NNE Cold Season Thread 2024-2025

[TheMainer]

Nice thing about living on the trail, 50 miles before work this morning in an hour and a half. First 2 miles leaving the house is a little dry, but overall pretty decent going. Will probably start riding from the house now. 

[mreaves]

1 hour ago, TheMainer said:

Nice thing about living on the trail, 50 miles before work this morning in an hour and a half. First 2 miles leaving the house is a little dry, but overall pretty decent going. Will probably start riding from the house now. 

Nice. The trail to my place got closed because of a new house being built below me last year. We still haven’t found a re-route. It’s on the docket for next year. 

[TheMainer]

31 minutes ago, mreaves said:

Nice. The trail to my place got closed because of a new house being built below me last year. We still haven’t found a re-route. It’s on the docket for next year. 

Ah yeah that stinks, we're dealing with more plowed roads and trail closures every year as people build more camps, nothing they are even up here in the winter but still dont want sleds around. Unfortunate really.

[J.Spin]

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.

[J.Spin]

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 6^th storm. The month also featured the second largest storm with 9.1 inches from the January 1^st storm, and the January 28^th storm was tied for third with the December 6^th 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.

[borderwx]

Another polar wax morning, started at 5F, nice in the woods out of the wind with a few inches of diamond dust in Craftsbury.




A skim of snow at the house, looks like all the people and animals will be hanging by the woodstove tonight


.

[#NoPoles]

Any snowmobilers have any knowledge about Northern Trails Lodging, a motel in Pittsburg, NH?

[#NoPoles]

Temp is dropping like a rock. Probably looking at the coldest low temp of this winter, sunrise tomorrow 

[qg_omega]

Zero at 6pm

[#NoPoles]

12 minutes ago, qg_omega said:

Zero at 6pm

Same

[TheMainer]

Good 210 mile day leaving from the house up to Pittston Farm, a loop through the woods, back down Moosehead and back to the house. If we can get the snow train going it's gonna get real good up here. 

[powderfreak]

10 hours ago, borderwx said:

Another polar wax morning, started at 5F, nice in the woods out of the wind with a few inches of diamond dust in Craftsbury.

A skim of snow at the house, looks like all the people and animals will be hanging by the woodstove tonight

It’s been a fun month.  Snowpack has been tracking just above normal in the northern Greens.

Pack above 5 feet at the co-op stake.  Favorable to the mean after last night’s fresh snow.

 

[#NoPoles]

37 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

It’s been a fun month.  Snowpack has been tracking just above normal in the northern Greens.

Pack above 5 feet at the co-op stake.  Favorable to the mean after last night’s fresh snow.

 

I love this graphic. I look forward to you posting it every winter

[#NoPoles]

-24

[borderwx]

As advertised, coldest start thus far…

-17F on top of the hill


.

[J.Spin]

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.

[TheMainer]

Took the wife, the old man, and his GF down to Acadia National Park today to do 60 miles, up Cadillac and over to Eagle Lake. Pretty neat and you usually only have a short window to do it, sometimes years in between opportunities.

[Met1985]

2 hours ago, TheMainer said:

Took the wife, the old man, and his GF down to Acadia National Park today to do 60 miles, up Cadillac and over to Eagle Lake. Pretty neat and you usually only have a short window to do it, sometimes years in between opportunities.

Freaking beautiful up there. Looks completely different in the snow. 

[J.Spin]

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 19^th. 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.

[powderfreak]

Nice little fluffer last night.  4”.

[dmcginvt]

Definitely skied like a fluffy 4 inches too.  The snowgun pea soup at the top left a lot to be desired though! zero vis down to the haychute.  could barely see the ground below me   But at least it was warmer than this weekend!

[powderfreak]

2 hours ago, dmcginvt said:

Definitely skied like a fluffy 4 inches too.  The snowgun pea soup at the top left a lot to be desired though! zero vis down to the haychute.  could barely see the ground below me   But at least it was warmer than this weekend!

First time in like a month we had to kill snow guns due to marginal temps.

I think the mountain does another 4-6” tonight.  A healthy 6 at High Road would not surprise me.

[MRVexpat]

8 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

First time in like a month we had to kill snow guns due to marginal temps.

I think the mountain does another 4-6” tonight.  A healthy 6 at High Road would not surprise me.

You have any thoughts on the Thursday deal? Would be really nice to avoid laying down a crust layer...

[mreaves]

8 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

First time in like a month we had to kill snow guns due to marginal temps.

I think the mountain does another 4-6” tonight.  A healthy 6 at High Road would not surprise me.

It definitely settled today. I had to clear the driveway after being gone for the weekend and it was definitely sloppy at times. Not much melting though. 

[powderfreak]

11 minutes ago, MRVexpat said:

You have any thoughts on the Thursday deal? Would be really nice to avoid laying down a crust layer...

I think we crust.  It doesn’t take much, even if it’s snow to sleet to dry slot, that dry slot often is freezing mist/drizzle.  It takes so little liquid to crust the snowpack I think we’d need some wholesale changes to that look on Thursday.

Even the GFS warm sectors Thursday night after precip shuts off… which there are also varying levels of crust too.  Maybe just a zipper that 100 underfoot can take care of.

[dmcginvt]

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

First time in like a month we had to kill snow guns due to marginal temps.

I think the mountain does another 4-6” tonight.  A healthy 6 at High Road would not surprise me.

hrrr says more 9.  rap say no 6 tops. I always add to pf and im usually right because he's the most conservative peep i have ever come across and it's fair.  Mansfield never lets down.  Plus that plume added by the guns adds to the nuclei needed.  just sucks the moisture out of the cloud and puts it on the trail.  Will be an early bedtime to get up there at 7:30 again.  Im home and back to regular skiing and so happy.  Its been 5 years since I skied so much.  Im old and I think all the old regulars are going to pull me in as they see me now.  I dont want to ski with them!

 

 

[powderfreak]

12 minutes ago, dmcginvt said:

hrrr says more 9.  rap say no 6 tops. I always add to pf and im usually right because he's the most conservative peep i have ever come across and it's fair.  Mansfield never lets down.  Plus that plume added by the guns adds to the nuclei needed.  just sucks the moisture out of the cloud and puts it on the trail.  Will be an early bedtime to get up there at 7:30 again.  Im home and back to regular skiing and so happy.  Its been 5 years since I skied so much

 

 

You’re not the only one lol.  The Stowe Family is always arguing with me that there’s more snow.  I’m just trying to forecast what the High Road stake will show. We’ll see tomorrow.  3-6” with High Road closer to the 6” is my call.

[dmcginvt]

I know.  Always better to err on the side of less.  I appreciate it soo much.  We have temp issues tonight so elevation will matter.  32.4 here right now (820') and it's raining.  to mping

[powderfreak]

6 minutes ago, dmcginvt said:

I know.  Always better to err on the side of less.  I appreciate it soo much.  We have temp issues tonight so elevation will matter.  32.4 here right now (820') and it's raining.  

Really raining my there?  Snowing at 750ft here but really only sticking to cold surfaces.  Roads and parking lots are wet in town.

[dmcginvt]

10 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Really raining my there?  Snowing at 750ft here but really only sticking to cold surfaces.  Roads and parking lots are wet in town.

def raining Im like 5 miles the crow flies from you just let the dog back in he's wet.  its not wet snow it's water of no white shade. temp is dropping though.  Hopefully back to snow we go