powderfreak
New member
I'm going to go back through and insert the image tags but for now I'll leave it at this....
So many things were hit today. Runs were taking 45 minutes each due to
exploration and that's how I like it. Where were all the people? Its a
Sunday in January and there was no one there. And the snow...oh the
snow. There's a lot of it, maybe a foot of powder on top of a supportable
crust. Snowpack ranged between 3 and 5 feet in the woods. I can't
remember it being that deep at any point during last season.
Snowmaking shack in GoatDive area:
Creek somewhere...with this much snow there are so many possibilities:
Out towards the bench:
There's a large rock you pass out towards the bench and I always use it to
judge snowdepth...we're at 3 feet or so:
The outter planets were tasty...
Pipeline Chute
We rode up the quad...thought Pipeline Chute might be real nice. Didn't
see any other tracks heading over there and man did we hit the jackpot.
Welcome to Pipeline...this thing is like an elevator shaft:
Dave up top...
Dave doing his best in the tight chute (movie): http://tinyurl.com/d52kb
Occasional mandatory icefall drops and little room for error made this a
pretty fun run...
Then it opens up into powder filled, untracked steep shots. Here's a clip
of me in one of these spaces: http://tinyurl.com/77vbr
Pictures do not do this run justice...it is steep enough that we were
setting off some fairly substantial sloughs and same goes for Hazelton
Chutes.
Hazelton Chutes
These were a first for me. I had heard of them and we found the knife
edge ridgeline (really only 10 feet wide, max, with several short but very
steep chutes dropping off them)...
Chute 1:
Chute 2:
Dave skiing it: http://tinyurl.com/drssj
Bypass Chutes
We were the first skiers of the season to head in there that we could
see. No traverse out to the real chutes was laid down so we packed it
down in up to 5 feet of snow. Take your skis off and you'll drown. What
I found interesting about this area, and the rest of the mountain, is that
there is a substantial snowpack but it is very layered. We were setting
off some large sloughs and if you bounced/ski cut the steeper chutes you
could actually get them to slide.
In the Bypass Chutes area the snow was deep:
Yours truely dropping in for first tracks (movie): http://tinyurl.com/cv7v2
At the bottom of that chute, there's a cliff that Dave decided to drop and
leads to a very open powder field:
Video clip of Dave dropping and watching his ski shoot 30 feet downhill:
http://tinyurl.com/9tvyd
And a clip of Dave powder surfing the lower portion:
http://tinyurl.com/cppd8
It was so much fun we went back up to do it again and although its a
little blurry, here's Dave in our western-like Mount Mansfield powder
choked chute:
Further down after cruising the Nosedive Glades, we got into the GoatDive
woods and with plenty of pillow and cliff lines, Dave started dropping
things. I gotta figure out how to make the movement shots crisp as the
camera likes to blur them...but you get the idea:
All in all, quite an amazing day. The snowpack is one of the best I've
seen in my three winters up here. Its layered with a solid base/crust
layer with a foot thick powder layer on top. Very, very nice. I'm also
very surprised the locals haven't been out there hammering that stuff.
Absolutely amazing to just go out, wander around in deep powder, and not
see any other traces of tracks. Where is everyone?
It another 4-6" of snow falls without an mixed precip, I'd think about
taking a vacation day before any warm up or niar next weekend. Its good
out there, real good.
-Scott
So many things were hit today. Runs were taking 45 minutes each due to
exploration and that's how I like it. Where were all the people? Its a
Sunday in January and there was no one there. And the snow...oh the
snow. There's a lot of it, maybe a foot of powder on top of a supportable
crust. Snowpack ranged between 3 and 5 feet in the woods. I can't
remember it being that deep at any point during last season.
Snowmaking shack in GoatDive area:
Creek somewhere...with this much snow there are so many possibilities:
Out towards the bench:
There's a large rock you pass out towards the bench and I always use it to
judge snowdepth...we're at 3 feet or so:
The outter planets were tasty...
Pipeline Chute
We rode up the quad...thought Pipeline Chute might be real nice. Didn't
see any other tracks heading over there and man did we hit the jackpot.
Welcome to Pipeline...this thing is like an elevator shaft:
Dave up top...
Dave doing his best in the tight chute (movie): http://tinyurl.com/d52kb
Occasional mandatory icefall drops and little room for error made this a
pretty fun run...
Then it opens up into powder filled, untracked steep shots. Here's a clip
of me in one of these spaces: http://tinyurl.com/77vbr
Pictures do not do this run justice...it is steep enough that we were
setting off some fairly substantial sloughs and same goes for Hazelton
Chutes.
Hazelton Chutes
These were a first for me. I had heard of them and we found the knife
edge ridgeline (really only 10 feet wide, max, with several short but very
steep chutes dropping off them)...
Chute 1:
Chute 2:
Dave skiing it: http://tinyurl.com/drssj
Bypass Chutes
We were the first skiers of the season to head in there that we could
see. No traverse out to the real chutes was laid down so we packed it
down in up to 5 feet of snow. Take your skis off and you'll drown. What
I found interesting about this area, and the rest of the mountain, is that
there is a substantial snowpack but it is very layered. We were setting
off some large sloughs and if you bounced/ski cut the steeper chutes you
could actually get them to slide.
In the Bypass Chutes area the snow was deep:
Yours truely dropping in for first tracks (movie): http://tinyurl.com/cv7v2
At the bottom of that chute, there's a cliff that Dave decided to drop and
leads to a very open powder field:
Video clip of Dave dropping and watching his ski shoot 30 feet downhill:
http://tinyurl.com/9tvyd
And a clip of Dave powder surfing the lower portion:
http://tinyurl.com/cppd8
It was so much fun we went back up to do it again and although its a
little blurry, here's Dave in our western-like Mount Mansfield powder
choked chute:
Further down after cruising the Nosedive Glades, we got into the GoatDive
woods and with plenty of pillow and cliff lines, Dave started dropping
things. I gotta figure out how to make the movement shots crisp as the
camera likes to blur them...but you get the idea:
All in all, quite an amazing day. The snowpack is one of the best I've
seen in my three winters up here. Its layered with a solid base/crust
layer with a foot thick powder layer on top. Very, very nice. I'm also
very surprised the locals haven't been out there hammering that stuff.
Absolutely amazing to just go out, wander around in deep powder, and not
see any other traces of tracks. Where is everyone?
It another 4-6" of snow falls without an mixed precip, I'd think about
taking a vacation day before any warm up or niar next weekend. Its good
out there, real good.
-Scott
I registered for this forum just to tell you that is one awesome report. Although I too could not get to the video to work. I am from Western New York and have been skiing Stowe once a year for the last 14 years. I thought I had found all the nooks and crannys, but you've shown a whole new face here! My question is how do you drop in to this awesome territory? Is it off of Goat or Nosedive? From the one picture you have looking up the mountain it looks like you are on Nosedive looking up. Is this true? I would love to get some more details on this area. Thanks in advance