Raiders of Snow Valley, VT

Recent snowfall has blessed us across the Northeast, and there is no part of this run that any skier should take for granted.

Snow Valley base lodge

If you haven’t dusted off the boards for awhile, grab your rear-entry’s or your leathers and get after it, conditions are so soft that they’ll put a smile on your face to match the nostalgia of deep winters past.

This weekend, with a fat base worthy of an old time Tribe Called Quest song, my brother agreed to accompany me for a late afternoon skin at a resort that wasn’t as fortunate as those still standing.

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A Jay Peak Thanksgiving

Last August a friend asked me to recommend the Eastern resort with the best chance for fresh snow over the Thanksgiving weekend. I was intrigued because it seemed like a bold and direct challenge to me, to organize an early season destination trip with a good shot at pow.

Jay-Summit

It didn’t take me long to consider Jay Peak, Vermont. Jay is of course the exception that proves the rule, recent winner of Powder Magazines “Best Pow” award and home of a mindbending Eastern US accumulation record total of more than 500″ in a single season.

While there are few guarantees for conditions anywhere on the planet, I’d also been itching to get back to Jay. Few resorts get to completely re-imagine themselves, but it seems that’s what Jay has done in the past 20 years.

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Stowe, Vt: Ignition 2014

November is a dangerous time of year for productivity. If you’re like me, you’ve got a few extra tabs open in your browser at any given moment: one for NOAA, another for your blogging ski-weatherman of choice, and maybe another for a favorite mountain.

Stowe-Vt-November-2014

With rumors flurrying last week about a few inches here or a foot there and with Killington’s trusty machinery as a fallback, I knew I’d be on snow come Saturday morning. The question was where.

For the first time since I learned to ski at age five, the season snuck up on me. I’m usually watching powder edits by mid-August and scraping off summer wax in early October, just in case. Fresh out of college and living in a new town with a job, though, I had other things on my mind this year. When temperatures started to dip toward the end of last month and pictures of dusted peaks began popping up online, I almost wasn’t ready.

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