Author Archives: Brian Sweeney

About Brian Sweeney

Computer programmer, blogger and home-brew software developer with a penchant for back-country adventures, old metal, black coffee and micro-brew.

Jay Peak Sidecountry

Another long overdue post from February 12th. This time we returned to the mecca of east coast powder skiing and tree skiing: Jay Peak. As usual the best skiing was in the woods and out of bounds. The two main areas of interest were the woods to skier’s left of Beaver Pond and the woods to skier’s right of Timbuktu. What was wrong with the woods actually inside of the ski area you might ask? Nothing. Except that they don’t have as much fresh pow 🙂 Here’s an overview of the area:

View Jay Sidecountry in a larger map

Me getting fired up for
the descent.

Our first foray our of bounds for the day was off to skier’s right of Timbuktu. The nice part about this, is that contrary to what you might expect about skiing out of bounds, you can’t really screw this up. In the worst case you just wind up on the road and hike/skin/ski back. If it’s a snow storm, beware of highway trucks – we nearly got clobbered by one and had to jump out of the way quickly. But the slog back to Jay was otherwise uneventful. Highlights of this area are: lots of untracked pow and a few cool drops. Their precise locations are unknown to me, unfortunately.

Rob surveys our
newly found line.

Some time in the afternoon we headed over to look for more sidecountry accessed via the Long Trail. Our info indicated that you should enter the woods over by the Beaver Pond, find the Long Trail and follow it as far as North Jay. Any time between North Jay and entering the woods is candidate for powdery woods. We ended up wasting all sorts of time trying to find the long trail, which was buried in snow making it pretty hard to find. Finally we just decided to go North which was the general direction of the LT. The route we found was nice, but it wasn’t as long or as steep as we’d hoped. On the upside there was no shortage of untracked. In hindsight we should have done one of two things differently. There was a steep knoll just south of where we dropped in which would probably have been more fun, if not the same length. If we had had the time, the best option would have been to head all the way up North Jay and find something off of there. It would certainly have been longer and the topo seems to indicate several routes of decent pitch. Eventually all of these runs mellow out and you have to skin or hike back to the ski area. There is a network of x-country trails which we found helpful in filtrating.

Bottom line: anyone who says there’s no powder skiing on the east coast ain’t lookin’ hard enough.

A glimpse of the bottomless pow.

Gear List:

Bolton Valley Sidecountry and treeskiing

Rob and Christine hunting
for some sidecountry
powder skiing

Over a month overdue, here’s my report from the Bolton Valley sidecountry. We’d heard a number of things about this place, aside from the fact that it’s flat and full of kids and old people. Those things are true, but what many do not know is that not many people go there looking for tree skiing or sidecountry, so when it snows (which is pretty much all it did this winter) Bolton holds onto it for a long time. We headed up there on January 29th, did some digging around and found a few cool places to ski.

There are three real areas of interest at Bolton Valley. The main area of interest is the region to skiers right of the actual ski area. The x-country network comes close enough to the alpine area that you can follow it out of bounds and along the ridge. Once on the ridge, the idea is simply to find a clearing in the woods with enough of a pitch to make some good turns. The pitch eventually mellows out and runs into a brook which leads you back to the ski area. We blew it and dropped in too soon and missed a portion of the run, but an inspection of the topo maps shows that some decent turns are to be had in this area. We managed to find fresh tracks for a good part of the way down.

View Bolton Sidecountry in a larger map

The second area of interest is a face above the top of the ski area and just below the actual summit of the mountain. It’s supposed to be steep and tight, requiring a skin or hike from the top of the lift to the summit. Unfortunately we didn’t get the chance to check it out.

Me coming off a cool little drop deep in the woods.
Photo credit: Rob

The final area worth mention is the lengthy tree run all the way to skier’s right. It seems to follow a long drainage down the side of the mountain. It’s not super steep and it’s more open than say, Hatchet at Wildcat, or Beaver Pond at Jay, but I found the terrain interesting. There are plenty of small drops, large rocks, rolls and fall aways in the chute. We were nearly a week (I thing) after the most recent snow and there was still plenty of soft snow to go around.

View Bolton Sidecountry in a larger map

Franconia Ridge

Having been confined to lift serviced terrain thus far in the season, Rob and I decided it was about time we ventured into the backcountry. Specifically, we chose to ski Lincoln on the western slope of Franconia Ridge. We arrived at the Lafayette Place parking area around 7:30 am. After a solid 20 minutes of messing around with our gear, we were on the trail. It was bright and clear, the wind was still and it was about 10 degrees: perfect skinning weather!

Here’s an overview:

View Franconia Ridge in a larger map

We shot off down the the Old Bridle Path toward the Greenleaf Hut, shedding layers left and right despite the cold. The plan was to follow that trail until it passed the bottom of the drainage and then follow it all the up to the top of the slides. After about 2000 feet of vertical, we realized we had missed the cutoff. on the upside, we got a pretty good look at the slides we were about to ski.

View Franconia Ridge in a larger map

We skinned back down the trail about 300 vertical feet, until we found the point where the trail comes closest to Walker Brook. Once there, it was obvious that someone had hiked out of the woods on skis. We should have known to follow these tracks when we first encountered them. We quickly found the brook and followed a week-old skin track toward the slides.



Left: the bottom of the drainage and the slides in the distance. Right: Rob and I skinning.

Eventually the pitch becomes too steep for skins, so we stash the skis and start boot-packing our way up the 1300 foot slide. This was fun but a lot of work. The snowpack was mostly powder, but every now and then we’d find some crust or ice, and in many places we were scrambling over larger rocks that were buried just beneath the snow. For much of the way up we were in thigh deep powder. The ascent was about 35 degrees sustained and we had to use our poles to ladder up for nearly 50% of the time.

This was my first time hiking in my new North Face Off Chute 26. When I first found it, I pretty much concluded that this thing was the perfect winter day pack and my conclusion still stands. I was able to get all of my technical gear, extra layers, food and water into it and it still carries pleasantly.

Rob scrambles upward – I still owe him a case of beer for
breaking trail most of the way.

By the time we got to the top the skies had socked in and it had begun to snow lightly. The wind was blowing steadily, though thankfully not too hard. Even so, it was still pretty cold, so we scrambled to get dressed and ready for the descent. On the way down, we alternated between taking fresh tracks and working the cameras. Check it out…

Rob, wrapping up his snow pit and packing his bag.

A quick review of the run.

Rob, ready to slay pow.

Killin’ it.

Rob disappears behind a small drop, in a cloud of smoke no less.
He talks me into dropping it shortly after…

Me looking like a fool…

Rob shreds up a nice pitch.

Many have already correctly observed that I was on the verge of experiencing cardiac arrest during the filming of this line. This is hard work, we just climbed straight up a mountain! I attempt to redeem myself as seen below:

Ducking under a tree on the way out.

By now, we’d worked up a pretty serious appetite, so we went into town and got sandwiches. All in all, it was a darn good day.

Gear List (click links for more product info):

Head Monsters, Marker Dukes, Mad River Glen, Jay Peak and La Niña…

…Are all my new favorite things.

Northern Vermont got blasted with snow last week and over the weekend. Mad River Glen and Jay were both 100% open so we packed the car and headed north. MRG had been mostly closed during the week, so we figured we’d hit MRG on Saturday for some fresh tracks, and then migrate up to Jay on Sunday to take advantage of the overnight snowfall they were expecting.

I’d never been to MRG before, but I’d heard the stories: they have a single (chair lift), don’t do much in the way of snow-making or grooming, and they still don’t allow boarders. Additionally, from a brief chat with a patroller, Rob discovered that ropes and closed signs at MRG are kind of like stop signs in Italy: more of a friendly suggestion. This all made for some exceptional tree skiing: scratchy in places, but mostly knee deep powder with deeper drifts. The woods there are both tight and steep. We spun around 8 laps in the woods before we ran out of gas around 2 pm.

Jay got nearly a foot over Saturday night, and fortunately for us (but not so fortunately for every behind us) we managed to get the first chair up. We were among the first people to hit the woods to far skiers left (Beaver Pond and Andre’s). Again, there were a few bares spots, but mostly it was knee deep powder, with thigh deep drifts no uncommon. It snowed all day, and we continued to find fresh tracks until our last run of the day, just past 3. Behold:

Be envious!

Plenty of snow left by the afternoon…

Of course, in order to best enjoy these epic January conditions, a sweet pair of powder boards are necessary. Thanks to Quiver Killers, I was able to pull my Dukes off of my BD Havocs and plop them onto my Head Monsters with relative ease the night before. At 193 cm long and 95 mm under foot, the Monsters are, well just that: monsters. When I first pulled them out of the box like two years I began question my judgment in buying such a pair of skis on the East Coast. And then they sat in the corner of my room while I decided what to do with them. The excellent snow conditions over the weekend prompted me to pull ’em out and take ’em for a spin. It took me a run or two to figure out how to handle them in the woods, however due to a variety of factors, I found them to handle nearly as well as a significantly smaller ski. The Monsters are exceptionally light, even for their size (in fact they are the lightest of all of my skis). Coupled with the snub-nosed form factor of the Dukes, the whole setup keeps a very low moment of inertia. I found that this really lets me throw them around quickly. The Dukes are mounted well aft of center which allows me to pivot on my heels quickly and easily, and the added length up front lets you keep an aggressive forward stance. All in all, they could hardly have worked out better. I can’t wait to take these beasts out west…

The Vermont sunset on the way home from Jay.