Vermont Photographer Benjamin D. Bloom

Tawny & I celebrated Valentine’s Day by taking her splitboard out for its first backcountry experience. Tawny’s been in the backcountry before, but slowshoes made it hard to keep up and took a lot of energy out of her. With her old Burton board split, and the hardware mounted up, we were ready to go.

Tawny said that the first few steps were awkward, but she soon fell into a skinning rhythm.  It made me remember my first time on skins and my amazement as they grip the snow.

There were a lot of people in the parking lot, but we only ran into one other couple on the trail. We had plenty of time to enjoy the beautiful Vermont scenery.  The trees had a light frosting of snow on them, making the branches blend in with the cloudy skies.

No matter how many times I look at them, splitboards still look odd to me.

Are we there yet?

A peek into the treats that awaited us.  while the lower part of the skin is a buffed out cross country trail, the upper part opens into large expanses of tracked snow.  Considering we haven’t had significant snow in the last week or so, there’s a fair amount up in the Green Mountains and a surprising amount of untracked still available.

Tawny begins her first skin/ride transition.

I had some skin cheater strips hanging around.  I never appreciated them, but with Tawny’s size, new skin glue, and the fact that her skins are super wide, I think they’ll be helpful for her.

I’m amazed that Voile’s hardware keeps the board together.  It’s such a simple set of devices, but it works quite well!

A quick cup of hot cocoa to warm up and provide a bit of sugar for the descent.

Nice, moderately spaced trees awaited us below.  There were tracks down many of the open areas, but we didn’t have to look too hard to find pockets of untracked.

Was it deep?  Nope.  It was fun, though.  I’m so lucky to have a wife that will join me in the backcountry. Happy Valentine’s Day, Tawny!

With temperatures threatening to hover around 0°F all day, a group of SkiVT-L regulars headed into the Backcountry.  The initial plan was to meet at 10am at the trailhead, but due to some slight forgetfulness, I missed that group.  No worries; the skin in was along the Catamount Trail and the area we planned to ski would continue to drop back onto the trail.  As it turns out, driving from Essex, to Waterbury, to Essex, and back to Waterbury to the trail head meant that I would run into the group just as they were finishing their first lap. Watching some of the final descents, I could tell the snow was going to be interesting.  The winds that swept through the region on Friday had done their damage to pockets of snow making for inconsistent conditions that would throw you over the handlebars when you least expected it.

We all had our moments adjusting to the snow.  I certainly played ostrich more than once, but I was lucky enough to capture Bobby with a spectacular display on his first run.

As much as we joked around, complaining about the snow conditions, it was really quite good skiing in many places.

Definitely good enough to slap the skins on a few times and hunt out more pockets of non-wind affected powder.

Roger – you look like one of them Famous Internet Skiers here.

With temperatures hovering just above zero, not all of our skin glue worked all day.  Seeing as it was a simple out and back, the penalty for complete failure was pretty low.  Any good backcountry skier will have a bag of tricks to dip into when equipment (bindings, skins, boots, etc.) breaks.  In this case, Patrick had duct tape (plaid, mind you) holding one skin on and zip ties holding the other.  It’s worth paying attention when you zip tie your skins, though, otherwise you end up with a predicament like this:

As usual, it was great skiing with all of you.  Pray for snow!  We could use some.  Roger Hill posted a graphic on the SkiVT-L Listserv that compares this year’s snowpack to the 2009 season. It’s pretty dismal.

More photos from our backcountry excursion are on my SmugMug site.

Our last day at Snowbird provided soft snow and sunshine.  The initial plan was to ski in Mineral Basin in the morning and then head over to Little Cloud, where we had previously spent little time, but had good runs.  Well, Mineral Basin was too nice to leave.  The snow on skier’s right was mostly in the shade and softer while the snow on the left was baking in the sun, soft, and heavy (but not manky / mashed potatoes.)

After skiing “Living the Dream” we felt like we were.  Soft, swooping turns down a relatively steep untracked face.  Being on a snowboard, the traverse was some work, but worth it.  To the guy that we met at the bottom, you can see one of the photos below and some more in the gallery titled Snowbird – 1/3/2010

At some point, I’ll finish going through most of the photos and put up a combined set of galleries from our Utah vacation. What a great trip!  We can’t wait to head back.  Next time, later in the season when the snowpack is a little more consistent and predictable.