2/20: Stowe Backcountry (lots of pictures)

[powderfreak]

Sorry for the poor photo quality, the light was extremely flat and we were in and out of the clouds. Also, sorry for the quantity of photos but I know in high school, living down in Albany, I read the reports but pictures are really

I had to be back in Burlington in the early afternoon and Dave and I have wanted to do the Garden ever since the big storm, so we took one gondola ride yesterday and spent a couple hours just wandering around on the summit ridgeline. The climbing gully looked like it had a bootpack at one point but new snow and blowing snow had filled it in so it was a guessing game to find where the previous track was...step off it and go in to your stomach.

Up top, no signs of unstable snow but we didn't go over towards Hourglass so who knows...the gullies were wind blown, chalky pow. They are short but fun and we never see anyone ski this area.

Dave started off with a little air into the first gully.
http://tinyurl.com/25vjey
http://tinyurl.com/2htg9v
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Now down the little snowfield into the second gully.
http://tinyurl.com/24r2w5
http://tinyurl.com/yuwl7d
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nmaD tree got in the way here.
http://tinyurl.com/25mfhb
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Then it was over to the Garden.
http://tinyurl.com/24zwuz
Mansfield Ridge looking south towards the towers/nose.
http://tinyurl.com/2donqg
Dave hiking to the top point with the steep center lines out of sight with the very nice looking skiers left bowl seen.
http://tinyurl.com/2grrt3
Looking down from where Dave is in the previous photo...Andy D. ripped some sweet turns down this at last year's partee. Dave ended up starting his run down this.
http://tinyurl.com/2y4upa

Up on top of the Rock Garden, we saw two tracks down our usually untracked line on skiers right. My first thought was Jim and Scotty hit it for some reason...tracks are always on the skiers left side if there at all. From looking at it in the distance, it looked skiable straight down the center which is rare.

Here's the right side looking out towards the center of the bowl.
http://tinyurl.com/2h4ssp

I wanted to go right down the highest, steepest point in the middle, a line that I've never skied.
http://tinyurl.com/253akw
The top 10 turns right down the middle is usually a bunch of massive boulders, but the incredible wind-loading from this past storm had turned it into a very steep, white ramp. This was something I was concerned could slide but after the first careful turn, I felt good about it. This was pretty steep and led straight to a decent sized cliff at the bottom. The turns were good.
http://tinyurl.com/2bxetg
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Then Dave skied down around after that and took these photos looking up on the lower headwall section. This was made up of a series of small cliffs and was a lot of fun to ski.
http://tinyurl.com/2sfnpb
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Hip checks are a fun way to stop in all this snow.
http://tinyurl.com/2kerkl

Then, Dave ripped some of the best big mountain turns you can get in the east aside from a very few select high elevation largely treeless areas.
http://tinyurl.com/3dl7uu
Transported to the western U.S. for a little while, this is why I love this mountain. GS turns through boot deep fluff on top of a couple feet of settled snow.
http://tinyurl.com/2ncg5e
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Lower down he landed one air off a wind-lip then went for another small drop and ended up going over the handlebars on the landing. Collecting your gear means wallowing through waist deep snow.
http://tinyurl.com/yos3gx

At the bottom of the bowl, it funnels into a gully...
Dave slashing the gully through thigh deep snow.
http://tinyurl.com/23khr3
....and then into really deep trees.
http://tinyurl.com/3xwd6z
http://tinyurl.com/2lr6jt

The Rock Garden is short but its my favorite backcountry shot just because of the type of terrain. And its probably got some of the most vertical of the closest thing to open, bowl-like skiing. Big Jay or Hourglass on Manny both have big verts of open tree skiing but not this wide open.
http://tinyurl.com/2bqef4

Topozone pegs the top of it at just over 4,100ft down to 3,600ft (Cliff House elevation) which runs just above elbow of Perry Merril. 500 verts is short but enough for it to be a helluva lot of fun. The Valentines Day storm transformed the mountain from "ok, we're getting there one small snowfall at a time" to "we're there and then some." Its fun.

-Scott

PS: Sunset Ridge looked awesome from top to bottom. Might be hatching a plan to try that one.
http://tinyurl.com/yuu87s

[bvibert]

Sweet pics, it looks unreal out there!

[RIDEr]

Great shots and great to see the BC finally filling in. I'm surprised it wasn't more tracked up from either the Meatheads or locals.

[highpeaksdrifter]

That is one well done trip report, great job. Thanks for the time and effort.

[Marc]

Woah. Nice trip. Nice pic's. It looks about a bazillion times better than freakin cardigan did. I wish I had been there.

[JimG.]

Nice!

Gonna have to take a day and go to Stowe when I'm in the area the first week of March.

[Greg]

Sweet pics! Thanks!

[cbcbd]

Sweet!

[mergs]

You're givin me goosebumps!

Thanks for the writeup!

[JD]

It's a long hike w/o a ton of payoff as compared to the other stuff to ski for the same effort. That being said, I skiied it untracked last tuesday morning with 2 friesds from skier's right at sunrise and it was great. Good place to go when everything is played.
Nice pics, but jeez, you're practically leading folks there.
Can't we just keep it to Mansfield back country, and leave it at that?