NNE Cold Season Thread 2022/2023

[Patriot21]

79 on the car thermometer when I pulled in at 4

[alex]

@powderfreak I’m thinking of skiing Wildcat tomorrow, what does one wear in this weather lol??? I feel like ski pants will be too hot but jeans may get soaked?

[mreaves]

57 minutes ago, alex said:

@powderfreak I’m thinking of skiing Wildcat tomorrow, what does one wear in this weather lol??? I feel like ski pants will be too hot but jeans may get soaked?

I think this is the latest in spring skiing attire. 
 

[gonegalt]

The river is rising pretty good. No jams, some pack/brash flowing by. Nice gentle melt.

Sorry about the lack of damage.

[mcglups]

1 hour ago, alex said:

@powderfreak I’m thinking of skiing Wildcat tomorrow, what does one wear in this weather lol??? I feel like ski pants will be too hot but jeans may get soaked?

I'll be there! I'm wearing ski pants for the morning session, who knows for the afternoon, perhaps a sweatshirt with jeans if I can make it that far.

[tamarack]

14 hours ago, gonegalt said:

The river is rising pretty good. No jams, some pack/brash flowing by. Nice gentle melt.

Sorry about the lack of damage.

Very calm and early ice out for the local river (Sandy R.). 
No matter the pack depth/density, I've yet to see a significant New England flood from snowmelt alone.   In 1984 I needed an extension to my 61" snow stake and the SWE was ~16", with higher numbers in the Allagash/St. John uplands (80"/20" SWE).  We thought that this would be the year the protection dike in Fort Kent would have its first big test, but the major snowmelt period - mid April into early May, had almost no precip.  24 years later the pack was big but much less than 1984, and a 3"+ RA event in late April brought the St. John to nearly 3 feet higher than the previous record in Fort Kent, with serious damage.

[Angus]

Been at SLoaf last two days - the pack is taking a big hit but still skiing everything on the mountain - including front and back side snowfields - I've been starting each morning at 830 and skiing non-stop to a 2pm - pretty crushed by then - lots of great bumps on Bubblecuffer and Winters Way. Ice still in Chain of Lakes - drove up this PM. 

[powderfreak]

On 4/13/2023 at 7:23 PM, alex said:

@powderfreak I’m thinking of skiing Wildcat tomorrow, what does one wear in this weather lol??? I feel like ski pants will be too hot but jeans may get soaked?

Ha I go short sleeve and snow pants.  It’s still too hot but skiing in shorts can be risky.  It’s pretty close to that level though.  Thigh Vents wide open on pants.

You end up sweating anyway. It’s a weird sensation to be on snow and get those puffs of very warm air in your face.  Then occasionally you find a small drainage or creek and the temp is 25F colder… before blasting back out into the heat.

Mansfield looks to have hit 69F for another daily record. Old record today was 66F in 1968.  Snow depth down to 56”.

[gonegalt]

Snow rotting out. Fields still nice but choose your route  wisely as bare areas appear. 

Can still ride down to river but that's done tomorrow with these awful SNE temps.

It's actually beautiful out. My sled commuting to my woods yacht will finish maybe day after tomorrow.

I'm melting.

River is up maybe 8' from mid-winter levels which lasted until just days ago. Rapid rise but no jams. Grimes rd in FF has ice issues right now- real lowland, takes little more than a septic backup to flood.

If I were a Grimes, I'd change my name.

 

 

[Patriot21]

Little over an inch from yesterday, not sure when it stopped raining.

[Ginx snewx]

On 4/14/2023 at 7:48 PM, powderfreak said:

Ha I go short sleeve and snow pants.  It’s still too hot but skiing in shorts can be risky.  It’s pretty close to that level though.  Thigh Vents wide open on pants.

You end up sweating anyway. It’s a weird sensation to be on snow and get those puffs of very warm air in your face.  Then occasionally you find a small drainage or creek and the temp is 25F colder… before blasting back out into the heat.

Mansfield looks to have hit 69F for another daily record. Old record today was 66F in 1968.  Snow depth down to 56”.

Did shirts and tees for 3 days. Butter skiing at 85 to 90. 

[#NoPoles]

I was thinking we should switch to a "Warm Season" threaf once the peepers come out. It's really weird to be listening to peepers as well as ice pellets bouncing off my window AC. Yes, I installed in my bedroom since it's on the 2nd level. Did not install on the main level.

[wxeyeNH]

GFS very bullish.  I need a few more inches to hit 100".  Still 100% bare trees up here

[tamarack]

1 hour ago, wxeyeNH said:

GFS very bullish.  I need a few more inches to hit 100".  Still 100% bare trees up here

Ri-i-i-i-ight.  (And I'd be a couple miles too far east anyway.)

Only tree with green here is the occasional willow, always the first, by a week or more.  Cherry buds opened during last week's 70s but 50s with ~30 minima have put them into near stasis.  Same with red maple and elm blossoms.

[J.Spin]

Based on the forecast, today seemed like the better half of the weekend for turns, so I decided to head to Mt. Mansfield and make use of all the snow that’s still out there.  A look at the Stowe Mountain Cam this morning showed that coverage still looked continuous on the Gondola side of the resort, and since that area generally melts out faster than the terrain under The Nose, I decided to ski that while it was still in good shape.

Based on what I’d seen from the webcam and views from the valley, the cloud ceiling seemed to be sitting at around 3,200’ on Mansfield, so my plan was to continue my ascent until I hit the lowest cloud deck, or the snow became too firm at elevation, whichever came first.  Indeed, as the webcam view had indicated, coverage on Gondolier was pretty much continuous from top to bottom.  It turns out that there are a couple of small breaks of a few feet, but they’re nothing substantial that would ruin a top-to-bottom run.

It remained mostly cloudy today, and not especially warm with temperatures around 50 F, so I was initially worried about the snow being generally too stiff for quality turns.  It was a little tough to tell exactly how it was going to ski during the ascent, but the sky began to brighten a bit in the midafternoon period, and the cloud ceiling started to rise.  The ceiling rose all the way up to 3,600’, and then slowly continued to rise beyond that, so I opted to make a full ascent to the Gondola Summit Station.  The brightening skies probably provided that extra punch of solar radiation to ensure that the snow quality was decent at all elevations, so in the end, the whole descent provided some fantastic spring turns.

I’d expect some decent gaps to open up on the Gondola terrain over the next week if the weather was going to be mild, but the snow there might actually hold out for a while.  The forecast suggests numerous snow chances over the next couple of weeks, so that could result in some accumulation and decent preservation as we head farther into the spring ski season.

[wxeyeNH]

38.8F  Moderate rain.  A little over 1"

 

[Patriot21]

Right around 3" from this past event. 

[tunafish]

31 minutes ago, Patriot21 said:

Right around 3" from this past event. 

https://cocorahs.org/Content.aspx?page=store

[mreaves]

2 hours ago, tunafish said:

https://cocorahs.org/Content.aspx?page=store

So you're saying you don't appreciate good ole Yankee ingenuity?

[tunafish]

5 minutes ago, mreaves said:

So you're saying you don't appreciate good ole Yankee ingenuity?

Oh, I appreciate it  

It just pains me to see when there's a $35 solution available.  Nothing beats a stratus!  Plus, the more CoCoRAHS observers the better.

[Patriot21]

1 hour ago, tunafish said:

Oh, I appreciate it  

It just pains me to see when there's a $35 solution available.  Nothing beats a stratus!  Plus, the more CoCoRAHS observers the better.

I know, I'm cheap when it comes to this stuff lol. I will get the real deal one day

[tamarack]

1 hour ago, mreaves said:

So you're saying you don't appreciate good ole Yankee ingenuity?

Love it, but less when taper turns 2.2" into 3".  

[backedgeapproaching]

#caughtonNestCam. https://video.nest.com/clip/9e001e92dc4c400fa16a0d66bd01b131.mp4

Forgot to close my garage door at dark. This M'Fer just waltzed in and grabs whole damn bag.

[powderfreak]

15 minutes ago, backedgeapproaching said:

#caughtonNestCam. https://video.nest.com/clip/9e001e92dc4c400fa16a0d66bd01b131.mp4

Forgot to close my garage door at dark. This M'Fer just waltzed in and grabs whole damn bag.

Ha! They are such resourceful creatures that take path of least resistance, but that one is on you lol.  Broke into a friend’s jeep last summer for donuts, never leave your doors unlocked either.

There’s a mom and two cubs in my neighborhood that I haven’t seen yet but several neighbors have past couple days… the bears are alive. 

[backedgeapproaching]

6 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Ha! They are such resourceful creatures that take path of least resistance, but that one is on you lol.  Broke into a friend’s jeep last summer for donuts, never leave your doors unlocked either.

There’s a mom and two cubs in my neighborhood that I haven’t seen yet but several neighbors have past couple days… the bears are alive. 

Oh 100% on me. I normally have those bags sealed up airtight in a container.

I went out after I got the alarm from the cam and my neighbors dog was out and was literally nose to nose with bear barking,the bear then went flying up the tree prob 20-30ft. Pretty intense.

You can hear my neighbor in this vid..lol. 

#caughtonNestCam. https://video.nest.com/clip/e28b3235abdd4504b26af8d1fddf609a.mp4

 

[powderfreak]

Love this time of year for the daylight.  We all know that one can take advantage of the late daylight... following months of early darkness.  The increasing daylight in the spring is by far the environmental factor that hits the strongest.

It was 6pm today when I was able to relax high up on the mountain and enjoy the extended light this time of year.  Love summer evenings and these spring evenings remind me of that daylight.

One can wander around high in the mountains after work and delay dinner as long as possible.  Eating dinner takes place later than 8pm these days.  Love it.  None of this darkness at 4pm and eating dinner super early at 6pm type stuff.

 

[J.Spin]

Similar to last weekend, Saturday seemed like the better weather day for skiing this weekend, so yesterday I headed to Stowe for some turns on the spring snow.  I visited the Gondola terrain last time, so this outing I decided to get in some skiing on Spruce Peak while the south-facing terrain is still offering some reasonable descents.

Starting from the MMSC parking lot, I had to hike for roughly 5 to 10 minutes before I was able to start skinning, and then I eventually made my way over to Main Street for the rest of the ascent.  Main Street coverage is nearly continuous over most of its course except for the very bottom down near the base of the Sensation Quad, and up in the flats near the top.  So, I topped out a bit shy of 3,000’ on the ascent vs. continuing on to the summit station of the Sensation Quad.  I was definitely happy to stop where I did though, because southerly winds were absolutely howling ahead of the approaching storm.  Main Street faces directly south with lots of exposure, so winds were sustained up in the 30 to 40 MPH range near the 3,000’ mark.  I actually pulled into the forest to remove my skins and gear up for the descent, and that gave me a break from the constant buffeting of the strong winds and helped avoid the likely frustration of things flapping around and flying away.

Main Street offered up lots of those steep, buttery spring snow carves that is typically does, and I didn’t spot any major areas of undermined snow that were of any concern.  I was able to get down into the flats above the base of the Sensation Quad with just a couple short stretches of breaks in the snowpack.  Although not quite 100% continuous from the Sensation Quad summit because of the break in the upper flats, the area still offers up quite a good yield of skiable vertical for the investment of the ascent.  Taking in the views across to Mansfield gave me a nice look at the ski options throughout the resort, and there are still numerous ascent and descent routes for great touring.  The snow on Nosedive looks a little more burnt out than I would have expected, but the melt out is different every year, which is part of what makes it interesting.  North Slope and the surrounding trails in that area seem to have some great coverage, so there should be some good options around there for quite a while.

Near the end of my tour, rain shafts started to show up among the mountains to the south, and I was able to watch the peaks disappearing as the incoming storm moved into the area.  The first spits of rain started to hit just as I arrived at my car, so the timing of the storm was right on with what the forecast had indicated.  This past week has been seasonably cool, and it looks like that has helped to slow down the spring melt.  With the forecast looking relatively cool for the next week or so, that should help to preserve the snow and ski options as we head into May.

[powderfreak]

Still been skiing 3-5 days a week taking an after work lap.  Today’s upper Hayride was skiing great.

Nice to have the rain stop.

[wxeyeNH]

Finally some sun

[J.Spin]

Unlike the previous couple of weekends, there were no real concerns about the weather for skiing this past weekend – both days looked quite reasonable without any major bouts of precipitation expected.  Saturday looked great with clear skies all morning, so I eventually headed back out to Mt. Mansfield for some turns.

I was torn between skinning and hiking for the ascent.  There appeared to be nearly continuous snow through various routes around The Nose side of the resort, but there were also plenty of areas in which the snow had melted out and dry ground was present.  Since there were some breaks in the snowpack near the base area on Lower North Slope anyway, and since I’d been skinning for the past couple of weeks, I decided to set myself up for hiking on the ascent.

To generally stay on dry ground, I kept my ascent on trails to the south of the main North Slope/Lord route, and it made the route a bit less steep.  There was still a lot of snow around, so I’d often find myself skirting the snow line on various trails, and I ended up mixing it up with some hiking on the snow as well.

I set my goal on ascending until I found a major break in the continuous snowpack, but I couldn’t really spot any obvious ones from the route I took, and I eventually topped out by the Octagon/Fourrunner Quad Summit.  The views of the Presidential Range were impressive, and it’s obvious that there have been recent snows in the elevations above tree line.

On my descent of the main North Slope/Lord route, I did discover that there’s a fairly large break of about 50 feet or so in the continuous cover on North Slope, but I just couldn’t see it from where I ascended.  Coverage is pretty much continuous aside from that break, and the couple of breaks in snowpack down by the base.

I saw a mix of people who were both skinning and hiking while I was out, and if I was to do it again, I think I’d bring along my skins so that I had them with me.  The snowpack is strong enough in a number of areas such that there are long stretches where skinning is the more practical and efficient approach, and having the flexibility to swap back and forth between skinning and hiking would be a nice option to have for a smooth ascent.