Bolton Valley, Vermont - April 5th, 2007

After a couple weeks of spring skiing to finish off the month of March, it looked as though April was going to usher in a rather substantial return to winter for Northern New England. The storm thoughts and rumors were flying around the weather communities as we entered the month, and by Tuesday, April 3rd, the arrival of the winter weather was imminent. The only thing left to do was sort out the details, as I outlined in a Tuesday morning message to SkiVT-L:

The snow started flying in the valleys the following day, and when I got home that evening, I took my first evening weather observations for the event:

The next morning, there were 4.3 inches of new snow on the snowboard at the house, and Bolton Valley had already received 6-8 new inches as of their early morning report. I recorded my observations before heading up to the mountain for some turns:

Some pictures from the morning's weather observations can be found below:

As I drove a few miles west to the Bolton Valley access road, the new snow accumulation dropped noticeably. The area around the base of the access road (elevation 340') had only about 2-3 inches of new snow, but this amount increased to about 6 inches in the Bolton Village parking lot (elevation ~2,150'). I had arrived in the village at around 8:30 A.M., to a temperature of 28 degrees F and heavy snowfall. I'm not sure if operations at the resort were moving slowly due to fewer staff as they approached the end of the season, but the main parking lot hadn't even been plowed by that point. I was thankful I had the Subaru. I think I made my life a little easier by testing a new parking strategy that I'd been thinking about for snowier days. Instead of taking the far entrance and parking at the north end of the main lot as I often do, I took the south entrance and parked more toward that end. There are several benefits to this approach, especially when the parking lot hasn't been plowed yet. The entrance is flat, that section of the lot has fewer ruts and potholes to deal with, and you don't have to try to park slowly and carefully around the other vehicles. It makes life a lot easier than navigating the steep hill at the other end of the lot and then getting bogged down in deep snow as you gingerly try to squeeze into a parking spot. You're a smidge further from the base lodge when you park at the south end, and you may have to trudge up a snowbank instead of walking the plowed road, but I think it's worth it. I wasn't exactly sure how long I was going to be skiing that morning, but I would eventually need to get my car out of there and get to work. I didn't want to have to deal with potentially being stuck, having to put the tire chains on, etc. I saw a huge SUV struggling to park in the snow down among the other cars at the north end of the lot, and figured I'd made the right choice. For others that like to do the early morning Bolton thing on powder days, keep the south part of the parking lot in mind if you don't park on the access road itself or up in the more exclusive spots.

Since I still had time before the lifts opened, I kicked the morning off with a quick skin-served run. I followed three other skiers that were skinning up Sprig O' Pine, until our paths diverged and they headed toward the top of the Mid Mountain Lift. I decided to take a different route for a change and make some turns on Cobrass Run. There were just a few inches of new snow on top of the groomed surface of Sprig O' Pine, but the snow got a lot deeper once I hit the ungroomed Cobrass Run. I'd estimate that the new accumulation there was around 8 inches. Being a bit further away from the lifts, I skinned up in the quiet solitude of Cobrass Run, sticking tight to the skier's right of the trail to disturb the untracked snow as little as possible. By the time I hit the junction with Five Corners, it was just about 9:00 A.M. and it was time to get skiing. I de-skinned, stowed my gear in my pack, and took in my surroundings for few more moments before I dropped in for some well-earned powder turns. Despite the hardened spring snow that sat below the powder, I never heard a peep out of my skis. I think I might have touched down on the base if the snow had been dryer, but it the snow density had only dropped to probably the 8-10% H2O range from what I could tell, and it seemed like there was even denser snow lower down from earlier in the storm. It was a good compromise density of snow, light enough for easy turning, but dense enough to keep me off the base snow (at least on my fat skis). I left my powder signature on the skier's left of the trail, and rejoined Sprig O' Pine for the trip down to the base. Even the skiing on the few inches of snow above the groomed surface was excellent. I had already made up my mind that I was going to do a lift-serviced run or two, but at that point I was getting even more psyched for the experience. I wasn't quite ready to leave the mountain.

Down at the base area, they were already loading the lifts, and I decided to hop on the Vista Quad for a nice long run from the top. As I rode the lift, the scene all around me was total return to winter... except for one interesting difference. At first I didn't quite know what it was, and then I realized it was the birds. Songbirds were all around chirping out their tunes. I'd actually heard numerous birds when I'd been shoveling the driveway down in the valley, but I hadn't heard them up in the higher elevations for quite a while. That gave the powder day a rather unique feel. Other than that, it might as well have been January or February up there.

In the higher elevations up near 3,000' the new snow was substantially deeper than the 6 inches I'd observed in the village area. Initial casual observations suggested it was close to a foot. I decided to check out Spillway for my first run, since I'd really ignored it most of the season. With its combination of pitch and exposure to the wind, I actually touched down to the base on occasion, but it was really fun to cut some powder turns on the steep slope. There were some death cookies around under the snow along the edge though, so when I got the chance, I cut over to Show Off. Now that was even sweeter. The snow had settled in a little deeper and I could ski without concern for hitting the base layer. Big Rock and Little Rock were sitting there just like I remembered from before the Vista Quad days. After I schussed to the bottom of Show Off, I knew I wasn't quite ready to leave the mountain. Down at Mid Mountain, I took a look at Glades, but since there was a thin cover sign at the entrance, I quickly opted for Beech Seal. I think I was the first one down Beech Seal for the day, and I set some huge powder carves down its face. That was cool. I definitely wasn't ready to leave the mountain.

For my next run, I tried out Hard Luck. I found excellent powder, which had settled in relatively light and deep like it had on Show Off. Hard Luck seemed to be a good representative example of the snow that hadn't been pushed around by the wind, so I did a couple of checks with my measurement ski pole in undisturbed snow. I got a reading of 11" on the first check, and 10" on the second check. Although it was snowing fairly heavily, there wasn't much wind, even at the higher elevations. The new snowfall had been pushed around a bit at some point however, so there may have been stronger winds earlier in the storm. At that point, I was also starting to get a sense of how many people were out on the hill... and it wasn't very many. I had a more difficult time than usual getting a feel for who was out there, because I hadn't actually seen anybody on the trails by that point. In fact, I'd hardly seen anyone at all. I had to go mostly on the couple of folks I had seen loading on the Vista Quad, and the few shouts and yelps I heard on surrounding trails. It was another one of those days where you felt like you were at a private resort with a select group of others that happened to get stranded there with you. I was certainly not ready to leave the mountain. I did hear a couple of guys over on Spillway shouting and celebrating in disbelief of what they were skiing. I get the impression that each ski season, people are surprised by powder in April, when it really seems to be the norm to have at least SOME powder days during the month. It's certainly not the month to put away the powder skis. Once I'd descended to Mid Mountain again, I glanced toward the Glades... and the thin cover sign was gone. That was certainly enough incentive for me, and down I went. Coverage wasn't a problem, and I floated through more untracked fluff among Glades' many contours. I wasn't quite ready to leave the mountain.

After another trip on the Vista Quad, I strung together a Hard Luck/Show Off combo, which allowed me to hit some of the terrain options I'd enjoyed the most with a little tree-skiing in between. Although I still hadn't encountered anyone on the trails, there were a few more tracks on Hard Luck by that point, so somebody was certainly skiing it. Show Off was more pristine, with my track and maybe a couple of others. I opted for Glades again on the lower mountain, and took the lesser-used jug handle route to the skier's left for some variety. After my fourth run, I could sense that one of those powder day thresholds had been passed. The trails I'd been skiing didn't have too many tracks on them yet, but if I wanted to hit totally untracked trails or simply get some more variety, I was going to have to widen my route selection. There's no doubt that I would have stayed for some more runs if I hadn't had other things to do, but with work on my mind, I decided to call it a morning and ski out to the car. For the sum of my four runs, the Avocet recorded 3,500 feet of vertical descent, and the Suunto recorded 3,451 feet, for a difference of 1.4%.

At times, it had been snowing at roughly an inch per hour while I was up on the mountain, and it was still dumping at mid morning when I headed back down the access road. At Bolton's next snowfall check, they reported that they had reached a foot of new snow accumulation from the event, which seemed about right based on what I had found on the slopes. Despite the continued snowfall, there were still only a couple of inches of new accumulation down at the bottom of the access road, and that's the depth I saw all the way west to Burlington. As of the morning hydrological reports, the highest Vermont total outside the ski areas was 12.8 inches reported from Sutton in the Northeast Kingdom. That was consistent with the heaviest snowfall being off to the east. From what I found on the web at that point, the highest running snow total for Vermont ski resorts was 15 inches reported at Jay Peak.

Temperatures were pretty marginal for snow in the valleys during the day, and when I returned home to Waterbury that evening, there was only a little additional snow accumulation on the snowboard.

The storm (which was sort of the "Easter Storm" in our series of holiday snowstorms) continued on for several more days. Even with our marginal temperatures in the valley, we managed to pick up 13.1 inches of new snow from the event. It turned out to be our third largest snowfall of the season in Waterbury, just edging out the 12.8-inch event from January 19th and 20th, which fell to fourth place. The ski areas ended up getting about four feet of snow out of the "Easter Storm", and there were still a couple more April storms to come. I'll detail those events in upcoming trip reports.

J.Spin