We were atop Mt Greylcok, the tallest peak in Massachusetts, the other weekend when we started receiving images and videos of folks back in Vermont skiing our tallest peak, Mt Mansfield.
The Toll Road which winds up Stowe at mellow grades is ideal for early season sliding, since it gets you to higher elevation but retains smooth terrain and switchbacks. It’s often the site of the first ski of the season if nature is kind enough to drop some snow before the ski areas can make the artificial stuff from guns and compressors.
While the weather brought some big fluctuations throughout the past week, there was still plenty of snow up high if you were willing to hike for it yesterday. As is customary, a dedicated handful of Juniors and I strapped skis to our packs and began the march up the Toll Road.
The snow on the roadside began to pile up, until the road itself was covered in white. A little higher still and we determined that the time had come to switch from shoes to skis. We strode our way on some old fishscales up to the top of the Toll Road, skied some laps around the flatter terrain there, and continued on to the Octagon area and the top of Nosedive.
Conditions were super variable: snow guns were spewing sticky wet snow, while dry powder sat atop icy crust in other spots. Cat tracks from machines and snowmobiles presented chunky surfaces with bumps and clumps.
In short, it was the perfect conditions for the first day on snow.
Skiing tricky stuff makes for more competent skiers! And if you can climb up a mountain and rip back down on the same pair of narrow skis with your Nordic boots and little else, you won’t be phased in the slightest by a fast downhill on a groomed racecourse.
When we paused to “look down” at the snowless green Stowe golf course and villas far below, it provided some good perspective on what we’d accomplished. It also made me think back to classic old ski films where racers and explorers were conquering the bigggest of mountains on the simplest pieces of gear:
Some of my favorite quotes come from old ski literature like Luke Bodensteiner’s Endless Winter (ok, 1994 is not that old) where he remarks that “nobody can call themselves a skier until they can ski it all.” Or an old quote from some book or movie of years past, with the stipulation that “back in the day, there was no downhill skiing or cross country skiing…there was just skiing.”
So, here is a look at just skiing on Stowe yesterday!
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