Stowe advice

jimmywilson69 said:

Crop's bear has still been A1. I have never eaten there.

Click to expand...

As someone else posted the Crop is now Idletyme. I went for apps and beer in the brewery part it was good on both accounts. They restaurant/bar side is funky. I hadn't been since it was the Shed.

Smellytele said:

As someone else posted the Crop is now Idletyme. I went for apps and beer in the brewery part it was good on both accounts. They restaurant/bar side is funky. I hadn't been since it was the Shed.

Click to expand...

I can't get used to the new place. Worked as a cook at the Shed winter 96. That bar definitely ranks top 5 for me in terms of beer consumption.

I've been in the new place a couple of times and I keep expecting to see Ken Strong walking around sweeping up popcorn.

I'd recommend the Von Trapp restaurant in their lodge. Rather pricey but really good.

Looking for some other Stowe advice, the on-snow kind.

My wife is a beginner and still learning, so she will only do green trails. Neither of us have ever been to Stowe and I'm looking at the trail map, but having a tough time seeing an all green route down from any lifts with Toll Road being "partially open" whatever that means. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Start with lower mountain Spruce terrain, build confidence, then head over to Mountain Triple on Mansfield side. On the Mansfield side generally speaking the trails farthest to skiers right are the easiest.

I definitely agree with starting on the spruce side if your wife only skis greens. I wouldn't consider the trails skier's right off of the Mansfield triple to be easy blues (gulch, t line, and north slope). I am in a similar boat with my wife who is still fairly new at skiing. She and I have spent the last few days on those trails and lord, north slope and t line have some decent pitch for blues in my opinion. We didn't ski today but toll road on Wednesday was in pretty bad shape and will not be any fun to ski this weekend for sure. The coverage was spotty at best even then and where there was cover it was very slow and required way too much skating to be much fun.

Another FYI- I was amazed at how bad the conditions and coverage were Wednesday morning versus Tuesday at 4 when we left. A ton of trails completely rotted out and closed. There are still a lot of trails with a good base but the soft spring snow turned into more of a wet ice with that grey color and never really softened up at all on Wednesday. Didn't ski today but it's been raining steadily since 1:30 so I'm not expecting anything good for tomorrow. We may actually go to jay just to burn a few ski Vermont passes that we have left.


Sent from my iPhone using AlpineZone

Was more thinking Sunrise to Lower Tyro.

deadheadskier said:

Was more thinking Sunrise to Lower Tyro.

Click to expand...

Sorry, you're right, that one seemed much more mellow than the few others on that side. I haven't skied Stowe that much but have been here all week and my two cents is that it's not the greatest mountain for a beginner looking for variety. With the exception of a few trails off the sunny spruce or meadows chairs, and sunrise and Lower tyro, there aren't many other good options right now. I think a beginner may better off skiing gondolier or perry Merrill than gulch, t line, or north slope.


Sent from my iPhone using AlpineZone

That's a fair observation. Definitely not a great mountain for beginners. Perry Merrill is a great lower intermediate trail. The only challenge is getting down to it for the first couple hundred vertical. Pretty steep in sections and can get scraped off.

An expensive place to only ski greens...

Smellytele said:

An expensive place to only ski greens...

Click to expand...

Stowe seems expensive, period (never been) and I'd never go without a discount. We have 2 out of our 3 Ski VT Passes left to use up, so we'll use up one which will make the price ~$43 I believe. That's about that it would be anywhere else using discounts and we need to use these passes up and like I said, we've never been to Stowe and want to check it out.

cdskier said:

On a related topic...better hurry up and eat at Common Man while you still have a chance. They announced this past weekend that they are closing this Summer and Fall and tentatively re-opening next Winter for one "final" season (with the current owners at least).

Click to expand...

Damnit, we usually go up in the summer and try to eat there while we're up. That's really disappointing