Long trail to Buchanan shelter

 For the first time in 2 months it wasn't a good day for skiing. It got too warm the day before and was scheduled to get too warm again. The plan was to go up to the Long Trail from the snow mobile parking lot. Snow shoeing on this day but doing recon work for skiing on another day.

This is a steep uphill that goes up to the Long Trail. We took a right to head North. At this point there is a long stretch, maybe 1.5 miles, of ridge skiing with good views to both sides and pretty open for skiing. After that it gets harder. The tracks, even old tracks, went away so it was hard to follow the trail. It also gets steep at points here so probably about 1 mile of harder terrain if we were skiing. Then we got to the intersection with the trail that goes to the Buchanan shelter. I have done this downhill back to the ponds this year and it is a nice one. With snow shoes it wasn't that exciting but felt good to not be breaking trail. Since we were going back to the snow mobile parking lot the downhill keeps going, for 2 miles, past the ponds. We saw no one all day until we got back to the ponds area. Even there I think we only saw 2 people. A good weekend excursion.

This would be a good ski for some day. 8 hard miles so would need to leave some time for it. Lots of up and down. Doing the loop the way we did it probably makes the most sense. Once you get up the first big uphill there is a long stretch of what would be nice ridge skiing.

There is still plenty of snow. We need some colder days and another small storm to be back to great skiing again.

Back to Bolton

 It is light until 5:30 now which makes for a longer day. I made it out Fri late afternoon and then Sat early morning. Things change fast from day to day. Fri was blue sky and very little wind. Sat was very windy and snow turning to sleet. I left before the sleet got going. The two pictures from Sat are from Harringtons View where the wind was 40+. Wind was pretty blocked in the woods the rest of my time out.

Sat:

 

Clouds, sun, snow

 Well, mostly clouds and snow but nothing wrong with that. Keeps snowing 2-4 almost every night. Made it to Stowe two days this week and both days had fresh snow from the night before. Starting to take great conditions for granted. Big base so you can ski anywhere on trails or woods. Both these days were above freezing in town but the mountains were right around 32 and it remained winter skiing with snow off and on one of the days. 

Middle of Feb

 Another great ski week comes to an end. Luckily there should be plenty of skiing next week also.

This week included Stowe, Bolton, CHSA, Bolton.

Since I haven't been to CHSA this year I will say a few things about that. The trails keep expanding there. You can go up to the Camels Hump Challenge trail past the bus and then connect back into the CHSA trails a few miles down the Challenge trail. Holly and I did that Sat as well as checking out a few groomers including Crows Foot which was our way down. It had snowed a few inches the night before and snowed the whole time we were there.

I had two half days off during the week. I planned on skiing both days at Stowe. The first day was windy and cold so I decided to go to Bolton instead. Good call as the lifts were on wind hold off and on and it was cold. The next day at Stowe was nice. Warmer and very little wind. Run of the day was lift line and Hay Ride. Both had nice powder turns all the way down. Woods off of Hay ride was skiing nice also.

Here we are CHSA:

Jeff's new cabin?

Back at Bolton Sunday: