Bolton Valley | January 23, 2011

Got back from Bozeman last night around 7pm, pretty wild ride into Denver and even scarier into Boston but I’m still here. We ventured up to Bolton at 4:30am yesterday morning, apparently they had been getting cranked the last few weeks while I was in Montana, one storm after another. The temp was forecasted to be a high of -4, we’re used to it being cold up at Bolton — last year we skied in -37 degree wind chill, each one of us got a little tinge of frostbite and mine is still there.
Yesterday was a perfect mix of clouds and sun, just enough to make some beautiful photos. We had planned to scope out the centerline chute down the middle mountain at Bolton – which isn’t lift served. Once we started skinning we realized there was definitely enough snow for this line to go. As we started to ascend the road from the Vista lift to the Wilderness lift we realized it was going to be pretty difficult to find this line, it was very clear from the bottom of the mountain but things are different from elevation. We reached the point where we thought it would be and headed into the wilderness in search of the chute. In the process I got myself stuck up to my neck in a treewell which was terrifying to say the least, and Lucas did as well. The problem up high in VT right now is that there is a ton of thick brush and trees covering the ground, when the snow falls on that it doesn’t exactly fall on the ground, it usually falls on top of the brush and continues to accumulate on top. When you step on some of these areas the brush holds up, but some areas fall clean through to the ground and some holes an be endless deep. It took me 20 minutes to get out of this hole and by the time I got out and started skinning back to where Andy and Lucas had been before, Andy had found the famed Centerline Chute. Well, it was completely scraped off, we were not surprised, pissed or agitated about this because the guy who found it before us was on foot, in 4′ deep snow. We somehow got down it, into the lower angle terrain that was actually pretty awesome. Just another reason why we love Bolton Valley so much. We’ll be back to the mountains this week/weekend — enjoy!