J.Spin
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A link to additional pictures is available at the bottom of the report.
After my evening snowfall reading from Saturday, the ?storm? was pretty much tapering off, but we still managed a little more snowfall at our place in Waterbury (elevation 495?). The morning check on the snowboard revealed an additional 0.3 inches of snow, bringing us to 6.9 inches of snowfall from the event and 21.9 inches of snowfall on the season. I was happy to see the snowfall continued into the evening down at our elevation, because I was planning on a backcountry day up at Bolton and figured they may have received a little more snow as well.
You almost couldn?t ask for a better ski forecast than what was predicted in our area on Sunday. Forecasters were calling for mostly sunny conditions, a high of around 30 degrees F, and light winds. This forecast, combined with the fact that the Bolton area had received almost a foot of fresh snow the previous day, had me pretty excited to get out to earn some powder turns and take some photographs. My initial plan was to head up by myself for some early morning reconnaissance turns at Bolton?s Timberline area, and then head up with E later in the day so we could ski together. My parents were coming over to our place for the holiday, and since my mom has offered many times to watch the boys so E and I could ski together, this seemed like a good occasion. I?m just starting to use a Canon 30D camera that I got over the holidays, and getting the chance to ski with E would mean we could really give it a workout in terms of action photography. I?m eager to see how well it performs. Unfortunately, I?ve yet to discover an efficient way of getting ski action shots when I?m out by myself. Maybe someday the technology will exist, but until then, action shots aren?t really a practical option on solo outings. E was fighting a mild cold however, so she wasn?t enthusiastic about working too hard on the hill and making things worse. I told her that I?d call her on the phone during my solo trip and let her know if the skiing was worth it.
I didn?t rush right up to the hill in the morning, since I knew the snow wasn?t going anywhere and there weren?t likely to be too many people tracking up the slopes. There were also some clouds still hanging around, so I wanted to let them dissipate. When I arrived up at the Timberline area, there was one other car in the parking lot, and the area hadn?t been plowed. There were maybe around 7 inches of new snow down at that elevation (~1,500?) but it was light and fluffy and easy to drive through. The other car in the lot appeared to belong to a man that was heading out for a hike with his dog. I had actually debated making my trip some sort of a sidecountry outing, where I used the Snowflake lift over at Bolton?s main base area to get a big jump on my vertical to the top of the Timberline area, but the long walk up the access road or the effort of trying to hitch a ride were deterrents. Also, I was somewhat eager for the exercise from the full hike, and I wanted to get a close look at the snow coverage where I?d be skiing.
I started skinning right from the car, and decided to head up the Showtime trail under the Timberline Quad to get the lay of the land. Showtime wasn?t quite unblemished powder, as there were about 7 tracks from people that had hit it the previous day. I couldn?t tell if these folks hiked Timberline directly, or came over from the main area for a little sidecountry action, but I couldn?t find any uptracks on Showtime. To make my skinning easier, and to practice a little powder conservation, I tried to keep myself in one of the skier?s downtracks. This actually worked quite well on the lower, gentle grade of Showtime?s bottom section. After Saturday?s experience of skiing fully-covered natural terrain over at Bolton?s main area, I knew the Timberline area would be just about ready in terms of coverage. But, there was notably less snow at Timberline than the main area. The terrain I was skiing over at the main area on Saturday was at around the 2,500-foot elevation, and it hadn?t occurred to me that I was now roughly 1,000 feet below that. If I had to guess at the snow depth at the bottom of Timberline, I?d say it was around a foot, made up of a combination of base snow and the new powder. Fortunately, the bottom of the Timberline area is well manicured and grassy, so I didn?t expect that the snow depth would present much of a problem for fat skis.
I continued up Showtime, and eventually had to start making switchbacks as I hit the steeper upper sections. There was no way I could follow the tracks of the previous skiers that had come down the slope; it was just too steep. I still did my best to conserve the powder, and made my switchbacks on roughly half the trail. I wasn?t sure if anyone else was even going to make use of the great skiing in the area, but I figured they?d want fresh lines if they did. I crested to the lift?s unloading station at around 2,250?, and was presented with something that I?d totally forgotten about the Timberline area: the unloading station that I?d been looking at from the base was actually the mid station! Duh. The real summit of the lift lay another 200-300 feet above me at an elevation of about 2,500?. An interesting quirk of the Timberline geography is that there?s a substantial dip (maybe 50 vertical feet) right on this part of the lift line. I?d totally forgotten about that. Also, the terrain above me on the lift line (part of the Intro trail) was far too steep and rocky for skinning. I can?t believe they have the Intro trail listed as an intermediate run on the Bolton Valley trail map, because from where I stood it looked like a wall of rocks. I still wanted to get to the actual lift summit, so I had to find a way around the wall. I searched around a bit to the left and the right, but all the trails (Twice as Nice, Showtime, Spell Binder, and Wood?s Hole) simply went down! How could this be? There had to be a way down to the base from the summit. Unfortunately, I?d forgotten to bring my Bolton Valley trail map, so I had to go by memory. If none of the immediate trails could get me up to the summit, there had to be more trails on the periphery that could. I scanned my memory of the last time I?d checked out the Bolton Valley trail map, and could swear there was terrain on both sides of the Timberline area that dropped from the summit. After a little more investigation in the area, I started along the top of Twice as Nice trail because it seemed to drop the least elevation as it headed out from the lift station. There had to be a connecting trail from there to the periphery.
Well, I couldn?t find a connecting trail, so before I lost too much of my hard-earned vertical, I made the decision to cut through the woods to get to whatever trail was out there. The woods weren?t especially thick, but with only 1-2 feet of snow at this elevation, a lot of the underlying debris was still present. This limited my choice of lines, and a few times I had to go into protection mode with hood down to prevent a deluge of snow from the overlying evergreens heading down my neck. After a few minutes of this, I hit the top of the local rise in terrain and thought I could see thinner vegetation ahead. When I finally got close to the clearing however, I was confronted with a very steep slope that had lots of small evergreens. I could see the thinner vegetation about 20-30 feet below me, but it was going to be tough to get there. After cracking part of the pivot point of one of my Trekkers a few weeks back on a difficult streambed crossing, I decided to learn from the experience and not conduct another extreme field test on my equipment. I reluctantly popped off my skis and ventured boot-style down the difficult slope. Fortunately, the snowpack was not so deep that going in boots for a few dozen yards was a big chore. I put my skis back on, looked around, and found that I was in quite an interesting place.
I was in what appeared to be some sort of glade. There were larger hardwoods around, and lots of saplings as well. Whatever this glade was, it was either unattended recently, or meant to be skied when the snowpack is in the range of three to four feet or higher. The ground had a lot of saplings of this height that would really limit the available lines without at least that much snow. It was beautiful with all the snow covering the branches in such a wind-protected environment, but it definitely wasn?t what I was looking for in terms of skinning uphill. It appeared that this glade (or whatever it was) continued upward, but it was way to steep, and the vegetation was too thick with this snowpack to make a route for me. So, I followed the glade in its downhill direction, hoping it would bring me to some more open terrain. Fortunately, it did.
After a minute or so of following the thick glade, I came to what looked like a cat track. ?Ahh?, I thought, this had to be a real trail. Well, it wasn?t quite a real trail. What I had found was a flat section of a nicely-maintained glade. I was dismayed to see that this glade quickly shot steeply up the mountain. It wasn?t optimal skinning terrain, but at least it was open, and I was pretty sure it would lead me to the top of the Timberline Lift. I was relieved to have finally found something, because I was just about to turn back. I had been eyeing a foreboding-looking mountain off to my south, as well as the big drainage that separated it from me, and I definitely did not want to end up in there? especially alone. It turns out the mountain I was looking at was Bone Mountain (2,900?), and the drainage is the one that drains Goose Pond which sits to the east at around 2,800?. I realized that the nicely-manicured glade I was now following was one of Bolton?s backcountry glades, which are supposedly not patrolled terrain of the mountain. I?m not sure when they were added (possibly while I was out in Montana) but I?ve never skied any part of them. I can say that the terrain looks fantastic. I probably could have skied the area on Sunday with the available snow, but there is a LOT of contour in those glades (stumps, jumps, logs, rocks) so they would really be more appropriate for skiing with a deeper base. I was still somewhat unsure what the day?s skiing would be like with the current snowpack, so I was planning to ski a more grassy slope. I also didn?t want to mess around in terrain that I didn?t know very well and was virtually off the map while I was on a solo outing.
I started my skin up the glades, which was actually difficult at times. There are some rather steep pitches in there, and with some of the terrain features, I was left with only one line choice. I was happy to have full-width skins on my fat skis. I stopped several times for photos of the area, since it?s a place that I?ll definitely want to visit in the future. It will be interesting to see how much traffic these backcountry glades actually get. From the Bolton Valley trail map, it looks like you can make an easy return to the bottom of the Timberline lift, so that shouldn?t be a deterrent. I?ve also got to find out if the Timberline area is open all the time, or works on a reduced schedule like it has at times in the past. The final challenge of my trip up the backcountry glades was a 5-10-foot ledge that stood between me and the lift summit. I was thankful that the ledge had a natural switchback in it, and I was able to get up relatively easily with just one kick turn in the middle. I skinned the last flat stretch to a large clearing and found myself at the top station of the Timberline Lift.
I was at an elevation of roughly 2,500?, and had a great view of Bolton Mountain itself (3,680?). From up on the Timberline summit, you can really get an idea of the expanse of terrain that surrounds the ski area. I had a snack and a drink, and called up E on the cell phone. I let her know that I had reached the summit, and that I wasn?t going to pressure her to come out in the afternoon. The skiing looked like it was going to be good, but hardly epic by Northern Vermont standards and not worth aggravating her cold. At least that?s what my opinion was before I skied. I then hung around the Timberline summit area and got some pictures. There was a big drift on the summit area that was probably about two feet deep, and although it was sort of hard to find a spot with ?average? snow depth, I estimate it was probably around 18 inches. As I stood around finishing my snack in the sun, I heard a very interesting sound behind me. It was the sound of tinkling ice in a metal pipe. What I think was happening was that there was some ice/water in one of the snowmaking pipes near the summit, and the sun was loosening it and causing it to tumble down inside the slanted pipe. It was a rather interesting phenomenon.
I switched to ski mode and then had to decide what to take for a run. Fortunately there was a large map board at the Timberline summit area, so I was able to scrape the rime off of it and take a look. I was sort of partial to heading back down Showtime, since I?d come up that way and it looked like decent snow and pitch. The big decision was how to get there. I wasn?t about to head straight down the lift line, because the final steep pitch of Intro looked way too rocky. I decided to get there via Brandy Wine, which was a single black diamond and seemed to be the mellowest way down. I?d still have to hike back up a bit to get to the mid station and the start of Showtime, but the vertical I?d have to gain would be minimal and I wouldn?t even need to put my skins back on. Before I set off, I made a slight detour however. I?d been looking down Villager, the trail that heads from the Timberline summit down to the main base area, and the snow in the top section just looked too good to pass up. So, I made a short run there. Oh baby, was that snow nice. I think the wind had favored this area because it felt like 18 inches of powder. It was actually hard to tell just how deep it was because it was completely bottomless. I had to make a short hike back up to the Timberline summit, but it was worth it.
I then started down the lift line of the quad, and the snow continued to impress. It wasn?t quite as deep as the snow I hit on the top of Villager, but I still wasn?t hitting bottom at all and the turns went on and on. I next turned down Brandy Wine, where the snow was a little more windswept and chunky. After the first pitch of Brandy Wine, I spied a small cat track that had the marks of at least on snowmobile on it, and it looked to be the way back to the Timberline mid station. It was a gentle slope, which was tackled easily with a couple minutes of herringboning. That little track is probably the best way to get to the Timberline summit if you come up Showtime, and I probably could have summited in 15-20 minutes by that route instead of taking nearly an hour via the woods and backcountry glades. Of course, then I wouldn?t have had my nice tour of the glades. But, now that I know what the backcountry glades are like, I certainly don?t need to use them as a skinning route. I?ll definitely take that little cat track over to Brandy Wine the next time I skin up Showtime. Another sensible skin route from the Timberline base to the summit would be to head up a combination of Timberline Run, Lower Brandywine, and Brandy Wine. That route wouldn?t take the terrain head on, and would present a comfortable grade that probably requires very few switchbacks.
I was now at the Timberline mid station with most of my run left to go. I snapped some more photographs, and noticed a group of six skiers (four men and two women) skinning up Showtime. I hoped the skin track I had set was useful to them, and I was glad that I?d done my best to conserve the powder on Showtime. I started my run down the steep Showtime headwall, choosing a large untracked area a bit to the skier?s right of center. I was worried that the snow depth wouldn?t be sufficient down at this elevation for such steep terrain, but I didn?t hit a thing with my skis. Within moments I was blasting down the slope and powder was flying everywhere. It was still shy of face-shot deep, but it was much better than I?d expected. I kept going until I ran into some of the folks skinning up the hill, and then we chatted for a bit about the conditions. They asked about the summit area, and I informed them that the snow was even deeper up there. I bid them adieu, and continued on with more bottomless powder turns. As I neared the end of my run, I pulled out my phone and gave E a call.
?Guess what?, I said, ?I think I?ve changed my mind about whether or not you should come up here!? The bottomless turns all the way down Showtime had shown me that in terms of actual skiing, the conditions were significantly better than I?d expected. The conditions still weren?t epic or anything, but they were good enough that I had to at least give a shot at convincing E to come up and make some turns. I knew that in reality it was getting too late for her to change her mind anyway, but at least she?d been informed. I finished my run by gliding past the Timberline Lodge and down to my waiting car, really excited about how much better the skiing was in the lower elevations than what I?d thought I?d encounter. There were a few dozen cars in the upper section of the Timberline parking lot at that point, but I couldn?t figure out where all the people were. Either there were dozens of people doing something in the Timberline Lodge, or they were all out enjoying the new snow. It was strange. My car was still the only one in the lower tier of the parking lot, and a plow had come through and plowed me in. Fortunately, the Subaru was able to blast through the snowbank and get me home. The Suunto S6 recorded 1 run for 1,207 feet of vertical, and the Avocet recorded 1 run for 1,250 feet of vertical, for a difference of 3.5%.
I've inserted copies of the day's vertical and GPS plots below, click on the images for larger versions.
Additional pictures from the day can be found at:
http://www.jandeproductions.com/2006/31DEC06.html
J.Spin
After my evening snowfall reading from Saturday, the ?storm? was pretty much tapering off, but we still managed a little more snowfall at our place in Waterbury (elevation 495?). The morning check on the snowboard revealed an additional 0.3 inches of snow, bringing us to 6.9 inches of snowfall from the event and 21.9 inches of snowfall on the season. I was happy to see the snowfall continued into the evening down at our elevation, because I was planning on a backcountry day up at Bolton and figured they may have received a little more snow as well.
You almost couldn?t ask for a better ski forecast than what was predicted in our area on Sunday. Forecasters were calling for mostly sunny conditions, a high of around 30 degrees F, and light winds. This forecast, combined with the fact that the Bolton area had received almost a foot of fresh snow the previous day, had me pretty excited to get out to earn some powder turns and take some photographs. My initial plan was to head up by myself for some early morning reconnaissance turns at Bolton?s Timberline area, and then head up with E later in the day so we could ski together. My parents were coming over to our place for the holiday, and since my mom has offered many times to watch the boys so E and I could ski together, this seemed like a good occasion. I?m just starting to use a Canon 30D camera that I got over the holidays, and getting the chance to ski with E would mean we could really give it a workout in terms of action photography. I?m eager to see how well it performs. Unfortunately, I?ve yet to discover an efficient way of getting ski action shots when I?m out by myself. Maybe someday the technology will exist, but until then, action shots aren?t really a practical option on solo outings. E was fighting a mild cold however, so she wasn?t enthusiastic about working too hard on the hill and making things worse. I told her that I?d call her on the phone during my solo trip and let her know if the skiing was worth it.
I didn?t rush right up to the hill in the morning, since I knew the snow wasn?t going anywhere and there weren?t likely to be too many people tracking up the slopes. There were also some clouds still hanging around, so I wanted to let them dissipate. When I arrived up at the Timberline area, there was one other car in the parking lot, and the area hadn?t been plowed. There were maybe around 7 inches of new snow down at that elevation (~1,500?) but it was light and fluffy and easy to drive through. The other car in the lot appeared to belong to a man that was heading out for a hike with his dog. I had actually debated making my trip some sort of a sidecountry outing, where I used the Snowflake lift over at Bolton?s main base area to get a big jump on my vertical to the top of the Timberline area, but the long walk up the access road or the effort of trying to hitch a ride were deterrents. Also, I was somewhat eager for the exercise from the full hike, and I wanted to get a close look at the snow coverage where I?d be skiing.
I started skinning right from the car, and decided to head up the Showtime trail under the Timberline Quad to get the lay of the land. Showtime wasn?t quite unblemished powder, as there were about 7 tracks from people that had hit it the previous day. I couldn?t tell if these folks hiked Timberline directly, or came over from the main area for a little sidecountry action, but I couldn?t find any uptracks on Showtime. To make my skinning easier, and to practice a little powder conservation, I tried to keep myself in one of the skier?s downtracks. This actually worked quite well on the lower, gentle grade of Showtime?s bottom section. After Saturday?s experience of skiing fully-covered natural terrain over at Bolton?s main area, I knew the Timberline area would be just about ready in terms of coverage. But, there was notably less snow at Timberline than the main area. The terrain I was skiing over at the main area on Saturday was at around the 2,500-foot elevation, and it hadn?t occurred to me that I was now roughly 1,000 feet below that. If I had to guess at the snow depth at the bottom of Timberline, I?d say it was around a foot, made up of a combination of base snow and the new powder. Fortunately, the bottom of the Timberline area is well manicured and grassy, so I didn?t expect that the snow depth would present much of a problem for fat skis.
I continued up Showtime, and eventually had to start making switchbacks as I hit the steeper upper sections. There was no way I could follow the tracks of the previous skiers that had come down the slope; it was just too steep. I still did my best to conserve the powder, and made my switchbacks on roughly half the trail. I wasn?t sure if anyone else was even going to make use of the great skiing in the area, but I figured they?d want fresh lines if they did. I crested to the lift?s unloading station at around 2,250?, and was presented with something that I?d totally forgotten about the Timberline area: the unloading station that I?d been looking at from the base was actually the mid station! Duh. The real summit of the lift lay another 200-300 feet above me at an elevation of about 2,500?. An interesting quirk of the Timberline geography is that there?s a substantial dip (maybe 50 vertical feet) right on this part of the lift line. I?d totally forgotten about that. Also, the terrain above me on the lift line (part of the Intro trail) was far too steep and rocky for skinning. I can?t believe they have the Intro trail listed as an intermediate run on the Bolton Valley trail map, because from where I stood it looked like a wall of rocks. I still wanted to get to the actual lift summit, so I had to find a way around the wall. I searched around a bit to the left and the right, but all the trails (Twice as Nice, Showtime, Spell Binder, and Wood?s Hole) simply went down! How could this be? There had to be a way down to the base from the summit. Unfortunately, I?d forgotten to bring my Bolton Valley trail map, so I had to go by memory. If none of the immediate trails could get me up to the summit, there had to be more trails on the periphery that could. I scanned my memory of the last time I?d checked out the Bolton Valley trail map, and could swear there was terrain on both sides of the Timberline area that dropped from the summit. After a little more investigation in the area, I started along the top of Twice as Nice trail because it seemed to drop the least elevation as it headed out from the lift station. There had to be a connecting trail from there to the periphery.
Well, I couldn?t find a connecting trail, so before I lost too much of my hard-earned vertical, I made the decision to cut through the woods to get to whatever trail was out there. The woods weren?t especially thick, but with only 1-2 feet of snow at this elevation, a lot of the underlying debris was still present. This limited my choice of lines, and a few times I had to go into protection mode with hood down to prevent a deluge of snow from the overlying evergreens heading down my neck. After a few minutes of this, I hit the top of the local rise in terrain and thought I could see thinner vegetation ahead. When I finally got close to the clearing however, I was confronted with a very steep slope that had lots of small evergreens. I could see the thinner vegetation about 20-30 feet below me, but it was going to be tough to get there. After cracking part of the pivot point of one of my Trekkers a few weeks back on a difficult streambed crossing, I decided to learn from the experience and not conduct another extreme field test on my equipment. I reluctantly popped off my skis and ventured boot-style down the difficult slope. Fortunately, the snowpack was not so deep that going in boots for a few dozen yards was a big chore. I put my skis back on, looked around, and found that I was in quite an interesting place.
I was in what appeared to be some sort of glade. There were larger hardwoods around, and lots of saplings as well. Whatever this glade was, it was either unattended recently, or meant to be skied when the snowpack is in the range of three to four feet or higher. The ground had a lot of saplings of this height that would really limit the available lines without at least that much snow. It was beautiful with all the snow covering the branches in such a wind-protected environment, but it definitely wasn?t what I was looking for in terms of skinning uphill. It appeared that this glade (or whatever it was) continued upward, but it was way to steep, and the vegetation was too thick with this snowpack to make a route for me. So, I followed the glade in its downhill direction, hoping it would bring me to some more open terrain. Fortunately, it did.
After a minute or so of following the thick glade, I came to what looked like a cat track. ?Ahh?, I thought, this had to be a real trail. Well, it wasn?t quite a real trail. What I had found was a flat section of a nicely-maintained glade. I was dismayed to see that this glade quickly shot steeply up the mountain. It wasn?t optimal skinning terrain, but at least it was open, and I was pretty sure it would lead me to the top of the Timberline Lift. I was relieved to have finally found something, because I was just about to turn back. I had been eyeing a foreboding-looking mountain off to my south, as well as the big drainage that separated it from me, and I definitely did not want to end up in there? especially alone. It turns out the mountain I was looking at was Bone Mountain (2,900?), and the drainage is the one that drains Goose Pond which sits to the east at around 2,800?. I realized that the nicely-manicured glade I was now following was one of Bolton?s backcountry glades, which are supposedly not patrolled terrain of the mountain. I?m not sure when they were added (possibly while I was out in Montana) but I?ve never skied any part of them. I can say that the terrain looks fantastic. I probably could have skied the area on Sunday with the available snow, but there is a LOT of contour in those glades (stumps, jumps, logs, rocks) so they would really be more appropriate for skiing with a deeper base. I was still somewhat unsure what the day?s skiing would be like with the current snowpack, so I was planning to ski a more grassy slope. I also didn?t want to mess around in terrain that I didn?t know very well and was virtually off the map while I was on a solo outing.
I started my skin up the glades, which was actually difficult at times. There are some rather steep pitches in there, and with some of the terrain features, I was left with only one line choice. I was happy to have full-width skins on my fat skis. I stopped several times for photos of the area, since it?s a place that I?ll definitely want to visit in the future. It will be interesting to see how much traffic these backcountry glades actually get. From the Bolton Valley trail map, it looks like you can make an easy return to the bottom of the Timberline lift, so that shouldn?t be a deterrent. I?ve also got to find out if the Timberline area is open all the time, or works on a reduced schedule like it has at times in the past. The final challenge of my trip up the backcountry glades was a 5-10-foot ledge that stood between me and the lift summit. I was thankful that the ledge had a natural switchback in it, and I was able to get up relatively easily with just one kick turn in the middle. I skinned the last flat stretch to a large clearing and found myself at the top station of the Timberline Lift.
I was at an elevation of roughly 2,500?, and had a great view of Bolton Mountain itself (3,680?). From up on the Timberline summit, you can really get an idea of the expanse of terrain that surrounds the ski area. I had a snack and a drink, and called up E on the cell phone. I let her know that I had reached the summit, and that I wasn?t going to pressure her to come out in the afternoon. The skiing looked like it was going to be good, but hardly epic by Northern Vermont standards and not worth aggravating her cold. At least that?s what my opinion was before I skied. I then hung around the Timberline summit area and got some pictures. There was a big drift on the summit area that was probably about two feet deep, and although it was sort of hard to find a spot with ?average? snow depth, I estimate it was probably around 18 inches. As I stood around finishing my snack in the sun, I heard a very interesting sound behind me. It was the sound of tinkling ice in a metal pipe. What I think was happening was that there was some ice/water in one of the snowmaking pipes near the summit, and the sun was loosening it and causing it to tumble down inside the slanted pipe. It was a rather interesting phenomenon.
I switched to ski mode and then had to decide what to take for a run. Fortunately there was a large map board at the Timberline summit area, so I was able to scrape the rime off of it and take a look. I was sort of partial to heading back down Showtime, since I?d come up that way and it looked like decent snow and pitch. The big decision was how to get there. I wasn?t about to head straight down the lift line, because the final steep pitch of Intro looked way too rocky. I decided to get there via Brandy Wine, which was a single black diamond and seemed to be the mellowest way down. I?d still have to hike back up a bit to get to the mid station and the start of Showtime, but the vertical I?d have to gain would be minimal and I wouldn?t even need to put my skins back on. Before I set off, I made a slight detour however. I?d been looking down Villager, the trail that heads from the Timberline summit down to the main base area, and the snow in the top section just looked too good to pass up. So, I made a short run there. Oh baby, was that snow nice. I think the wind had favored this area because it felt like 18 inches of powder. It was actually hard to tell just how deep it was because it was completely bottomless. I had to make a short hike back up to the Timberline summit, but it was worth it.
I then started down the lift line of the quad, and the snow continued to impress. It wasn?t quite as deep as the snow I hit on the top of Villager, but I still wasn?t hitting bottom at all and the turns went on and on. I next turned down Brandy Wine, where the snow was a little more windswept and chunky. After the first pitch of Brandy Wine, I spied a small cat track that had the marks of at least on snowmobile on it, and it looked to be the way back to the Timberline mid station. It was a gentle slope, which was tackled easily with a couple minutes of herringboning. That little track is probably the best way to get to the Timberline summit if you come up Showtime, and I probably could have summited in 15-20 minutes by that route instead of taking nearly an hour via the woods and backcountry glades. Of course, then I wouldn?t have had my nice tour of the glades. But, now that I know what the backcountry glades are like, I certainly don?t need to use them as a skinning route. I?ll definitely take that little cat track over to Brandy Wine the next time I skin up Showtime. Another sensible skin route from the Timberline base to the summit would be to head up a combination of Timberline Run, Lower Brandywine, and Brandy Wine. That route wouldn?t take the terrain head on, and would present a comfortable grade that probably requires very few switchbacks.
I was now at the Timberline mid station with most of my run left to go. I snapped some more photographs, and noticed a group of six skiers (four men and two women) skinning up Showtime. I hoped the skin track I had set was useful to them, and I was glad that I?d done my best to conserve the powder on Showtime. I started my run down the steep Showtime headwall, choosing a large untracked area a bit to the skier?s right of center. I was worried that the snow depth wouldn?t be sufficient down at this elevation for such steep terrain, but I didn?t hit a thing with my skis. Within moments I was blasting down the slope and powder was flying everywhere. It was still shy of face-shot deep, but it was much better than I?d expected. I kept going until I ran into some of the folks skinning up the hill, and then we chatted for a bit about the conditions. They asked about the summit area, and I informed them that the snow was even deeper up there. I bid them adieu, and continued on with more bottomless powder turns. As I neared the end of my run, I pulled out my phone and gave E a call.
?Guess what?, I said, ?I think I?ve changed my mind about whether or not you should come up here!? The bottomless turns all the way down Showtime had shown me that in terms of actual skiing, the conditions were significantly better than I?d expected. The conditions still weren?t epic or anything, but they were good enough that I had to at least give a shot at convincing E to come up and make some turns. I knew that in reality it was getting too late for her to change her mind anyway, but at least she?d been informed. I finished my run by gliding past the Timberline Lodge and down to my waiting car, really excited about how much better the skiing was in the lower elevations than what I?d thought I?d encounter. There were a few dozen cars in the upper section of the Timberline parking lot at that point, but I couldn?t figure out where all the people were. Either there were dozens of people doing something in the Timberline Lodge, or they were all out enjoying the new snow. It was strange. My car was still the only one in the lower tier of the parking lot, and a plow had come through and plowed me in. Fortunately, the Subaru was able to blast through the snowbank and get me home. The Suunto S6 recorded 1 run for 1,207 feet of vertical, and the Avocet recorded 1 run for 1,250 feet of vertical, for a difference of 3.5%.
I've inserted copies of the day's vertical and GPS plots below, click on the images for larger versions.
Additional pictures from the day can be found at:
http://www.jandeproductions.com/2006/31DEC06.html
J.Spin
