Bolton Valley TR 12/09/07

With the amazing amount of snow that we have received in the past week, the mountains are skiing like it is mid-March. Which is sweet, since I really like skiing on natural snow in the woods. But have you ever seen non-natural snow in the woods???

From my trip up Timberline on Wednesday night, Kris and I decided to skin up Timberline Sunday morning to check things out. Few other people rolled into the parking lot as we were starting out, three ladies, all who commented on Kris's Rossignol Rip Ckick Skiis. Mellow skin up, I had enough time to pull my skins and ski back down to Kris. Which confirmed that the snow has got even better. Met back up at the top with a nice view of Burlington in the distance, shared a thermos of coffee/hot chocolate, a homegrown Mocha. As we are having our snack, another group passes us on the way to the top. Another comment on the Rip Chick skis.

We hop back into the skis, drop into the 7-up Woods off of Bolton Valley. It is a tight entrance, until we start our traverse out left in search of untracked snow. This led to a 3 foot rock face when I decided I needed to jump off of it. First try faceplant. Second try stick it. Kris follows suit into a nice powder pillow. From our vantage point the trees open up into a beautiful birch glade, with many rollers and pillows to play on. Kris got the confidence to start dropping smaller drops, and I had a blast using the widely spaced trees as gates to rip around.

All in all a great day to be on the slopes, an do something I would call training!

Bolton night skiing.

And not the night skiing under the big lights, led headlamp lights!

So I went up to Bolton last night with my neighbor and a few of his friends for some nighttime teleski action. In the last storm cycle they totalled about 30 inches of new snow ontop of the base that was up there. With the last foot being nice light fluffy powder, so light when we skied it, the snow would fall like it was just coming down for the first time. Skined up TImberline to the mid-station droppped into the trail on far skiers left, debated and we headed into the woods. Really tight at the top and it sorta sucked skiing that with a small led headlamp with a light beam about 15 feet. Traverse farther skiers left, it opens up into am amazing birch glade, untracked, so we all had fresh snow in these nicely spaced trees. The effect of this super light snow and a headlamp was awsome, total without. The only negative point we had was it was not steep enough with all the snow!!!! Best run of the year thus far.

Next lap, skin all the way to the top of Timberline, drop into lost boyz. One or two people beat us to that, but plenty of freshies to go around. Steeper, with some roller/drops that sneak up on you in the dark. Nothing like big powder turn, to nothing below you to a poof of powder when you land, all in the dark!!! Easily one of the best runs of the year to come. Four super solid skiers just ripping in the dark on amazing snow.