, and it was great. We were thinking it might be a bit tough though for families if the kids want something more typical to eat, but they can always catch that at the main base lodge, and Miso Curry seems to be a great addition to the variety of food available at the resort.

Glad you enjoyed the pictures! Unfortunately, stopping in for food at Omakase wasn’t even an option – it was closed and looked totally dead aside from a couple of vehicles in the parking area. I couldn’t believe they weren’t open in the midafternoon on Saturday of a holiday weekend and was worried that they’d gone out of business or something (although the icicles seem to suggest plenty of activity in what I guess is the kitchen area with that vent). When I got home, I checked to see what was up, and I guess they just don’t open until 5:00 P.M. I’m amazed they aren’t going for the après ski crowd with a location like that. They would probably get a ton of business if they did, but a 5:00 P.M. opening really means they’re just going for dinner for people who are in the area overnight? This article in Local LaVida from a couple years back suggests that they planned to have an early bird après menu: Seasons Plans: With plans of opening doors starting the winter of 2022, early season hours will be limited to start but will expand as the season progresses. Omakase plans to have an early bird après menu from 2-5 pm, offering generously priced small plates with a daily brew! Dinner service will be held between 5-10 pm with a Sunday brunch menu and specials board on the horizon. As the season goes into full swing, operations will expand to meet the demands of holiday and peak periods. It looks like a great spot, and it’s totally the kind of place that I would grab some food to bring home to the family for dinner after a day at the resort or in the backcountry if they were open (I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve done that at Sushi Yoshi in Stowe or the Miso Kome hut at Bolton). One can’t help but like how the building fits right in with the wintry Jay Peak vibe thanks to the stacked snow and icicles on the roof, so I still had to grab a shot on my way home!

A couple weeks back there was some great discussion in the thread on the Jay Peak backcountry conditions in areas like Gilpin Mountain and Domey’s Dome, so I was certainly looking to head up there for some touring when the opportunity arose. Prodigious amounts of snow have simply continued to fall through much of this past week, with Jay Peak now at 200 inches of snowfall on the season. So, the powder has been staying fresh and the snowpack just keeps getting deeper. I was thinking of heading up for a tour in the Gilpin/Domey’s area this weekend, and out of the blue my younger son called to see if I’d bring him and some of his college friends on a backcountry ski tour since some of their passes were in blackout mode due to the holiday weekend. I told him where I was already thinking on touring, and that’s all it took – the plan was in place to head out Saturday morning. The forecast for the day was looking great – temperatures in the upper 20s F are perfect because it’s warm enough to be quite comfortable out in the backcountry, but below the freezing mark to avoid any temperature effects on the powder. I was concerned about parking since it’s a holiday weekend, but there were plenty of parking spots up at Jay Pass on Route 242. I arrived about 20 minutes before my son and his friends, so I poked around at the pass, and checked out the snow conditions and trail access points until they arrived. I’ve skied the terrain north of the pass on Gilpin Mountain before, but this time I wanted to check out the terrain to the south. My plan for our tour was to use the Long Trail to head up Gilpin Mountain and out along the ridgeline toward Domey’s Dome, then descend the west face of the range and catch the Catamount Trail for the return trip. With regard to ski touring, that side of the range is, in theory, set up beautifully – the Long Trail follows the ridgeline, and the Catamount Trail roughly parallels it down in the valley near Route 242. So, you can head out on the Long Trail to whatever point you want, then drop in for a descent and use the Catamount Trail as a collector for returning to Jay Pass. I say it’s a great setup “in theory”, with the caveat that the Long Trail can be tough to follow at this time of year. The Long Trail uses white blazes on the trees to mark its route for hikers, and the trees up along the ridgeline there can be absolutely loaded with snow. So, following the trail can be quite challenging if someone hasn’t already put a track in place. Also, as the snowpack continues to rise, the blazes can be more and more difficult to find. As of now, the blazes are at about waist level, so they’re still visible if you can find them behind the inches of snow caked to the trees, but even at the current height they are getting hard to see. One could certainly head out to an ascent of Domey’s Dome using the Catamount Trail from below, but after traversing the Catamount Trail in that area for the return on our tour (there are plenty of undulations and meanderings), that approach feels like more work than it needs to be unless you park farther down on Route 242. While it was breezy in the open area of Jay Pass, with the anemometers at the weather station area buzzing right along, the wind disappeared as soon as we entered the forest on our ascent. Following the Long Trail upward from the pass to Gilpin Mountain was fairly easy – it was well set as a skin track from plenty of skier traffic, so even without being able to see the blazes, it’s fairly easy to follow. Once we were up at the Gilpin Mountain ridgeline, we took a quick jaunt to the north to check out the official summit of Gilpin Mountain at 3,021’ then moved southward and reached the South Peak of Gilpin Mountain, which is slightly lower at 2,993’. From there, we headed south on the Long Trail toward Domey’s Dome. We ran into a couple of guys from Quebec (based on their accents) who were setting up to descend a steep, sweet looking gully on the back side of the range. They joked with us about not stealing it from them, but we would never have done that, and we had other plans anyway. After that, we didn’t run into anyone, because skier traffic seems very light once you get past the general Gilpin Mountain area. We were able to follow the Long Trail southward for a little while, with the help of one track from a previous skier, but as we descended into the col between Gilpin and Domey’s, it became more and more difficult to hold the ridgeline and not get pulled into descending on one side of the ridge of the other. Nobody had broken trail on the Long Trail across the ridgeline, so the route finding took time. We had access to multiple GPS units, and when the Long Trail is obscured with deep snow like it is now, you certainly want to have your GPS and compass. Not wanting to waste too much of the session trying to navigate the traverse, we eventually decided to hug the western side of the ridge as we headed southward, with the intention of beginning a descent if we saw some appealing ski terrain. It wasn’t too long before we found a relatively steep line that dropped through some open trees, and we decided it was as good a time as any to begin skiing. Our descent from the col between Gilpin and Domey’s featured some nice areas with reasonably open trees, spots with excellent natural glades, and some terrain that had been logged and maintained for logging access. The powder was fantastic – there was typically 1 to 2 feet of bottomless powder over a deep base. I would frequently check the depth of the snowpack, and my ski pole would go below the surface of the snow, which means the snowpack depth was in excess of 40 inches. The powder was in a very nice right-side-up density gradient starting with snow in roughly the 6 to 8% H2O range on top. The only thing that could have really made the powder better would have been to throw on several more inches of fresh 3-6% H2O champagne, but that’s really getting picky, because it skied incredibly well. Everyone was on fat skis with widths over 100 mm, and the skis were definitely in their element out there today. My son was on his Telemark skis for the first time in 2 or 3 years because he’s been looking for a good pair of boots to replace the current ones that are too tight, but it didn’t look like his Telemark skiing had missed a beat. I was happy to see that, and so were his friends. As of this morning, Jay Peak is reporting 203 inches of snowfall on the season, and you can really feel it when you’re out there in the nearby backcountry. The snowpack depth at the Mt. Mansfield Stake at 3,700’ is around 55 inches, but based on what I found out there on our tour in the Gilpin/Domey’s area, that snowpack depth is probably obtained at a lower elevation in the Jay Peak area. We weren’t even out in the Big Jay Basin area, which seems to collect some of the most snow in the area due to it’s leeward position, so I bet the snowpack is quite deep out there. My son and his friends are planning to head out to Alyeska in March for some skiing during spring break, and he mentioned that as of now they apparently have the most snowfall for the season of any ski area in the U.S. at 346 inches. That got me wondering about how things are going for some of the well-known, snowier resorts in western North America with respect to snowfall, and I saw that Steamboat is at 143 inches, Whistler Blackcomb is at 197 inches, Grand Targhee is at 211 inches, and Alta is at 233 inches. So, Jay Peak’s 203 inches is certainly in that ballpark, and the area’s snowpack is definitely doing well. I’d say what’s really helped with making Jay Peak’s snowfall perform in terms of building the snowpack is that they haven’t had to deal with many thaws, especially in the past few weeks when they’ve has so much continuous snowfall.

The back side of our current storm cycle has looked decent for a while on the GFS (which seems to typically do really nice medium-range work with these northern stream systems around here), and I see that the BTV NWS has Winter Weather Advisories up for the Northern Greens (and stretching down in the Central Greens a bit) starting at 4 PM today. This morning’s near term AFD talks about some of the snow that’s already fallen, what could be coming, and the Froude aspects. Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Burlington VT 930 AM EST Tue Jan 14 2025 NEAR TERM /THROUGH WEDNESDAY/... As of 918 AM EST Tuesday...Fcst in good shape this morning after our first round of upslope snow showers last night delivered 8.5 inches at Westfield CoCoRahs site and 4.7 inches near Enosburg Falls and 3.3 in Stowe. The setup for later this aftn into the overnight hours features a weak surface trof approaching from the north, while a combination of Great Lake and building mid/upper lvl trof moisture wl increase from north to south acrs our region. Expect the areal coverage of snow showers to increase aft 18z this aftn with localized moderate snowfall possible in the favorable upslope regions of the northern Dacks and mtns of central/northern VT by evening. Initially froude is btwn 1.0 and 1.5, which supports snow close to mtn ridge crests and less side, but toward 12z Weds numbers decrease <1.0 supporting heavier snowfall immediately upwind of mtn crest. In addition, thermal analysis indicates sweet spot for snow growth with progged 850mb temps falling btwn -12C and -16C and good moisture profiles, supporting snow ratios in the 25/30 to 1 range. All this is covered well in crnt snowfall fcst with a sharp elevational dependent snowfall anticipated from a dusting to 2 inches Champlain Valley to localized amounts near a foot Mt Mansfield to Jay Peak and similar scenario expected from the SLV to Giant Mtn in northern NY. Temps hold steady in the upper teens to locally near 30F CPV cities today with cloudy skies prevailing.