Stowe 4/13/08

[kcyanks1]

Conditions: Icy. Ungroomed almost skiable (and mostly closed); groomed stuff edgeable but hard and slick.
Weather: 20's, occasional snow/freezing rain

Weather would've been totally fine mid-winter. Unfortunately, in the middle of the spring corn cycle, if it doesn't warm up a given day (or snow a good amount), everything is ice. Thankfully I had new skis that actually have edges, so I was able to make turns on the groomers. Ungroomed stuff, to the extent open (Goat, Starr, Lookout, National, Hayride, and Chin Clip were all at least partially closed) was mostly unskiable. So most of the abbreviated day was on the groomers, generally off the gondola.

One surprise as compared to 4/12/08 at Sugarbush is that Stowe's woods (at least the one run I took) didn't have debris scattered throughout. The coverage there is incredible. There will be some excellent spring skiing on days that it warms up.

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Nice report..based on my observations two weeks ago..Stowe has way more snow than Sugarbush but that's pretty typical..Stowe did receive 7 more feet of snowfall

[kcyanks1]

Originally Posted by GrilledSteezeSandwich

Nice report..based on my observations two weeks ago..Stowe has way more snow than Sugarbush but that's pretty typical..Stowe did receive 7 more feet of snowfall

Thanks. Stowe does seem to have a lot more snow than Sugarbush. The debris issue is independent of that, though (because I don't think the difference between the two is recent snow that covered up the garbage at Stowe, though maybe I'm wrong). The coverage in Paradise woods at SB was great -- there was just a lot of crap on top of it. But then in John Atkinson's post here a couple days ago, he had some nice, clean looking Sugarbush woods. I guess what the storm did varied based on location (probably having to do with aspect, density, types of trees, etc.).