After a slow start, it suddenly snowed and winter was here, full-time, for now. Top and below, the Montpelier, VT, middle school cross-country team heads across a field on an adventure ski. Everything else is within about two miles of home during the first big snowfall of 2021.
Category Archives: Skiing
Last Days of a Long Season
It started snowing in early November in Vermont and kept snowing, with a few rainstorms in between, well into April. At its deepest, the snow on top of Mt. Mansfield, the highest point in the state, reached 10 feet. And the manmade snow on the ski resort slopes hung on well into May. These pictures were taken May 5 and people skied for weeks after […]
Also posted in Spring, spring skiing, Vermont
Tagged spring skiing, Vermont
World Cup at Killington
Mikaela Shiffrin celebrates her slalom win Sunday. When bringing a weekend of women’s World Cup alpine ski racing from Europe to Killington, VT, was proposed, Eastern skiers all but guaranteed that they’d show up to cheer, and Killington guaranteed snow to race on. After all it would be the first women’s World Cup race in Vermont for 38 years. They all delivered Saturday and Sunday, when […]
First Snow
I know it was 70 last week, but the first snow has arrived on Vermont’s Mount Mansfield, and skiers and boarders have been walking up to ride down. Right on schedule. These are from yesterday. Rocky and grassy in places, but skiable. Â
Also posted in climate, fall foliage, Snow, Winter
Bend, OR
People in Bend, Oregon, are pretty insistent about Bend being sunny, as in more than 300 days a year that are either sunny or mostly sunny. I was there last week and there was only one sunny day out of seven (above, at Mt. Bachelor Ski Resort). The rest of the time was taken up with rain, snow, sleet and freezing rain in varying amounts, coating […]
Wintry Notch
Hard to beat Smugglers Notch in Stowe for drama in early winter. It’s not Buffalo, but it is winter. This was Friday, temperatures in the low 20s and a gusty wind. Frigid, with lots of blue light. Of course, today it’s in the 40s and rainy, and heading for the 60s tomorrow.
Slightly Snowier
Ok, it’s a little early in the season to be obsessed with snow, but it’s still interesting that the valleys remain their tawny, gray and purple November colors while much of Mt. Mansfield, Vermont’s highest peak, had enough snow to ski on yesterday. Some of it was shot out of snow guns, but most of it was real. By the way, snow guns are loud and […]
Green Again
Spring always creeps slowly into the winter-brown Vermont hills and then explodes. This, the other foliage season, a riot of green, seems to arrive in the space of three days. And in the space of two weeks we go from skiing (bottom photo, Mt. Mansfield on April 22nd), to plowing (top, East Montpelier), to bicycling, paddling and mowing the lawn. Summer’s so short it’s a […]
La Coupe du Monde, Quebec
Nordic skiing World Cup races are rarely held outside of Europe’s skiing nations, where almost every winter weekend they are watched by the kind crowds North America can only manage to turn out for events like professional football. But last weekend the World Cup sprints came to an 800-meter hairpin-turn course of manmade snow in front of the provincial parliament building in Quebec City. Americans […]
Also posted in Canada, cross-country skiing, exercise, Snow, Winter
The Notch, Natch
It’s been one of those Decembers in north-central Vermont: virtually no snow. But there was a little bit over the weekend, packed down on the Smugglers Notch road in Stowe, now closed to traffic for the winter but open for skiers, ice climbers, dog walkers, strollers, sledders and anyone else who wants to venture past the gates that block each end. It’s almost the only […]
Also posted in exercise, People, Snow, Vermont, Weather, Winter
Tagged cross-country skiing, Smugglers Notch, Vermont
NCAAs at Stowe
Slightly late putting this post up, but the NCAA nordic ski championships were held at the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe in March.  The weather for the skate race on the first day was beautiful. The second day, for the classic race, it poured. More pictures are here.
Tuck & Roll
Cross-Country ski racers tuck as they glide downhill during the New England Nordic Ski Association Eastern Cup sprints at Craftsbury Nordic Center in Craftsbury, VT, December 18. A gallery of photos from the race is in the pull-down menu under Projects.