Ice-covered trees on my Sunday backcountry tour at Bolton Valley
Sunday, March 16, 2008 at 04:36 PM
Weird. That's the best way to describe today's ski tour on the backcountry trails at Bolton Valley today. Other words that come to mind are frozen, crusty and otherworldly.
While the high trails picked up some snow over the last week, they also got the deep-freeze treatment. Ice was everywhere. It coated trees at nearly an inch in thickness.
During our ski on Heavenly Highway, Birch Loop and Gardiner's Lane, the Skimeister and I navigated around many limbs and trees that were downed by the weight of the ice. Other branches and birches seemed to perform backbends under the heavy load.
I was glad that I had taken along my helmet because I heard heavy, icy branches crack against it several times as I ducked under them. Better than cracking against my noggin!
Now factor in some rather thick fog. Turns out it rolled in as we were rolling in to the parking lot at noontime. The combination of ice, snow and fog made for a surreal scene as we skied.
Every once and a while the wind would blow and the clanking of the ice branches created an odd windchime sound. It occurred to me that branches might still want to fall, so I turned my eyes upward when I heard the wind and whenever I looked for a place to stop.
As for the skiing, well it was tough with light backcountry ski equipment because of the crust layer that was under two to three inches of fresh snow. I didn't do much real turning today. It was just cool to be out among the glassy trees.
As we crossed small brooks, I peered down at them and noticed that in some places there must have been about four feet of snow on the banks. That's in start contrast to the lower elevations near Burlington, where the snow has been melting.
Now if only Mother Nature would give us a good, old-fashioned snowstorm to cover that layer of crust. That would be lovely.
I'm sure the groomed ski trails at the resort were fine, as the machines would have chewed up the crust. Drop me a line to tell me about your skiing experience this weekend. Good? Bad? Ugly?
I may have to check out the downhill slopes in the next couple of days when sunshine is expected. There's plenty of snow on the mountains of northern Vermont, we might as well make use of it!
Filed in: Backcountry skiing, Bolton Valley
1. marina | Sunday, March 16, 2008 at 07:16 PM
its weird, I was just looking at your blog this morning, since I had been searching various VT backcountry tours and called out to my husband, 'here's someone who has done a lot of the same backcountry we've done!)
oddly enough, we also decided to do Bolton backcountry today. We parked a little below, at the catamount trail, went up and around to the long trail section, down Eagle's Nest and then back up George's Gorge, and then also on Birch's Loop and Gardiner's Lane. Though we only passed one person the whole day!
there was a LOT of snow, it was surprising. George's Gorge was great, there was at least 4 in of powder over the crust, making it look tempting for downhill if I had on heavier backcountry skis.
My favorite loop we've done so far was in the Breadloaf Wilderness, up Oak Ridge Trail and then down Moosalamoo trail, connecting back up to our car via Blueberry Hill trails and the Wilkinson trails. We usually come up with just one car, so we can't do as many of the point-to-point tours that you do, so I am always trying to figure out amongst three maps if we can make a loop somehow.
anyway, just had to comment, since it just struck me as odd we were on the same trail today, after reading your blog this morning! We have a bicycle touring blog, I think I might need to alter it to add our skiing adventures.
2. Skimaven | Monday, March 17, 2008 at 11:02 AM
Funny! We only passed four other skimavens on Sunday afternoon. We stopped and chatted about the icy trees. You got a good workout yesterday, I see!
Two questions:
- What's the link to your biking blog?
- Do you know how long your Oak Ridge-Moosalamoo-Blueberry Hill loop is? Sounds great.
3. marina | Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 09:21 AM
http://bycycle.dyndns.org/ is our bicycling blog - I just started it last summer to keep track of our long trips. But I do think I need to add in some skiing as well so the name might change ;)
the oak ridge - moosalamoo - blueberry hill loop took us the 'usual' time (10am-4pm) so I am guessing 8-10mi or so, maybe on the shorter side since there was a lot of climbing. We started the Oak Ridge Trail partway in, off of one of the forest roads near the Wilkinson Trails (http://www.moosalamoo.org/map/index.html is a good map if you grab it from Blueberry Hill, the online version isn't as good) but you can see the Oak Ridge Trail starts a lot further away, (on 125) but we parked at the forest road entrance that has the Oak Ridge and the Wilkinson Trails nearby. (http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/gmfl/green_mountain/recreation_management/xcskiing/wilkinson.htm)
is another map. So its Goshen-Ripton Road, we parked right at the entrance of Forest Road 92 - unplowed. So we skiied up Oak Ridge, down Moosalamoo, then onto Blueberry Hill to get to the Catamount, went towards Widows' Clearing, but beared left back across the Goshen-Ripton road to get back onto the Wilkinson Trails. They look disconnected on the Green Mountain map, but since its the Catamount they've connected it - right at the top of that loop. The Moosalamoo map shows it correctly, but you really need the hardcopy.
it really worked out well! It sounds complicated but the Moosalamoo map makes it a pretty clear loop.
we went back to Bolton Valley for st. paddy's day too - we headed back to Boston that afternoon but got in a nice loop up Raven's Wing and then around and down the small secton of Bolton-Trapp, (nice views!) I couldn't get over how much new snow they had even from the day before! We almost went downhill instead but wanted to explore the other side of their backcountry trails.
I'm hoping to go back up next weekend, and maybe do the Skytop Trail. We did the Underhill/Dewey combo this past weekend which was fun, started at Nebraska Valley Road rather than at Trapp making the loop longer. But the snow at Bolton was much better, actually. There are a few nice 'northern Vermont Nordic skiing' maps that we have that are helpful.