Photo(s) of the Week: Shallow Powder and Alpenglow

Scattered snow showers continue to add precious white snowflakes to our relatively thin snowpack across the Northeast, with up to 4″ of Champlain Powder falling around VT’s Mt. Mansfield on Thursday. While most off-piste lines still need quite a bit of natural-snow base, others are really starting to take shape. The first image here was [...]

Photo of the Week: Solstice Sacrifice

When a light mist turned to a steady rain on Wednesday afternoon, a few of us did not hesitate to continue up the mountain for some afternoon turns. We’ve learned over the years that skiing in the rain is always worth it. More than anything, it impresses the snow gods. (Prolific snows have followed many [...]

Micro-Freshies…And More to Come?

Happy Winter Solstice! Monday night and Tuesday morning treated skiers in the central and northern Green Mountains to a dusting to 3″ of fresh snow at the higher elevations. (Does anyone have any snow to report from other regions?) It was enough to freshen up the coverage on natural snow terrain that had melted back [...]

Photo of the Week: Winter is Back

Old Man Winter finally seems to be done taking naps and neglecting his snowfall producing duties. He breathed some fresh snow into the mountains across the northeast Friday and earlier today, and he now seems intent on offering up some more on Monday and then again on Wednesday. It’s likely going to be a white [...]

Thin Cover and Twisty Trails

We didn’t quite make out with the November snow of our dreams this past weekend in the northeast, but Friday’s mountain snows made for some genuinely fun thin-cover skiing. A solid dusting to nearly 2″ fell across the higher elevations Friday and Friday night, just enough to keep at least some of us off our [...]

Photo of the Week: SNOvember Dreams

After a round of some really fun skiing through the Halloween period, some nice warm weather has all but wiped out our natural snow pack for the time being. And until Old Man Winter comes back around and settles in for a few good months, we have images like this to remind us of how [...]

Photo of the Week: Halloween Turns

After skiing like a super hero who we began to call “Ski-Ra”, a smiling Ski-Ra turned to us and declared, “I think I’m always going to ski with a cape. It’s so fun!” Meanwhile, Matt Davis (below), our maple-sugaring, yurt-living, science teaching friend, dressed up like a regular skier, not wanting anything to interfere with [...]

Octobah Powdah…Weekend Nor’Eastah

10/31 UPDATE (Look below for a few more photos from skiing in central VT over the weekend. The historic October snowstorm produced over two feet of snow in some parts of Western MA and southern NH. Closer to home here in central VT, we picked up a bit less than that, but the skiing was [...]

Why We Love Old Man Winter

While the January Thaw earlier this month hooked us up with a few pleasant, spring-like days, it also wiped out a good bit of our already thin snow pack. Then, while out skiing a few meager pasture strips last Tuesday (see first image below), snowflakes started to fly once again. It was as if Old [...]

Northeast Skiing: A World of Contrasts

The past week in the northeast offered a perfectly normal yet utterly wild swing in the weather and snow conditions – an annual event many of us refer to as the January Thaw. For the moment, at least, the change in weather has nearly wiped out the thin snowpack we had at the lowest elevations, [...]

UPDATE Feb.12: A New Secret Weapon? A Sneak Peek at the Marquette Backcountry Ski

by Brian Mohr David Olilla, who calls the playful mountains of Michgan’s Upper Peninsula home, is onto something revolutionary. He’s now producing a ski that many of us here in the northeast have been dreaming about for years. It thrives in thin-cover conditions common in the very early or very late season, and in many [...]

Photo of the Week: Thin Cover is Fun

Maybe it’s because a thin snow pack is all we have to work with sometimes in the northeast. Or perhaps it has to do with those “thin cover” signs we’d come across on the ski hill as kids…and the great fun we’d have leaving the adults behind while we jumped dirt patches and straight-lined large [...]