When one looks at the long arc of winter in northern Vermont, March can be counted on to be the best part of the season for both snowpack and weather. The days are getting longer, which means sun on the Front Four well past noon, conditions throughout the trail network and into the woods are often at their zenith for both depth and quality and — best of all — the arctic temperatures of January are rarely found in spring.
Gauging the quality of the skiing and riding at the resort right now, it very much appears that this year’s spring skiing should be just as good as usual. This is a welcome departure from a season that has had more than its share of challenges ranging from a slow start, stretches of warm and wet weather and an absence of the mega snow dump that often separates the good season from the great season.
Skiers and riders though tend to live in the present more than in the past. If the sliding or riding is great right now, does the past really matter? Right now, the trails are exceptionally good. This past weekend marked one of only several stretches where every route on the map was open. You didn’t have to poach the very top of Lookout with the rope dropped at the entrance from Panic Alley — provided the double chair wasn’t turning. National Drop-in, Phil’s Zuggy, go for it! Even Spruce Line was open top to bottom at one brief point when the B-net on Main Street was open at Cross Cut 2.
To what do the locals owe this sudden embarrassment of riches? Thank Mother Nature who routed a large storm across the northeast late last week. When the skies finally cleared, nine inches of snow had been left on the mountain. True, it wasn’t the lightest of snows, but it added both depth and density to Stowe’s base, important for prolonging the season at least into April which was no sure bet three weeks ago.
Your scribe has been for decades a dedicated watcher of the WCAX snow stake found alongside the Toll Road. The depths at the stake have been checked and recorded daily since 1954.
It provides one of the best records available about what is happening day to day and year after year for the Mount Mansfield snowpack. Right now, the reading shows that the depth has reached 65” which is only 4 inches below the historical average for this date. Sure, who wouldn’t like to see the number spiking up towards 80 or 90 inches but considering that for much of the year, the depth was closer to two feet under the average, this is a significant upgrade.
Another pleasant thing over the last two weeks is that it has been snowing at least a bit almost every night and often during the days as well. None of this jumps out at you when you are sitting in Boston or Hartford looking at the daily trail and snow report on the Stowe Mountain Resort website, but if you are one of those dedicated locals who are at the mountain day after day regardless of the weather, you are probably feeling rather good at the end of each ski or board day.
There is no real room this week for negativity in The Scribe’s weekly ramblings — which is not always the case — but one veteran voice from the Mount Mansfield Ski Patrol did mention that perhaps the parking scheme that has been in place hasn’t made the traffic problem disappear. That view was simple and concise — what did a big Friday storm do — it produced a significant Saturday morning traffic jam.
The Mountain Road remains a narrow conduit to funnel thousands of cars to Stowe Mountain Resort, and whether they are parking at the Mansfield and Gondola lots or being relegated to the second-class lots down at Toll House and the Touring Center it is still going to take drivers a lot of time to cover the 5-6 miles from the Baggy Knees or Barrows Road to get up to the resort. There will be those who argue that asking many of your passholders to park far away and take a shuttle does not make them second class customers, but hey, what do they call the seating areas in the front of the plane? Longtime skiers know that traffic jams on powder days have been part of the Stowe experience since the very beginning of lift service. The $0.25 fee collected at the toll booth at the entrance to the Mansfield lot in the 1950s certainly didn’t promote good traffic flow.
Ski bum series
There was one other development this past week. For the umpteenth time this season, this week’s ski bum racing was postponed.
The ostensible reason was lack of hill space. With Super-G on Main Street, some training moved to Slalom Hill, and it seemed that Vail-Stowe needed the Competition Hill for their own use. Fair enough but at 10:30 a.m. there was no sign of activity yet on Comp Hill.
The hundred racers who are present each week paid in advance for their weekly races, which at this point should have numbered at least eight. So far there have been four.
Weekly racing is a tradition that goes back to the Stowe standard races run on the Standard Trail beginning in the 1950s.
In their current format, bum races have been around for better than 45 seasons. How hard is it to find the hour it takes to run a hundred racers down two courses? Last-minute cancelations also don’t do much for the restaurants that are preparing to host the post-race parties.
Kim Brown, a ski bum by winter and a hacker by summer, lives in Waterbury Center with his very understanding family.
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