Bolton Valley, VT 2/27/2010

J.Spin

New member
Saturday was our first chance to see how Bolton had fared from the big midweek storm. Numbers wise, they’d picked up almost four feet of snow from the initial round of precipitation, but as we’d seen at Stowe the preceding Thursday, the snow was fairly dense and more difficult to ski in the lower elevations. The mountain had reported another 5 inches overnight to top of the previous snow, so that was quite encouraging in terms of setting up some fresh powder skiing.

We parked at Timberline (~1,500’), but immediately worked our way up toward the Vista Summit (~3,150’) to see how the snow was skiing in the highest elevations. Up at the Timberline Summit (~2,500’) the snow was skiing well and the new powder was fairly dry, but it quickly began to get thicker as we descended to the village area (~2,150’). Once we reached the Vista Summit, we certainly found the best conditions of the morning – even the headwall of Cobrass was skiing pretty well. There were some clouds around, but we’d broken out into the sun at the top of Vista and it was quite a sight. The cumulus clouds off in the distance looked much more like something one would see in summer vs. winter, and presumably spoke to the interesting weather pattern that had recently brought about the big snows. We made a long descent back to the Timberline Base to have an early lunch, and skied some of the Villager Trees along the way. We hiked for some extra turns in there with the boys, and the powder was OK at first, but after a few hundred vertical we were getting down into the elevations where the new powder wasn’t as dry, and the subsurface became harder since it was derived from wetter snow.

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We had a good lunch down at Timberline, which was rather deserted at first due to the early hour, then we headed back up toward the main mountain. Based on what we’d found in our travels up to that point, there was no need to ski anything at Timberline since the snow on the upper mountain was so clearly superior. We got a call from Stephen that he was cycling the Vista Glades, and with the huge amounts of snow and colder temperatures up there, that seemed like a perfect choice. The Vista Glades were in excellent shape, with all the ledgy areas well covered thanks to the copious dense snow. E and the boys weren’t all that familiar with the Vista Glades since we don’t often ski them, but once they were in there and saw how much fun the skiing was, they agreed that it had been a great choice.

With upper elevation terrain in mind, we headed over to the Wilderness area next so we could check out Bolton Outlaw. As a testament to just how much snow, or likely how much dense snow and liquid equivalent had fallen, the top pitch of the Wilderness Lift Line actually had pretty decent coverage. That’s saying a lot. I’m not sure if it was actually open at that point, but it had been well traveled by plenty of skiers. Bolton Outlaw was excellent, and there wasn’t even a need to venture off into the powder on the sides because the trail itself was just so soft. We were definitely up in the elevations where the drier snow had fallen and the temperatures had never gone above freezing. Below Bolton Outlaw, we skied the steep pitch of Cougar, which provided one of the best scenes from the day. Ty was skiing very fast due to the extra reliability of the snow surface, and he dropped into Cougar and skied the bumps at full tilt, followed by a huge hand in the air at the bottom. E said he’d clearly been watching plenty of Olympic ski action.

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Below the level of the Wilderness mid station, we played around in the various glades and found good powder down to a point. It was a gradual change in snow quality with elevation of course, but once we got down to around the 2,300’ elevation, the untracked snow had reached a stage of density/wetness that it was getting tough to ski. Fortunately, in the Wilderness area we were just about down to the base elevations and back on piste by that point, so it worked out pretty well. The snow quality and skier traffic were so good over at Wilderness that I would have been happy to simply stay there for the rest of the afternoon. However, Ty eventually started to get tired (probably because he had been skiing pretty hard) and wanted to head home.

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In terms of the overall weather for the day, it was quite an eclectic mix: one minute we’d have bright sunshine, and then ten minutes later it would be snowing at a decent clip. As the afternoon wore on, the snowfall won out, and in the middle afternoon it was snowing at about an inch per hour for a while; I’d say it put down a quick half inch or so. The temperatures were excellent, being a few degrees above freezing down at the Timberline base elevations, and several degrees below freezing up at the summit areas. Even though I didn’t have a chance to get many pictures from that part of the day, the time spent over at Wilderness on Saturday was so good that it will probably end up being one of the highlights of the season.

J.Spin
 
Ty was skiing very fast due to the extra reliability of the snow surface, and he dropped into Cougar and skied the bumps at full tilt
You'll have to get a video of that some time. Late in his 7 year old season the tight bumps in Telluride's East Drain were the first time I couldn't keep up with Adam.
 
Tony Crocker":2wb8no9o said:
Ty was skiing very fast due to the extra reliability of the snow surface, and he dropped into Cougar and skied the bumps at full tilt
You'll have to get a video of that some time. Late in his 7 year old season the tight bumps in Telluride's East Drain were the first time I couldn't keep up with Adam.
E and I both commented on how we wished we'd had a video of that one. As the boys get older and potentially get more into the recording processes, it will be fun to start doing more video again. The only problem is that recording much video in with the photography throws on yet another layer to the process, and it really works best if everyone is into both the skiing and running the equipment. Like we found with our 2003 trip to Lost Trail, Big Mountain, and Fernie, multiple still and video cameras can result in some great shots and enough footage to assemble multiple videos. But, the whole group has to be into it because things can go VERY slowly for someone that just wants to ski. Ty has just started doing some of his own photos over the past couple of seasons with E’s camera, so he has some interest, but we'll have to see where it leads. He has asked a couple times to wear the helmet cam, so one of these days I'll have to pull everything together and fire it up for him.

-J
 
Wow... great shots, looks like tons of fun... would you like to adopt me so I can follow your family around the mountain? :)

We hit Bolton for the first time this year - we're usually at MRG, SB or Jay - and really enjoyed it! We'll be back for more exploring for sure.
 
My God, maggie...7 posts in 5.5 years? That's got to be some kind of record! Hope you'll share your thoughts with us more often.
 
J.Spin":4xxcit3y said:
E and I both commented on how we wished we'd had a video of that one. As the boys get older and potentially get more into the recording processes, it will be fun to start doing more video again. The only problem is that recording much video in with the photography throws on yet another layer to the process, and it really works best if everyone is into both the skiing and running the equipment.

I know the process having gone it today. I generally record only one or two runs per season for each kid. Generally opting to ski at different places or runs from the previous year. So this afternoon, I grabbed the videocamera in the car and processed up the single. I filmed Tara down Antelope-Upper Canyon-Bunny-lower Beaver-Rockerfeller. Most of it was bumped up, so a real challenge following her. I filmed a few runs during Morgane's races this season, however she wanted me to film her also. Started off at Chute-Fall Line-Creamery then all the way toward Sunnyside for a combination of bumps and corn.

J.Spin":4xxcit3y said:
But, the whole group has to be into it because things can go VERY slowly for someone that just wants to ski.

I hear you, I didn't get the camera out yesterday and carried it all day today (with or without the videocam).. People are sometimes annoyed by my lack of pictures, but sometimes I don't really want to bother if I've been to the same place a number of times. On the big powder day, I generally don't even take pictures. Lucky (not Luke) someone else had a camera at Le Massif (yet to be posted pics), because I couldn't be bother myself. Pictures taking and videos are very time demanding, and you need to be patient especially for action shots.


maggie":4xxcit3y said:
Wow... great shots, looks like tons of fun... would you like to adopt me so I can follow your family around the mountain? :)

We hit Bolton for the first time this year - we're usually at MRG, SB or Jay - and really enjoyed it! We'll be back for more exploring for sure.

We were looking into heading to Bolton tomorrow, but girls want to go back at MRG. It doesn't matter to us, the girls have passes at MRG.
 
Good choice on MRG and Bolton. MRG also had the St. Patrick's day special :mrgreen: (if you wear the green ) on the lift tickets. You could ski at MRG for the price of 2 pints of Guinness in a bar.
 
maggie":1juuu2dq said:
Wow... great shots, looks like tons of fun... would you like to adopt me so I can follow your family around the mountain? :)

We hit Bolton for the first time this year - we're usually at MRG, SB or Jay - and really enjoyed it!
I can certainly relate to that, as we used to ski most of the other local mountains like MRG, SB, Jay, Stowe, and Smugg’s more frequently than Bolton. For the Burlington area, Bolton Valley is the closest lift-served skiing at about 30 minutes away, and we would occasionally visit for a day here and there or do some night skiing. But, for an extra 15 minutes or so we could be at some of the bigger places, so we’d often just default to those. Also, I had passes to Stowe and Sugarbush for many years, so I frequented those areas. Now we’re only a few minutes away from the Bolton Valley access road, so even though we’re closer to all those ski areas compared to when we lived in Burlington, the travel time disparity between Bolton and all the other areas is bigger; it takes us about three times longer get to places like Stowe, MRG, and SB than it does to Bolton. With the boys being young, proximity was at least part of why we focused on Bolton, but that’s not as much of an issue now that the boys are older and can do longer days, and there’s a lot more that keeps us coming back. This has been our fourth season at Bolton since returning from Montana, and we’re definitely hooked on the mountain; I bought our 2010-2011 season passes a couple months back. The resort actually threw several extra perks into their passes for next season. The price went down a bit, and now they call them “All Access Season Passes” that automatically include access to the backcountry/Nordic network and the fitness center/pool/hot tub etc. In the past those have been add-ons with additional cost. Those are two very good perks for us because the plan is for Dylan to inherit Ty’s current Telemark gear next season, so everyone will be able to skin for turns on the backcountry network, and Dylan has also been gaining a level of stamina that will make it more practical. In addition, E has been tempted to do the pool add on for her and the boys for the past couple of seasons because they like to swim, and now they won’t have to worry about that. Even without any sort of additional perks though, we would have been back at Bolton next season anyway. Things like the MRG-style lack of high-speed lifts, low skier traffic, great snowfall, plentiful in-bounds glades and tree skiing, easy access/integrated backcountry network, and the opportunities for exploration make it a really good fit for us. With all those options Bolton has been more than enough variety for us, but we also get a lot of days at Stowe through the ski program at the boy’s school, so that mixes it up a lot to feed any need for more diversity.

maggie":1juuu2dq said:
We'll be back for more exploring for sure.
The potential for exploration has been one of the things that’s amazed me about the resort. I’ve been exploring the in-bounds off piste and out of bounds areas now for four seasons with ~40 Bolton outings each, and it still feels like I’ve just scratched the surface. I have such a huge growing list of terrain to check out, that it was only this season when I was finally able to get around to visiting the Bryant Cabin area in Bolton’s backcountry network, and it’s one of the more popular sections of Bolton’s backcountry terrain.

After our first full season at Bolton, I wrote up some descriptions/impressions here at First Tracks, and it was interesting to look back and see if those thoughts had changed. I think my impressions are still fairly similar, but below I’ve expanded/updated a few of the observations that were a bit different than my initial impressions. Looking at the list below, my observations are mostly about the on-snow experience from a local’s perspective, but these aspects could still be important to the day trip or week-long resort visitor in some cases.

Snowfall: Bolton Valley’s annual snowfall is probably a bit higher than I had initially thought. For our first season at Bolton, I think their total snowfall came in right around the ~300” average that they had in their literature at the time. Now that they are providing a more refined annual snowfall average, they are indicating 312 inches/season. At equivalent elevations, I think their snowfall isn’t all the far off from what Stowe reports several miles to the north (333”/season). There are a couple of things that give me that impression: the top of Bolton’s upper lifts are only at 3,150’, vs. the 3,600’ – 3,700’ range for Stowe/Mansfield Stake, and Bolton typically closes a couple of weeks earlier than Stowe and doesn’t appear to incorporate that post-season snowfall into their numbers. As the only area on the western side of the Green Mountain Spine around here, Bolton can sometimes be the jackpot in certain storms vs. the other northern areas. Even with the slightly lower summit elevations compared to Stowe, Smugg’s and Jay Peak, Bolton will sometimes wind up at the top of the accumulations list for certain storms. This season, that period around New Year’s when Burlington received their record snowfall was one that really stood out. That event was rather unique, but Bolton Valley picked up a couple of feet of snow at one point during the event, which was ~2-3X what the other northern areas had reported for that timeframe. Last year’s school break week was another period where they wound up with the highest snowfall totals in the area, picking up 6 feet in 6 days. It looks like we were up at the mountain for the first Saturday and the Tuesday of that week, and Bolton definitely delivered. As I recall, Bolton’s totals for that stretch were actually not that far ahead of the other local resorts, but considering Bolton’s lower summit elevations, they did quite well. I’ve also see that being on the western side of the Greens can have its disadvantages though, and I discuss a couple of those at the bottom of the post.

The backcountry: I knew there was a lot of backcountry terrain out there surrounding Bolton, and that there were lots of “unofficial” glade areas, but I think the bigger revelations over the past season or two have been how many officially maintained glades there are in association with the backcountry trail network. I was able to check out several of these glades this season, but there are many more, including some brand new ones like Holden’s Hollow and Alchemist that I just heard about this season in one of the Bolton Valley Nordic Newsletters. Those areas are certainly on my list for next season.

In-bounds glades: While I’ve been slowly learning about more and more of the glades on the mountain over the past several seasons, enhancements and entirely new glades are popping up all over the place. After patroller Quinn alerted me to the Bolton Valley Glade Enhancement Project, I realized why so many new places seemed to be opening up, and why some off piste areas that I’d visited in the past had been improved and expanded. I really like what Bolton is doing in terms of not thinning most of these areas to the level of Jay Peak-style glades, where you can end up with enough traffic to actually get bump lines in the trees. Also, while these areas do have names, some of them are just indicated by tree icons on the trail map (pasted below). I think this is a great strategy for letting people explore the areas on their own, as the icon indicates “Hey, there’s some nice tree skiing in here, go ahead and explore this area”. They do have some of the more “formal” glades, like Vista Glades, the main line in the Enchanted Forest area, and the Glades trail, which is nice for folks that aren’t quite ready for the tighter glades or that next level of off piste exploration. Some of the other glades, like those around Twice as Nice are maintained with somewhat open tree spacing, but potentially due to lower capacity lifts and less overall skier volume none of it ever seems to bump up like I’ve sometimes experienced at Jay Peak.

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On piste snow quality: Relatively speaking, I’ve found the quality of snow on Bolton’s trails to be pretty nice compared to some of the more popular resorts in the area, again presumably due to lots of snowfall and lower skier throughput thanks to the standard speed lifts. With the dearth of snowfall this past season, and the fact that we skied at both Bolton and Stowe many weekends, the disparity was more noticeable than some other seasons. In the past I’ve spent most of my time at Stowe off piste whenever possible, but being more constrained to marked runs this season when working with some of the kids in our Sunday group has forced me to spend more time on the trails. Let’s just say that I didn’t find the high-traffic areas at Stowe to be all that pretty during much of this mid season. I wouldn’t say on piste conditions were night and day in our back to back outings at Stowe and Bolton this season, but the superiority of Bolton’s surface conditions were very obvious to me, my wife, and others. Another parent in our Sunday program who has been skiing Bolton fairly frequently this season, offered up the same unsolicited opinion about the on piste conditions a few weeks back, so that sort of confirmed my impressions. As a less advanced, generally on piste skier, his perspective is different from mine, so I found that interesting. He told me that he’s actually thinking of working up at Bolton next season because he’d like to spend more time there.

There have also been a few downsides about Bolton that I’ve picked up on more since our initial season:

In terms of infrastructure, I’d like to see Bolton Valley focus on the main base lodge. The lodge has lots of character, and it’s great the way it’s integrated into the hotel/village complex, but it’s definitely in need of a thorough remodeling all around, and some expansion too. E and I have talked about it, and my colleague Stephen and his wife have commented on it as well. The main base lodge at Lost Trail Powder Mountain, our local ski area in Montana, was in a very similar state, sort of dated and appearing unkempt in certain areas. I’m sure it’s just tough for these smaller family-style ski areas to put the money into remodeling when resources are limited and there are other needs. Bolton’s main base lodge also suffers from space issues. As is common in many ski area base lodges, it seems like they try to stuff too many chairs into the space to accommodate enough guests, and things just end up too cramped to even move around. Since we ski at both Bolton Valley and Stowe many weekends, the disparity between Bolton’s main lodge and the new Spruce Camp Base Lodge at Stowe is quite dramatic. Although I’d never expect Bolton to go to the level of Stowe’s new opulent lodge, I think something like Bolton’s Timberline Lodge would be great. It’s not perfect, but it’s much newer than the main lodge, and the amount of chairs and table’s they have there isn’t overdone. Even when all the tables are full, you can get around and get to the food, your bags, etc. I know that our family, as well as Stephen’s family, opts for Timberline as a daily base of operations whenever possible because the lodge environment has more of the qualities we’re looking for.

Down at Timberline, I think a nice improvement would be to pave the main drop off circle. Most of the winter it’s not an issue, but after a few seasons I’ve noticed that it tends to get quite muddy during the spring and some large ruts can develop. They recently paved one of the parking lots down at Timberline, and although I think they did that in association with other functions besides skiing, perhaps they could extend it to the circle where all the mud develops.

As I mentioned above, Bolton’s western exposure has some occasional advantages in terms of snowfall, but it has some drawbacks as well. The higher elevations are often exposed to the northwesterly winds associated with storms, and certain slopes (those that are open and with the correct orientation) can really get blasted and have a hard time building base. The western exposure can provide great sun for afternoon skiing, but this is also a hotter part of the day, so the sun on the slopes has a tendency to melt it out faster than say east-facing slopes like those on Mt. Mansfield. With its position up above the Champlain Valley, Bolton also seems to be more susceptible to warm air intrusions from the west, while the resorts on the east side of the spine are a little more protected.

That’s what I can recall for now. Unfortunately, I still don’t interact too much with customer service for things like lodging or transportation, but we sometimes eat at the restaurants and buy food from the village store/deli and have been happy with the experiences. The deli is open daily now that we are far enough into summer, and we really appreciate having that lunch option right at the slopes after hiking etc. The atmosphere up there is even more relaxed during the off season, so it’s a great place to relax and hang out.

J.Spin
 
J Spin,

How are those little buggers progressing in 2011, It has to be a ton it looks like you have them on the right path man! Shredding Shredding Shredding! That's what I love to see. These pics remind me of Jackson Hole this year pre-christmas when I was there visiting my aging parents. So ill! Best of luck turning those little beasts of nano silver in to men on the mountain, I wouldn't want to try and hang with them a few years down the road. Props man! \:D/
 
ShredTheGnar":24exvi7p said:
J Spin,

How are those little buggers progressing in 2011, It has to be a ton it looks like you have them on the right path man! Shredding Shredding Shredding! That's what I love to see. These pics remind me of Jackson Hole this year pre-christmas when I was there visiting my aging parents. So ill! Best of luck turning those little beasts of nano silver in to men on the mountain, I wouldn't want to try and hang with them a few years down the road. Props man! \:D/
The boys are both moving along well this season; Ty is working on different techniques with his powder skiing, such as keeping his skis together to make a unified platform depending on the conditions. When he was younger it was definitely harder for him to balance as well with the skis close together. I think he's enjoying the powder more than ever this season as ha plays with various techniques. With Dylan we're trying to get his pole positioning, timing, and upper/lower body separation down. For him it's been tough because when we're out in the powder, trees, steeps, bumps etc. there are enough other challenges to work on that he can't focus on pole technique. He'll hopefully get a chance to work on that this weekend at Stowe, because it sounds like we'll have some new snow but not a major dump.
 
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