Bolton Valley, Vermont - March 18th, 2007

By Saturday evening the upslope portion of our "St. Patrick's Day" storm was really cranking, and the effects were even reaching some of the valleys. When I took my snowboard reading on Sunday morning, we were up to 20.5 inches of accumulation at our place in Waterbury (elevation 495'), and up on the mountain at Bolton Valley they had hit 26 inches. Here are the data and comments from the morning's snowfall/weather check at the house:

Some pictures of the snow accumulation at the house as of Sunday morning can be found at our "St. Patrick's Day Snowstorm" web page. Sunday morning pictures and comments are found in the middle section of the page.

Dave and I talked a bit about heading to Stowe with his cousin, but since Dave wanted to get a relatively early start for his drive home, we decided on the convenience of a morning up at Bolton Valley. Bolton had lagged a bit behind some of the other local ski areas in snow accumulations from the first wave of the storm, but with the upslope portion, they had caught right up. This meant they'd actually picked up a good shot of snow overnight, and compared to Stowe, there was likely to be less competition for fresh tracks.

Dave had brought his snowboard along with his skis, and was certainly psyched for us to ride the boards for at least part of the day. As usual, I was somewhat less enthusiastic about riding the snowboards than he was. I enjoy snowboarding, and it is especially fun in powder, but my snowboard rarely comes out on powder days because of one glaring issue: snowboards absolutely suck for traversing, especially when there is any hint of an uphill or when there is deep powder. I'm sure someone could design a worse piece of equipment for traversing in snow, but I haven't ridden it yet. Basically, I just have to learn to limit my explorations when I'm on my board and that's that. Unfortunately, off-piste exploration is now so engrained in my typical ski days that I really have to change my mindset. Ultimately, since we were bringing both skis and snowboards, we figured we could carry out the more exotic exploration on skis, and then limit our snowboarding to areas that had consistent pitch. Also, I hadn't ridden my board at all during the season, and I certainly wanted to get at least one day on it. So, I brought my snowboard. In the end it turned out to be my saving grace.

Dave and I didn't rush too hard to get out for the very first of tracks, so we got up to the Timberline area a bit after 9:00 A.M. With the slightly later time of arrival, there were more cars in the parking lot than when Ty and I had arrived the previous day, but the crowd was far from large and we were once again able to get a spot in the center portion of the lot below the Timberline base lodge. Dave took advantage of Bolton's morning half day ticket, which was $42. It's a pretty decent deal since it lets you ski until 1:00 P.M., and you can actually start skiing at 8:30 A.M. on weekends. I hadn't even realized that Bolton started the lifts earlier on weekends (8:30 A.M. vs. 9:00 A.M.) until Kevin Broderick informed me the other day. That's great news for those that want to get out on the lifts a little earlier on weekend powder days, although Kevin did say that he wasn't sure what the plans are for lift opening times next season.

We moseyed up to the Timberline lift, and then I plopped down my CMH fat skis in the fluffy snow and clicked in. Or at least that's what should have happened. Somehow, I couldn't click in. My ski boots just didn't fit. Either my bindings had shrunk, or my ski boots had expanded, but I was at least an inch or two away from actually getting my boots into my bindings. For about a split second I wondered what in the world I'd done to my bindings... and then it hit me. I had E's skis. It wasn't the first time I'd made that blunder. E's CMH skis are 15 cm shorter than mine, but the difference isn't so obvious that it jumps out at you when you're quickly grabbing them off the rack in the garage. At the instant of realizing I had the wrong skis, the feeling was a bit akin to that sensation you get in the pit of your stomach when you're driving and you see the blue lights of the police come on behind you. Maybe you know you did something wrong, maybe you didn't do anything wrong, or maybe you're not sure. It's hardly a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but those blue lights always hit me like that. Anyway, that's an approximation of the feeling I've had when I've found myself at the bottom of a lift on a powder day without useable skis. I've only made that mistake one other time that I can remember, back on February 28th during our 2004 Ski trip. I had inadvertently grabbed E's skis on that occasion as well. Fortunately, we were right at the main base area of Lost Trail and I was able to pop into the lodge and get a pair of demo skis. The Bandits (XXs I believe) I demoed took a little getting used to on the groomed slopes because the semi twin-tip design seemed to make their tail short, but they performed pretty well once I got used to them, and I didn't even notice the difference once we got into the powder. We actually got some pretty decent shots from the day, including one of my favorites. I always get a kick out of looking at that picture and remembering that one of my favorite Lost Trail shots was actually on a pair of demo skis. It helps to remind me not to make that mistake again. After that first incident, I even started to place my CMH skis in a specific spot on the rack to ensure that I wouldn't grab E's skis again, but I guess I was getting too complacent and needed a reminder.

Unlike the first incorrect ski incident at Lost Trail, the second incident took place not at the main base area of Bolton Valley, but at the Timberline base. The Timberline base lodge has no equipment rental area that I'm aware of. After I announced my idiocy to Dave, we summed up the options. I could run home and grab my skis, which would probably require 30 minutes between walking back to the car, changing boots, driving etc. I could also head up to the main base and get a pair of demo skis, which would probably take just as long and cost some bucks. Or, we could simply grab the snowboards from the car. That would take just a few minutes and I wouldn't have to significantly delay the start of the powder day. Dave was fine with any option, but the choice was obvious: it was time for the snowboards. Dave was happy to snowboard as well, and so we quickly grabbed our stuff from the car and switched gear. Dave switched over in the lodge to make sure his hands and core started off warm; that would be especially important if he decided to do any photography because the storm was still raging and would be for much of the day. Bolton was on the way to another foot of snow on top of what they'd already received.

Being on the snowboards, I figured we could kick things off with a run down Twice as Nice because of its consistent top to bottom pitch. We unloaded at the Timberline mid station, and enjoyed our usual thrill of surviving the unloading slope with one leg out of our bindings. I was reminded of the days I'd snowboard with Andy at Lost Trail Powder Mountain back in Montana, where we'd keep track of our successful unloads from the lift (those without a tumble). Dave and I also had some fun with our unloading throughout the day. On at least one occasion we had another person with us while we rode the Timberline Quad, and we really had to warn her that she might want to stay clear as we got off because we never knew exactly what was going to happen. She seemed to get a kick out of the whole situation.

We hadn't hit the mountain early enough for first tracks, but there were still plenty of untracked areas on Twice as Nice. The new snow was beautifully light and fluffy, notably drier than what Ty and I had skied the previous day. The snow seemed like it was in the 4-6% H2O range, in the ballpark of what I figured we'd picked up down at the house. Consistent with my rough estimates, the Mt. Mansfield and Smuggler's Notch hydrologic reporting stations came in with snow densities of 6.0 % H2O and 3.8% H2O respectively in their Sunday reports. I believe both those stations take only 24-hour readings, so considering that there may have been some settling, that was pretty light stuff. In contrast, the comparable Saturday readings for the earlier portion of the storm were 9.8% H2O and 8.4% H2O respectively. That's still reasonably dry snow, but it's not quite in the same league as the upslope stuff. Unfortunately, the Jay Peak reporting station didn't provide liquid precipitation estimates for those two days, so I can't determine the snow density at that location. The station did record 26 inches of new snow near the base of Jay Peak however.

Anyway, as the numbers suggest, the riding was fantastic. Being our first day on snowboards for the season, I wouldn't say we were even fully dialed in on that first run, but the riding was generally so effortless that it didn't matter. We poked our way into the glades between Twice as Nice and Showtime for a bit, but I know personally I felt a little more comfortable in the openness of the trail at that point because I was still fine tuning my turns. Dave seemed to be getting in to the groove pretty quickly though. In and out and around the trail we went in the deep fluff, and it was the sort of run that you just wanted to do again and again.

At that point, we didn't dare spend out whole day on one run, so for our second trip we took the Timberline Quad all the way to the top. The world above the mid station was notably different than what we'd experienced below. The wind was howling, and it was affecting the deposition of the snow. There was relatively little wind below the mid station and the snow had fallen gently, with lots of loft. But with the wind up higher on the mountain, the snow was getting pushed around a lot. I'm sure it was collecting somewhere, but we didn't find the same deep fluff on the trails that we'd found below the mid station. I think we took Brandy Wine, but the combination of wind, snow that was slightly less fluffy, and the final traverse back to the lift at the bottom (not much fun on a snowboard) left us longing for Twice as Nice. It had only taken one run, but we knew we'd be more than happy spending the entire morning below the mid station. The snow was fluffier, and although it was dumping, there was little wind. We'd found our pot of white gold and there was no need to go anywhere else.

Although there were other trail options from the mid station, we couldn't pull ourselves away from the consistent pitch and great snow of Twice as Nice, so we spent the rest of our day there and in the Twice as Nice Glades. As the trail got a bit more tracked, we ventured more often into the glades to the skier's left, and learned a lot about the various entrances and how to best work our routes on snowboards to avoid any flat spots. It was a little frustrating at times, being constrained from hitting some relatively close powdery lines because they required some traversing that the snowboards couldn't deal with. Most of that frustration is just due to seeing things from my usual skier's perspective. On our 2nd to last run, we tried to explore an area up and to the skier's left of the glade, and that's when the snowboard syndrome came on in full effect. The pitch got flat, and we were soon floundering in deep powder. Leaving the snowboards on our feet hampered our movement, but taking them off would have been just as bad in such deep snow. I eventually resorted to sort of crawling along the top of the snow and shuffling my feet and board behind me. There were some obvious great lines down to our left, but there was no way to know that we weren't going to get into an even worse predicament, so we reluctantly made our way back toward the main section of the glade. That's certainly an area that we'll have to explore in the future when we're on our skis, as the lines we saw should eventually come down to the traverse that returns from the backcountry glades. We probably wasted about 15 minutes floundering about on our boards before we got back to the formal glades and could get moving, but at least we got to take a pee break.

Of course we swore off any more exploring from then on, and decided to take a nice fall line shot down the center of the glade for our next run. At that point even the glade was starting to get tracked out. The whole area was still fluffy chowder, but you had to work a little harder and head to the edges to find untracked lines. The trail was definitely hitting that next stage beyond the powder morning point where you can just hit it with reckless abandon and know you'll find an untracked line. We had caught our last lift ride right around 1:00 P.M. anyway, so Dave's morning ticket was expiring and things were aligning correctly to call it a day. After skiing at Stowe the previous day, Dave remarked at how comparatively untracked the trails remained at Bolton. I haven't been to a Stowe powder day for a while to compare, but I know they have more skiers and faster lifts. That should add up to tracking things out much more quickly. Dave was also surprised at how long the runs off the Timberline mid station felt despite being less than 1,000 vertical feet at a shot. By the time we were done, the altimeters had recorded 8 runs, with 6,735 feet of descent on Avocet and 6,719 feet on the Suunto. That's a difference of just 0.2%, which ties the record for the smallest difference I've recorded this season between the two instruments. We'd made an entire morning out of one trail and its associated glades, and I'm not sure if I would have done anything differently based on the conditions. I heard that the top of the Wilderness Chair was quite windy and the snow was blown off, although I'm sure the snow was less abused down low - and I'm quite sure that the powder in the Cotton Brook area on the leeward side of the mountain would have been out of this world.

We headed home, and at 2:00 P.M. I took another reading from the snowboard in the yard. We'd picked up another 2.1 inches during the day, pushing us past 130 inches of accumulation for the season and bringing the snowpack in the yard back up to tie the season's high point at 37 inches. Here are the data and comments from the 2:00 P.M. reading:

The storm wound down that evening, and Bolton Valley ended up with 39 inches of new snow out of the event, while Jay Peak pulled in 42 inches. Bolton had certainly been treated nicely by the upslope snowfall. I took one more reading off the snowboard that evening as the storm wound down, and we ended up with a total of 23.2 inches of new snow at the house. At some point, I had to find time to catch up on work and other stuff because there was the potential for another system to come through starting later on Monday. Here are the data and comments from the final 8:00 P.M. reading from the storm, with some snowfall totals for the local ski areas:

J.Spin