Tag Archives: sidecountry

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:


Black Diamond Contour Elliptic Carbon Trekking Pole Ink Blue, One SizePOC Synapsis 2.0 HelmetPOC Lobes Goggle Black/White, One SizeBlack Diamond Guide Glove - Men's Natural, L

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

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