Surprised at Bolton once again

The temperatures are too warm in the valley. I went up to Bolton because I heard they got some snow. It was great! They got 2-4 the night before and another 2-4 the night before that. Nice powder with good base and fast fun skiing. It was 32 degrees when I left at 1:00PM. Not sure if it will get too warm in the afternoon. Fresh tracks most of the time I was there. The parking lot was very crowded but not many people on the back country trails. Eagles Nest early then Paradise Pass and White Rabbit.

A little ice on the lake. Doesn't look like it will freeze this year.

Solar Halos

Saw what I think are Solar Halos or Sundogs while walking after work. I think it is the sun reflecting off ice crystals in the clouds. Pretty interesting. Tried to capture it in photos below. Mixed results. At some points it looked like a second sun.

This is a halo. Not the sun.

Bolton->Little River State Park (Waterbury)

The plan was to take the Cotton Brook trail down from Paradise Pass at Bolton and ski back to a car we had dropped off at Little River State Park. Things did not go according to plan! We started out at Bolton and went up to the Paradise Pass area. The snow was great up there. Plenty of it and temperatures must have been just below 32 since the snow was in good shape. We then headed down the Cotton Brook trail which also had good snow for the top half where the steeper skiing is. As we got down low and started traversing over toward the snow mobile trails things warmed up and the snow turned to cement. It was a slog in the deep snow that was sticking to the bottoms of our skis. Luckily Jill had wax that helped a lot but it still was a lot of work. Finally we got out to the snow mobile trails and we were relieved to be out of the woods and onto "groomed trails". I had done this trip before and thought you followed the snow mobile trails until you found some of the Little River trails to ski off onto. We skied for a while and got to some signs. One said Ricker Farm 1.3 miles. I thought that was good since I recognized the name from the State Park. We went for a while and got to another intersection with different signs. Left to a gate, no sign straight ahead, and something else to the right. We went left toward the "Cotton Brook Gate" which was a mistake! This crossed the river and went along the side of the reservoir. By the time we saw the reservoir we had cell reception and a map and saw we were on the wrong side of the reservoir. It was about 4:30 by this point so we had to press on. We ran into two people later on that we had talked to earlier in the day. They were out a lot longer than they expected also and we skied out with them to their car. At this point we had skied all the way around the long arm of the reservoir and were in Moscow! Luckily the two skiers we met drove us to Waterbury which was very nice of them. From there we called for a ride and then picked up our cars. Many thanks to Brian for driving out to Waterbury and picking us up. We got home at 7 or so. Very thankful we got out of the woods just before it got dark and things worked out (sort of). No problem getting to sleep when I got home!
An adventure to say the least. Some nice skiing at the beginning of the day. Lots of work after that and we had to push ourselves to cover a lot of miles before it got dark. Did I mention it started raining from about 3:00 to sunset?

Dropped a car at the dam in the AM. Unfortunately did not ski back to it!

Getting ready for some downhill

Christmas in Paradise

Bear "nest". Claw marks on beech trees in this area.

Skiing cement

Powder day - Smugglers Notch

At Smugglers Notch on Thursday. We got a good snow storm the day before so it was a great powder day. Went up the LT and skied the woods trails from that area. Woods and trails were in great shape all day. Ran out of energy before we ran out of good skiing. Very few pictures since I didn't want to stop to take them! One below of Sterling pond from LT and looking up FIS toward end of day.

There was enough snow so there was good local skiing at Shelburne Farms:

Back at it

We got about 1/2 inch in the valley. I went to Bolton again thinking I would just poke around on the groomers and get some exercise. Turned out to be a great day! Who knew? The woods up high had 4 inches of nice snow. Just enough to make it really nice and also fast. Stayed around Paradise Pass and all the open woods in that area that go toward the Waterbury side of things. Mostly untracked in that area all day.

Christmas?