jamesdeluxe
Administrator
I started my three-day visit to northern Vermont with an uninspiring outing at Bolton Valley on Friday: hard and fast with stiff snow in the trees following a midweek thaw/freeze, the northeast's first since... December? Conditions at Stowe on Saturday were considerably better with mostly soft groomers and low-angle trees. Anything steeper than that was scratchy.
With lots of traffic heading up the access road, I figured that I'd be looking at a long walk to the lifts; luckily, the huge lot on the Mansfield side is right alongside the gondola and Forerunner quad. Very convenient.
I started by taking the Over Easy gondola to always line-free Spruce:
The last time I skied Spruce was 2004, which I'm pretty sure was the final year of the double chair -- the first of its kind in the U.S. when opened in 1954 -- so the whole development over there, village and lifts, were new to me. What a difference taking the Sensation quad (barely five minutes) instead of 15+ on the old double. which I kinda liked, but hey, that's progress. Sterling and Smugglers had softened nicely in the moderate temps and you could really attack them. I had forgotten how fun these long, twisty classic New England trails were.
Tough to miss the NJ racers from our local molehill Campgaw:
Before heading back to Mansfield, I took a quick walk around the new village, which is still under construction. It looks very popular and honestly, given Stowe's clientele, it's surprising that they went until the mid-00s before building a Deer Valley-esque development like this. They're still building it out; not sure when the estimated completion date for the whole thing is.
Spruce Village's Target Audience:
Like pretty much everywhere in the east, locals were raving about Stowe's conditions all the way up through this week's market corrections. Starr and the other Front Four were open, but given the condition of the steep off-piste, you'd probably need John Egan-level ice skills to make it through.
Even with sub-optimum conditions, Stowe is a lot of fun and obviously deserves its traditional standing in the northeast Top 5. It skis bigger than the 2,100 lift-served verts and the trails still have plenty of New England personality.
With lots of traffic heading up the access road, I figured that I'd be looking at a long walk to the lifts; luckily, the huge lot on the Mansfield side is right alongside the gondola and Forerunner quad. Very convenient.
I started by taking the Over Easy gondola to always line-free Spruce:
The last time I skied Spruce was 2004, which I'm pretty sure was the final year of the double chair -- the first of its kind in the U.S. when opened in 1954 -- so the whole development over there, village and lifts, were new to me. What a difference taking the Sensation quad (barely five minutes) instead of 15+ on the old double. which I kinda liked, but hey, that's progress. Sterling and Smugglers had softened nicely in the moderate temps and you could really attack them. I had forgotten how fun these long, twisty classic New England trails were.
Tough to miss the NJ racers from our local molehill Campgaw:
Before heading back to Mansfield, I took a quick walk around the new village, which is still under construction. It looks very popular and honestly, given Stowe's clientele, it's surprising that they went until the mid-00s before building a Deer Valley-esque development like this. They're still building it out; not sure when the estimated completion date for the whole thing is.
Spruce Village's Target Audience:
Like pretty much everywhere in the east, locals were raving about Stowe's conditions all the way up through this week's market corrections. Starr and the other Front Four were open, but given the condition of the steep off-piste, you'd probably need John Egan-level ice skills to make it through.
Even with sub-optimum conditions, Stowe is a lot of fun and obviously deserves its traditional standing in the northeast Top 5. It skis bigger than the 2,100 lift-served verts and the trails still have plenty of New England personality.