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Day two of White Mountains backcountry revealed rugged terrain and conditions in all their wickedness. Weather was a factor as the temperature rose throughout the morning. Upon reaching the summit, we suspected a temperature inversion was at play (though being steamy on the summit was perhaps due to other factors!).

A long and tiring traverse followed by a horrendously wet bushwhack brought us to the goods. With spruce trees essentially raining on our parade due to melting snow, we made the best turns we could through the soaking wet snow. Challenges included continuously having to free our bases from stuck snow. Certainly not for the faint of heart, today’s foray in the White Mountain backcountry would have revealed much better conditions before the warm up began. Despite the challenges of this epic tour, we were out of the woods well before dinner with big toothy grins and clothes soaked to the bone.

With powder long since been tracked up and packed down at ski areas, it was high time to hit the backcountry and sample week old powder. Thus, I voyaged north to the backyard of my heart and sampled what the White Mountains backcountry had on tap. Offerings were substantially better than expected given how many days have passed since the last storm. Six inches of fluff was pillaged with deeper sections up high and in drifts.

Epic turns were had on a particularly sweet and perfectly pitched tight chute featuring sporadic trees and a meandering double fall line. The run ended with somewhat boring final turns on a switchback like route that ended with a skin out to white pastures. Evidence of recent animal tracks of all varieties were abundant in the snow. Most notably, at one point, I was following the tracks of a rather large moose which was somewhat concerning. The silence was blissful and the contact with nature and true rugged backcountry terrain was stunning.

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What a way to ring in the new year. While less dedicated skiers were partying and drinking last night, I was setting an early alarm and falling asleep just before 10:00pm on New Year’s Eve. I can understand the draw of New Year’s festivities and celebrations. Many years ago, I was into that scene myself. But as the saying goes, you snooze you loose. Or, rather… you don’t snooze because you are working up a world class hang over for the next morning. You get up late and miss skiing right onto the Single Chair for almost four hours. On a holiday. On a powder day.

I was expecting the skiing at Mad River to be good but not great. Maybe I would find some good powder early morning. Or, maybe I would be nailing boot to knee deep untracked at 2:00pm on my last run of the day. Or perhaps both.

Conditions on the trails were a delightful packed powder due to snow from yesterday and most of today. Groomers skied really nicely with the light powder softening things up, especially on trail edges. Moguls still had some crusties under the new snow which occasionally showed through on the surface. Snow started falling off an on by 10am and began in earnest around noon time. By 2pm, it was starting to come down. Hard.

Trees were skiing amazingly well. Lower elevations only had trace remnants of the thaw/freeze and were not that bad. Upper elevations contained dreamy powder and packed powder conditions. With no waiting for the Single chair until noon, clearly there was not much competition or skier impact to conditions. When lines started building on the Single Chair, I moved over to the Sunnyside Double after my lunch break. I simply could not be bothered to wait two to three minutes on a powder day. Boot buckle deep snow was the general rule. Hitting stuff that had been clearly missed yesterday revealed boot deep untracked with occasional AMAZING drifts of knee deep. Some serious jaw dropping untracked was pillaged this fine morning in the lesser known tree areas. But boot deep untracked was still being scored on my last run at 2:00pm which indicated a fine powder day at Mad River Glen.

Three-quarters down one run, I had to laugh. While sucking wind, I realized how much further I had to go to finish the run and get back to the Single. Jay Peak has turned me into a bit of a powder princess with its wide open mellow powdery trees. Not many runs at Jay truly challenge and those runs are usually scraped down pretty sore if not skied first thing in the morning. It was really nice to rough it up today with Mad River Glen’s challenging terrain offerings. You simply do not get that type of challenge at Jay. Or any where else, for that matter.

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Greetings holiday skiers. Welcome to the party. Just a few weeks too late. Today was a mixed bag of conditions ranging from two to four inches of untracked to frozen wet packed down concrete. Holiday crowds overall were minimal in volume but overbearing in terms of effect on the experience. Overall summary is Northern Vermont just dodged a bullet and early birds got some frosting before the warm weather eroded the fresh snow and glazed and crusted the snow. Which heading into New Year’s is only a minor set back given new snow and two nice powder days this week.

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Sensational boot to knee deep untracked powder was found today in Ashland, NH of all places. Two runs were made, each consisting of approximately four to five sensational powder turns. When life gives you snow and you have some time to kill and an fifty foot drop off your back porch, ski off the back side and rack up some powder vertical while the neighbors look on in disbelief!

Our epic December in New England is drawing to a close. Powder hounds were out in force this past week trouncing the goods following several feet of new snow on an already bomber base. My hope was that intimate knowledge of Jay Peak would allow me to find some untracked left over from Thursday when seven inches of snow fell at Jay Peak. Unfortunately, despite getting to Jay Peak nearly in time for first chair and immediately skiing through three of my favorite go to tree shots, I was not able to find any significant untracked snow.

Exacerbating the lack of untracked was the fact that I was skiing on my touring gear. Having lodged four impressive and deep gouges in my alpine skis last week at Burke, I dropped them off at the shop last Sunday expecting to pick them up by Friday. Unfortunately, I completely forgot to pick up the skis Friday night leaving to choose whether to leave first thing in the morning with touring gear or have a delayed start to pick up my alpine skis. I choose to ski in touring gear and felt very uncomfortable sliding around on my G-Rides which are super for touring and uphill travel but terrible in tight trees on bumps and hard pack. My skiing was absolutely abysmal and I felt like I was skiing my first day of the season all over again.

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With a major snowstorm brewing overnight and concerns about road conditions and drive times, I made the decision to ski Burke today instead of Jay. I was mostly fearful of the dreaded change over to mixed precipitation scheduled for late afternoon when I would most likely be coming home. Having recently driven home in a snow storm from Jay that involved stressful white knuckle driving, I was content to avoid the possibility of a treacherous long drive home and wind holds by opting for Burke Mountain.

When I awoke, three inches of snow had already fallen at my home and it was puking. The drive to Burke would be more eventful and tougher driving than my drive home. Franconia Notch was particularly brutal especially being stuck behind two snow plows, who were doing a damn fine job by taking their time with things. The plows split at the Route 3 exit and I sped up to Burke as fast as conditions would allow with plenty of time for first chair.

Ultimately, Burke turned out to be the best choice, but not because of the weather conditions. The forecasted mixed precipitation never really occurred and a break in the storm coincided with the drive home. Burke was the better choice because Burke and Jay both received the same amount of snow fall at exactly one foot and Burke had very few skiers, low competition, untracked on the trails from open until close, and no wind holds. Whereas at Jay, some lifts were shut down at noon time which would have resulted in crowding at Stateside and untracked would have been a glades only experience only an hour or two after opening.

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A December to remember keeps on cranking out the powder days. Several small storms kept Jay full of powder this past week with yet another six inches falling heading into the weekend. My expectations of a small amount of additional snow were blown away by half a foot on the open trails and much more in the trees. Today was a phenomenal day at Jay.

Normally, I never ski Can Am. But after boarding one of the first chairs on the Bonaventure Quad and seeing a steep powder field begging for tracks, I could not help myself. The lack of wind kept the normally blown off slopes full of powder. I followed that up with a completely untracked run down Vertigo. Since the Tram and Freezer were not running when Jay opened, I headed Tramside on my next run for Northwest Passage to the Expo Glade area and returned for Upper River Quai to more Expo Glade area powder. Trees offered boot to knee deep untracked. When the Flyer and Tram started turning, I went back to Stateside and hit a whole bunch of stuff as the party was up Tramside.

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Wincing in pain, I awoke without an alarm this morning after yesterday’s strenuous powder day at Burke. Everything hurt from my lower back to just behind my knee. Plans were already hatched to combine lift serviced and earned turns at Cannon to maximize powder potential almost a full week after the last storm hit New England. Original plans included the possibility of a full skin of Tuckerbrook but due to my tense and sore muscles I dialed plans back a bit.

Arriving at the Peabody Lodge, Cannon’s excellent staff were working the parking lots to alert potential customers that power was currently out but may be back online later. “No worries” I told a lot attendant. Pointing to my bindings I mentioned that “I have my own power.” Lifts were still running on backup power to get the remaining customers off the chairs before the bull wheels stopped turning. Since the power just went down, I decided to not wait for what could be a few minutes or a few hours.

Not long after I began skinning, I heard the tell tale hum of power being delivered to the lifts. No worries as I was off the grid regardless and heading for whiter pastures. I was baffled by the amount of traffic inflicted upon the mountain in the past few days and felt like a royal Johnny Come Lately as I picked up a well packed down skin track. There was plenty of fresh powder to still be found but I would not enjoy the pleasure of laying down first tracks today.

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Thankfully for powder hounds, Burke Mountain stuck to their scheduled first day of operation. Even though two feet of snow was added to Burke’s slopes this past week and skiers have been coming down with that rare illness known as powderitis, Burke held true to their first day. Massive powder reports from the more well known mountains and Burke’s perception as being off the beaten path and not a major mountain combined to make for an amazing powder day without much competition. Powder hounds killed it in Burke’s glades all day while most skiers were bumping elbows in long lines to fight over a few left over well hidden scraps at ski resorts along the spine of the Green Mountains.

Today was simply sensational. Boot deep untracked was found on every single run right through closing time with the first few runs featuring untracked snow almost top to bottom before the main trails and glades started getting chewed up. By noon time, the main routes and trails had a fairly choppy and bumpy packed snow but the glades and trees skied extremely well all day.

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Fringe benefits of working in academia include University shut downs on powder days. With a foot of snow walloping much of New Hampshire, I ventured up to Jay Peak for a mid-week powder day. Thankfully, the new Michelin X-Ice snow tires had been mounted on Friday or else my day would have been substantially different and less powdery due to an unplowed six inches of dense compacted powder at go time. Three hours later, I was clicking in at the Stateside Lodge and skiing towards the Jet at Jay thirty minutes past first chair.

My unexpected tardiness combined with an abundance of College kids (due to the new Triple Major pass) and the lack of uphill capacity (Bonaventure and the Freezer were not spinning) resulted in quickly readjusted plans and expectations. Much to my dismay, almost all of Stateside was completely tracked out by 9:45 A.M. when I plopped my butt onto the Jet Triple Chair. I immediately went for the trees but found lots of tracks.

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Considering what we were skiing on last year at this time, I really have no right to be anything but thankful and grateful for the tremendous early season bounty of natural snow blanketing Jay. But familiarity, perspective, and relativity often combine to suggest strange things, such as half the mountain being open and three powder days within two weeks of opening day is not enough to satisfy.

Yes, when I arrived at Jay I was disappointed to see “only” a few inches in the parking lot. That disappointment escalated as I made my first run finding the wind had removed most of the powder from Derick, Haynes, and U.N. as I madly cut across the trails on Stateside’s southern flank searching for the goods. As per usual, high winds at Jay indicates the powder will be found in the woods. But I “only” found a few inches in the first few open glades I skied. Perhaps the expectations were a little too high today considering it is “only” December 1st!

The trails at Jay quickly melted away from my mind as I searched for powder in the woods. I was eventually rewarded later in the afternoon with six inches of fluff which I repeated three times before calling it a day. The crowds showed up en masse around ten and proceeded to lay to waste the few precious inches of good snow in the open glades. With lines at The Jet backed up out of the corrals and the groomed trails featuring a despicable mix of hard pack, frozen groomer tracks, rock, and ice, it was definitely a day for trails untouched by the groomers. Lower trails near the Bonaventure Quad were stupendous natural snow romps. However, the trip down Montrealer to Northway to Taxi made those trails almost unworthy of the effort required to reach them.

With a storm rolling in Sunday evening through Tuesday of this coming week, Jay is seriously setup for one of its best December’s ever. Half the mountain is already open and two dozen trails on the other side of the map have enough snow to open once the Green Mountain Freezer fires up next week. For those able to take a vacation day on Tuesday and Wednesday, epic things are awaiting. The rest of us will have to settle for sloppy seconds next weekend. But I am okay with that because it is “only” December.

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Following the Thanksgiving Day rain event, Jay Peak posted a typical read-between-the-lines styled snow report that suggested skiing conditions would be variable and icy despite the change over that provided four inches of snow. The following day Jay reported in with another four inches of fresh and pictures of white stuff flying through the air. My interest was piqued and my optimism was initialized but I retained realistic sensibilities that skiing this weekend would be in a word, interesting.

My optimism was instantly dashed, much to my chagrin, as I approach the ski racks of Jay Peak’s stateside lodge. The snow was crunchy, without much depth, and of questionable base layers. Dust on crust it was going to be!

With my back still sore from last week’s two day powder romp, I was in no condition for a full out assault on the powder stashes I knew Jay had to offer for those willing to exert themselves. Things off the Jet Triple looked pretty bleak for first chair. Interestingly enough, the groomer tracks on The Jet looked most appetizing of all since I have yet to have a great top to bottom railroad tracks groomer run this season. Or, the natural snow under the chairlift just looked that bad. Perhaps a little of both. Most other skiers and riders on The Jet had the same idea so I pounced on The Jet like it was chock full o’ powder before the hordes turned The Jet into steep frozen cat tracks which happened by around ten that morning.

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Best November Ever. Period.

Sunday continued where we left off on Saturday which was about boot deep in the trees. With only The Jet Triple turning again, the Stateside area was completely tracked out on both the open and closed trails. Conga lines formed to head for whiter pastures. The boot pack and skin track lines heading up Northway looked like a Highway to Heaven. It was no secret where the untracked powder was on the mountain but there was plenty to go around considering the length of time a round trip took.

Much to my chagrin, even Can Am and Upper River Quai had been significantly tracked out by my first run. However, I noticed that Vertigo had not a track. Obviously, the steep drop into the glade needed another foot or two to avoid bottoming out on the rocks and stumps that were hidden beneath the tempting white. Good thing for me that most people care about their ski bases!

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It was not supposed to happen like this. Jay was supposed to open next week. If we were lucky, Jay would have had The Jet and Haynes covered with man made snow and groomed to less than desirable so called perfection. Instead, Jay got two feet of snow during the week before Thanksgiving and decided to open a week early. Thanks Jay!

The surreal feeling experienced while skiing through the trees during mid-November in what looks like and feels like mid-January conditions is not something I could ever get used to. Though I would certainly love to have enough such experiences that mid-November days become just as routine as the bi-weekly six inch refreshes that Jay usually receives during the winter.

Last week I ascended Jay Peak to the summit via earned turns on approximately 2-8″ of consolidated base depth. What remained of that initial shot of natural snow after the rains preceding this most recent storm is any ones guess. At the time of this writing, Jay has either under reported snow totals or have yet to find the magical “Jay Inch” measuring location. Sinking my pole more than halfway into the snow, many places in the trees were easily two or more feet deep. But the trees always receive blow in so that is not an accurate measurement. A more accurate measurement would be the minimum boot deep untracked found on the trails as the area opened for the first time this season.

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