March 10

I get an A+ for effort today, but an F for skiing... I met Steve at the Dewey trailhead this morning at the new 9am, it was 25F, the wind was gusting to hurricane force, a ton of branches had fallen on the road, and the trees were swaying wildly. We discussed that even if …

Day 105: March 5

I dropped off the Chickadee to her 7am Jazz band practice at EHS this morning, and made my way to Underhill State Park to skin up the Teardrop trail. At 7:15 am, it was a brisk -1F at the trailhead parking without any wind, even though the forecast called for 20 mph westerlies. It's cold …

Day 86: Feb 13

Powder day ! School was cancelled, but the chickadee didn't feel like skiing, and John didn't feel like skinning up and I didn't feel like driving +3 hrs to Stowe in a snowstorm and Finn had to go to UVM. The ski bum chose to skin up to Stowe and I left the house at …

Day 85: Feb 12

We are getting 12-18" of powder tonight and tomorrow - yippee! Therefore, today was the last day of a whole week of crappy conditions and to celebrate (!) I drove to Stowe like a tourist and a gas guzzling american. During the drive, I calculated that the extra 60 miles of driving, instead of skinning …

Day 59: Jan 15

I can't be a tourist two days in a row if I want to reach my vertical skinning goal, and I wanted to skin up before skiing with the men at Stowe today. Finn doesn't have school on Tuesdays and Thursdays this session - so he is a college ski bum, and John and him …

Day 34: Dec 18

Smuggs and Stowe both reported 6" of new snow this morning, so I had to verify their claims... The weather forecast also showed very strong winds from the north-west, so I knew the snow was going to be piled up somewhere... I just had to find out where. Temp was around 14F at the base, …

Day 28: Dec 11

Since it was cold this morning (1F) and I had to bring Hazel at the high school for jazz band at 7am, I decided to commute to Stowe by yet another route: the TearDrop trail, on the western side of Mount Mansfield. Stowe is mostly on the eastern aspect of the mountain. Therefore, a "simple"  …

Day 26: Dec 9

There are no days off for the ski bum who wants to ski 150 days in a season.... therefore, I got up at 5:30am on a Sunday morning to skin up Sterling Mountain at 7am.  The snow guns were running so it was a little annoying; the snow made by the guns is sticky, and …

Day 22: Dec 5

It was so good yesterday, that i decided to repeat the adventure, minus the car ride though. So I skinned up Black Snake at Smuggs (before the lifts open obviously), across Sterling Pond, up the Long Trail, down Spruce Peak at Stowe, across the road in the gondola and then back up the Forerunner quad.  …

Day 20: Dec 1

To celebrate the arrival of December, I decided to skin up Black Snake at Smuggs, and make my way around Sterling pond and up the Long trail, to the top of the Sensation Quad on the Stowe side (Spruce Peak).  (see day 10 post for the route - shown in yellow).  This "commute" is particularly …

Day 19: Nov 30

John joined me for the notch road commute today... however, we ended up getting a late start (ski bums need coffee and then newspaper reading time in the bathroom 💩), which meant we only had time to take 2 runs on the lift, and then we had to skin back up the notch to pick …

Day 10: Nov 19

Today I decided to commute to "work"  (ie, skiing at Stowe) by skiing over the 3 mile stretch of the Notch road (route 108) which is closed in the winter (the red line).   Going around by car adds ~32 miles (the blue line). Blue line shows how to get to Stowe by driving around... Red …