# Stowe/Mt. Mansfield, VT 4/25/2009



## J.Spin (Apr 29, 2009)

*Date(s) Skied: *April 25th, 2009

*Resort or Ski Area: *Stowe, VT

*Conditions: *~80 F in the early afternoon at the Midway Lodge (~1,700'), 60s F in the Mt. Mansfield alpine (~4,000'+), ripe corn snow below ~3,600' with some sloppy snow above that elevation due to recent snowfall.

*Trip Report: *The boys were more interested in planting flowers with Mom on Saturday than skiing, so unfortunately I couldn’t interest them in going out for some turns.  This meant that I was on a solo outing, but the upside was that I’d be able to do a much bigger tour than I would have been able to with Ty, or especially with Dylan.  The skies were clear and blue all Saturday morning on what was likely our warmest day of the spring up to that point.  The temperature was already around 80 F when I pulled into Stowe’s Midway lot (~1,700’) in the early afternoon, and with the forecast for temperatures in that range, I hadn’t been too optimistic about the snow quality.  My major goal was to at least get in a good workout, so I was willing to negotiate some sloppy snow on the descent if that was the way it had to be.

Snow was available right from the Midway Lodge elevation, with just a couple hundred feet of fairly flat walking on grass to get on it from the parking lot.  I was immediately surprised when I got on the snow and found that it wasn’t sloppy at all; it was all corn with just the top inch or so loosened up.  That’s the sort of corn that seems to provide some of the easiest turns, so I was immediately enthusiastic about the potential for a quality descent.  There wasn’t much of a breeze in the lower elevations, but the snow helped keep the air temperature a bit cooler and the ascent was very enjoyable.  For ascent attire I’d gone about as minimally as I felt comfortable doing, with a short sleeve polypropylene T-shirt and my ski pants with the side zippers fully open, and that worked out to be a comfortable setup for the temperature.  I hadn’t made a non-powder ascent on skins in a while, and I was quickly reminded how the lightness of Telemark gear allows you to simply fly up the slopes.  Before I knew it I was up at the Cliff House (3,625’) and feeling great, so I decided to keep going up into the alpine.







I set my skis onto my pack and hit the climbing gully.  There was a bit of rotten snow in spots, and as I didn’t immediately find a boot ladder, I had visions of an inefficient, sloppy climb with lots of post-holing.  I’d already post-holed a few times in the outskirts of the gully (it only took one of those to remind me to get my ski pants zipped up at least halfway) but fortunately, about 50 feet up the climbing gully I found a boot ladder made by some nice big feet.  That made the going fairly smooth, and the views of the Green and White Mountains continued to improve with each step.  Near the top of the gully, I ran into a guy about to descend.  He had spent an overnight or two on the mountain, and said that he’d been amazed to find fresh powder on Friday morning when he’d started skiing.  It sounds like along with Thursday morning, Friday morning had also been good in the higher elevations with regard to fresh snow.  The downside of the fresh snow was that conditions in the alpine were still a bit sloppy.  The new snow had not yet cycled to corn in the highest elevations, so it just wasn’t going to provide an optimal surface.  By the time I departed from my conversation in the gully, I was moments from the Mansfield ridge line.  Up on the ridge I enjoyed the new westerly views of the Champlain Valley and Adirondacks, and decided to stop in at the top of the Chin (4,395’) since I was so close.  There was a small group of college students enjoying the popular leeward side of the summit, and there was a pleasant breeze of probably 15 MPH or so.  The high temperature for the day at the Mt. Mansfield stake came in at 67 F, so I suspect that the summit maximum temperature was probably close to that.  Getting an April day like that at the top of the Chin is certainly a treat.











For my descent, I wasn’t able to ski right in the summit or the West Chin area due to lack of snow, but I was able to ski down the gully where the Long Trail drops away from the Chin as it heads south.  It was quite a perspective to see the snow create a flat surface through the gully, when in the off season it’s a 10-foot deep chasm containing the hiking trail.  I had to remove my skis to descend the very top of the climbing gully, but below that point one could keep them on continuously.  As expected, the new snow up high that hadn’t fully cycled to corn wasn’t as nice as the corn snow on the bottom 2,000’, but I actually had some fun turns in the climbing gully, and it let me work on Telemark turns in steeper, tighter confines.  I still had to make some alpine turns and throw in some side slipping up there since some areas were just so tight, but overall the gully allowed a good mix of styles.  The crème de la crème of snow surfaces for the day was probably the top half of the Gondolier descent.  There must have been very little traffic up there because most of the snow surface was just a smooth layer of ripe corn.  The lower half of Gondolier still had nice corn snow, but the surface wasn’t as smooth as the top half of trail.  Perhaps the lower elevations had experienced more melting that started forming aberrations in the surface.  Based on my GPS data, it looks like my descent was 2,720’, not quite what you can get for vertical in the winter when you head all the way back down to Route 108, but still a decent run.  There were still about 7 feet of snow at the stake on Saturday, and even though that level has dropped some with the recent warmth we’ve had, skiing should available on Mt. Mansfield for a while.





















J.Spin


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## drjeff (Apr 29, 2009)

NIce TR there Jspin!  TR's have now been taken to a new technological level!


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## ComeBackMudPuddles (Apr 29, 2009)

wow!  that's hi-tech!  cool.


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## thetrailboss (Apr 29, 2009)

Wow, amazing TR.  That puts mine to shame....

Always a pleasure to read your reports.  If you and the family are ever skiing at SB, let me know.  Would love to take a few runs.


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## skidmarks (Apr 29, 2009)

Cool Data! Gets me thinking....


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## TheBEast (Apr 29, 2009)

Very nice report!

What kind of GPS unit do you have?


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## RootDKJ (Apr 29, 2009)

drjeff said:


> NIce TR there Jspin!  TR's have now been taken to a new technological level!


+1  Awesome.  



TheBEast said:


> Very nice report!
> 
> What kind of GPS unit do you have?


Really, that's pretty neat.


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## Grassi21 (Apr 29, 2009)

Always loved your TR and pics.  This def. takes it to a new level.  Good stuff man.


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## campgottagopee (Apr 29, 2009)

Not a big TR poster and now never will be 

Great report!!!!


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## skiadikt (Apr 29, 2009)

very cool. way to get some.


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## BigJay (Apr 29, 2009)

Great stuff J.Spin!

Good to see you get some while everything is closed!


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## billski (Apr 30, 2009)

That's a helluva waterfalls under the gondi!


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## J.Spin (May 4, 2009)

drjeff said:


> NIce TR there Jspin!  TR's have now been taken to a new technological level!


I certainly learned the techniques from others (like BigJay, who showed me how to use Adobe Illustrator to make really nice Google Earth plots of GPS tracks) but I do have fun adding my own touches.  I've actually been doing these for a few seasons, although I don't think I've sent any in to AlpineZone since I've only recently been posting here more often.  Generally I only make plots for ski outings with hiking, and mostly backcountry trips since it takes a bunch of extra work to get the plots together.  I think it's really most useful for more unfamiliar terrain outside the usual ski areas anyway.  I've added a few reports below that use the technique - I think having the plots gives a much better idea of what went on where, and what the overall geography is like:

*Camel's Hump State Park, Vermont - January 21st, 2007*

*Bolton Valley/Cotton Brook Area, Vermont - February 4th, 2007*

*Bolton Valley backcountry, Vermont - February 11th, 2007*

*Bolton Valley backcountry, Vermont - February 18th, 2007*

*Pease Mountain, Vermont - March 3rd, 2007*

*Bone Mountain/Bolton Valley backcountry, Vermont - March 11th, 2007*

*Waterbury, Vermont - December 16th, 2007*

*Bolton Valley/Cotton Brook Area, Vermont - December 29th, 2007* 

*Robbins Mountain, Vermont - January 5th, 2008*

*Waterbury, Vermont - January 20th, 2008*

*Waterbury Backcountry, Vermont - February 16th, 2008*


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## J.Spin (May 4, 2009)

TheBEast said:


> What kind of GPS unit do you have?


It's a Garmin Etrex Vista.  It's actually a somewhat older model that I got from a friend back when we lived in Montana.  I believe the newer ones have more sensitive receivers (it looks like the new version has an "H" at the end of the name to indicate that fact), but mine does fine in the trees as long as I keep it mounted up high on my shoulder.  A current picture of the unit from the Garmin website is below:






-J


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## billski (May 4, 2009)

I broke down and got a GPS (same model, got it used on ebay last year)  after I became frustrated and almost VERY lost for the first time ever, when bushwhacking some abandoned (like 20 years abandoned) trails.  I had to do that because the compass and topo maps were just not enough help in the densely forested area.  I had made two failed attempts to summit and became very confused due to heavily wooded below-cliff bushwhacks and some hunter's markings.  I was actually looking for a very unique treasure, which I finally found on the third attempt.  I had even resorted to flagging (highly unusual for me).  It turned out I was taking the incorrect branch off an old cart road, but since the paths were unmarked, it was difficult to find.

What I ended up doing was loading known way points (specific ledge outcroppings, end of ledge, drainage, blowdowns) based on topos and Google earth into the GPS and from that point, I always knew where I was relative to the known objects.  Simply knowing where North was and my heading, were not enough, it was too dense..  The heavy foliage made it very challenging for reception, so I'd have to find a clearing and re-sync, but it all worked out in the end.

Bringing it home and downloading and mapping it me a much better sense of where I had been and why I had made the mistakes I did.   I know have an electronic "trail map" of my bushwhack, which is really nice for the next time.  It was really cool and a lot of fun.  I enjoy that sort of exploration.   I take my daughter geo-caching sometimes, which is a great, low risk way to get them into the forests, have some fun and enjoy ourselves.

BTW, I have the Vista without the "H", higher sensitivity and it worked out just fine.
BTW, if you have an IPHONE, you can get geo coodinates triangulated off the cell phone towers.  Kinda neat, but a NH Fish and Wildlife guy I talked to said the accuracy can vary widely and is nearly useless in search and rescue.


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## Greg (May 4, 2009)

This is the uber TR. Nice work!


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