After plans fell through for the weekend, I took Saturday off to rest and decided on Stowe for Sunday. I wasn’t expecting much. The storm was three days past and base temperatures on Saturday were above freezing. But I knew the ridge would have some great skiing regardless. So I set a late alarm. I woke up in no hurry and checked my phone for a weather update only to discover Stowe reported 4-8″ of new snow overnight. Lesson learned, never set a late alarm.

Between Stowe’s early lift openings and the 2.5 hour drive, first tracks were not going to happen (nor second or third for that matter). But that wasn’t why I was making the drive. I see no reason to ski Stowe unless I am going to hike the ridge and I figured (correctly) traffic up high would be limited.

The gondola singles line was walk on all day and the regular line was barely longer. Powder hounds were extremely limited and storm chasers had already gone home. I sampled the woods off both sides of Chin Clip a few times. I found ample untracked and tracked powder further out and packed powder on the more well known lines. But that was not the main attraction. The lack of a powder frenzy after this past Thursday’s shit show was nice. I enjoyed quality boot deep untracked turns at my leisure.

After stopping for lunch and fueling up, I headed back up and started climbing. The winds were fierce and the temperature was quite cold but I fought my way up the gully despite the bad weather and my extra baggage. Traffic in the gully was light and the wind was refilling the boot steps making travel challenging. Stepping off a boot step resulted in thigh deep post holing. I was passed by a lone snowboarder, but I didn’t see anyone else during the climb.

I opted for the less direct but far easier descent off the Chin and dropped into knee deep soft untracked. Wow. Absolutely sensational and completely unexpected. The wind had loaded the snow exceptionally well and as a result, I enjoyed some of my best and deepest turns of the season. Unfortunately, those turns were short lived as I was soon traversing and hiking up and over to the main attraction, one of my top three favorite lines in the east.

I was surprised to find that the brook had only been lightly tracked by a handful of prior skiers. So I continued to enjoy mostly untracked turns in boot to knee deep powder down one of my favorite lines. Absolutely amazing! The turns were fluid and occasionally inspired in defiance of my fatigued state. Despite the big vertical drop, the run ended far too soon and the long slog back to the resort ensued. I was completely exhausted so I called it a day despite a strong desire for a second lap.