Krysta starting up the Battell trail.  It’s a long way up to the top.

It’s not often that you get to walk through a leafless (or bug-less!) forrest on a warm sunny day.

The forest floor was covered with this tiny flowers, an imminent sign of the forthcoming explosion of life in the woods.

Taking a break with Mt Abe looming through the trees.  It’s still a long way up from here.

We came across some beautiful mountain cascades.

And there was even a little bit of snow left higher up in the boreal forest.

Just enough snow in spots to make the walking a little bit spicy.

Krysta taking in the views from the summit.

Lookin’ steazy on the summit

Not a bad view towards the south-west, with Breadloaf Mountain dominating the skyline.

And similarly, the south-east.

As we hung out on top for a bit, the haze cleared up a bit and the sun came out making for roughly perfect summit weather – temps in the low 60°s, a light breeze and sunny.  It might have been a bit too perfect though, as Krysta decided to take a short nap.

But soon enough it was time to head back towards civilization.

We found some more beautiful cascades along the way.

And even more of the small pink flowers.  They really were covering the forest floor!

After the hike we headed down into Bristol, where we enjoyed a delicious meal (as always) at the Bobcat.

Heading home through App Gap, we couldn’t help but to pause at the top to watch the fiery sunset unfolding before our eyes.

Awesome weather, awesome hike, awesome day.  ’Nuff said.

The Hendricksons have been coming off very sporadically (if at all) over the last few days, but it hasn’t quite been enough to get the fish excited about those big mayflies… yet.  However, the fish are definitely still out there and hungry, as evidenced by the hundreds we’re seeing every evening feasting on the various midge hatches.  So with little recourse, we’ve found ourselves fishing teeny tiny midges, and with pretty good success at that.

Starting out the season fishing such tiny flies as these (#22 – #26!!) has been a bit more of a technical start than I would have liked, but it’s nice to see that I haven’t lost my edge over the winter months.

Look carefully, the #26 midge  my father’s holding in front of his thumb is super tiny!

Now this has been great fun and all, but bring on the Hendricksons!

Pretty fine looking…

Pops enjoying the surprisingly soft cord.  With the warm temps and bright sun, it was pretty ripe by 9:30 am.

On days like these, cord really is king.

Anyways, here’s a quick shot of my father taking a quiet ride up through the snow on the new Marmot lift.

I look forward to the rest of my time out here.  Hopefully it will dump, but even some fun spring corn days would be nice!

We spent most of the day lapping around the in-bounds terrain, but towards the end of the day we decided to take a hike to see if we could get into any remaining snow that had fallen a few days prior.

Krysta beginning the hike up towards the summit of Mt Mansfield.

And working her way through one of the steepest parts of the bootpack.

The weather provided us an intense scene looking south along the Mansfield ridge.

Krysta on the final approach to the summit.  Not having been up to the top yet this winter, we just had to hit the summit.

Me and my Worths (ok, these aren’t technically mine, they’re the Humpback demos… I personally own a pair of Georges, but the Humpbacks were a bit more fitting for the skiing today) on top of the world… Or at least Vermont .

There was lots of cool sastrugi on the ridge.

After dawdling around a bit, it was time to begin the descent.  Maybe we could still make a dinner date, like the normal folks.

Krysta took the first turns, heading into the shadows.

Deciding to take a slightly more roundabout route on the way down, I managed to find my way into a little bit of fresh snow here and there.  Man, I love those pink bases!

Unfortunately, the good snow was a bit too short lived and the rest of the way down became more and more of a sufferfest.  With a combination of not enough snow, too many skiers having passed through before us, and woods that were just a bit too tight, the going was rough.  But we were committed, and so it goes…

We did eventually make it out, but never made it to that dinner date (it took a bit longer than we expected to get out)… Oh well, I’m glad to have spent the day with Krysta doing something a little bit more interesting than most folks out there .

When I showed up in the morning, the mountain was surprisingly calm.  But even more important, the Notch was looking good!  The Smuggs side was socked in, and the clouds were slowly spilling over the mountains.

Not a bad scene to start your day out.  (As always, click to enlarge the panorama).

When I met up with Aaron and his buddy Dave, we took a hike looking for adventure.

And with the snow stake at a measly 48″ (it’s been a rough year on the east coast), adventure is what we got.  I’m not sure I’d recommend anyone to go back into this zone with this little snow, but hey, it was… interesting, nonetheless.

Dave getting ready to drop into some of the… interesting terrain we found ourselves in.

After this, the skiing got rather rowdy and sketchy (again, there probably wasn’t enough snow in this zone).  I didn’t pull the camera out too many times, but here’s a few shots I managed to grab along the way.

Aaron after coming through a small mandatory air and around an icefall.

And popping through the trees.  I guess he’s having fun on those Humpbacks.  :)

Through all of our travail, we did manage to find a few small powder stashes remaining around the mountain.  For the most part though, everything had been skied out pretty thoroughly since the last “storm.”  Still, the adventure is always good and I’m glad we checked out that zone.  But the rest of our day was spent skiing much more mellow terrain.

The clouds hung around through the end of the day, still just as cool as they were in the morning.

Well, that was quite the adventure for the day… Whew!  I’m glad we got out and check it out though, you’ll never know until ya go!

Here’s one quick shot from the day of Josh ripping with the Worth Humpbacks.

So I dragged myself out of bed at an ungodly early hour (especially for a saturday).  When I loaded up the snow report, I was instantly disappointed: Stowe was reporting only 2-4 inches.  What.  The.  Hell!  Guess I was wrong, but I was already awake and ready to ski, so I set off.  With 2-4 inches, I was fairly confident that I could find some soft in a few selects spots before the hordes showed up later in the day.

When I got to Stowe, I jetted off for a lap off the 4Runner, planning on skiing a fairly mellow groomer lap before heading up the gondy.  This was in fact my first run ever on my brand new Worth Georges (Worth Skis, for those of you who don’t know, is a small semi-custom ski company I’m starting up with a few friends.  Check out our website for more info) and my new AT boots, the Tecnica Cochise.  Cruising past some untouched woods off of Nosedive, I just couldn’t help myself and jumped right on into the fray.  2-4 inches my ass!  There was at least 8-10 in the woods, with much more in a few select spots!  I guess my hunch paid off!

After that exhilarating run, I took off for the gondy, and being one of the first ones up there, I quickly set off for a relatively well known side country area.

As I passed a few snowboarders struggling on the traverse, I worked myself into position to get first tracks. To say that I was pleased finding this scene would be an understatement!

I kept on lapping that same zone basically all day long and continued to find fresh snow for my Georges to devour.  Man, those skis are so much fun!

Around 11:30 or so:

Around 1:30 or so, still fresh and untouched

At the end of the day, I hooked up with with my buddy Josh and we took a few laps, where yet again, we found more fresh.

After a long day of teaching, Josh was pretty stoked to still be skiing fresh (especially on a crowded saturday!).

Wow.  Just WOW!  It’s not often that you get to ski fresh all day, let alone on a saturday at Stowe.  This added with the joy of skiing my new Worth Georges and today was just a real treat!

At the end of the day, we met up with my buddy Josh and took a lap deep into the sidecountry.  The top half skied excellently, with lots of deep and untracked snow.  As we got lower down, things were a bit more tracked out (and therefore more icy with a stiff crust underneath), and the woods needed a bit more coverage (it was schwacky!), but overall the skiing out there was awesome!

Josh enjoying some day old pow!

Being a day late isn’t always a bad thing .

Krysta proving a little schwack can’t hurt that bad.

Tearing it up.

Josh getting deep!

She sure loves pow.

Sometimes I get a little bit narrow minded (thanks to Josh for the following photos of myself!).

But really, it’s hard to think straight when you’ve got pow on your mind.

Yehaw!  What a day.  Now hopefully the weather cooperates through the next 36 or or hours, because I’ve missed zipping through tight eastern trees quite a bit .