The rabble invaded Stowe today for the Can Food Drive and I was more than happy to do my part for a $25 ticket. Regardless of conditions (generally), I don’t pass up opportunities to ski Stowe at a discount.

Conditions were interesting and variable. It puked snow all day which was a glorious sight to behold halfway through the month of April. But don’t let your guard down because everything looks soft and fluffy! Ascending the Mountain Road, the rain snow line pretty was the Toll Road Area. Just down the Mountain Road everything was wet and rainy. Snow near the base area was very wet and there was a hard setup from the day before with warming temperatures causing consolidated snow to firm up. The lower 200-300 vertical feet of the mountain was choppy and unfriendly. Upper elevation sported a dense powder with untracked lines were hard to find though available off the beaten path.

After finally getting to disappoint myself by sampling Goat which had been roped on my previous visits, I wasted no time ducking into the woods. Trees in the Upper Mountain Forerunner area were mighty fine and impressive with that thick, dense powder. Mighty fine steep and tight lines in the trees, thank you very much! But I quickly decided that the royal soaking on the Forerunner was not worth the upper mountain trees and spent most of the day on the Gondi.

I found lots of nice untracked woods off the Gondi with a few especially choice lines of untracked. Twenty two powder days for the season and still counting! Unbelievable. I am almost batting 50/50 on powder days at this point with 44 total days this season to date.

Skiing Stowe always seems to make me appreciate Jay so much more. I really can’t stand 2000 vertical feet lifts. Really! I love cycling a much shorter lift in which I get the type of skiing I want from the first turn through the last. With Stowe (like Wildcat in this respect, Cannon also for that matter Zoomer excluded), I feel like I can waste 1/4 or 1/3 of a run (perhaps more) just trying to get to where I want to go. You can do glades almost top to bottom in some spots, but from my limited experience, some of the better shots that retain the goods longer tend to require a lot of wasted energy.

Then again, I have gotten lazy skiing Jay this year with all the powder. I used to love skiing bumps… now they are just something I tolerate en route to the powder. So having to ski down 400-500 vertical to get to a line is annoying. But I am always impressed with Stowe in that regard as the mountain makes you work for it. I just as rather get the same awesome powder tree skiing without having to work for it though.