Backcountry Exploring and the Unbearable Whiteness of Bolton

Well, Bolton Zealots, we’ve reached the Great In-Between. It’s this little breather after New Year’s Day and before Martin Luther King Weekend, when things get a bit mellower around the mountain, Season Pass holders re-emerge from their Holiday Week bomb shelters, and I enter a rapid detoxification program for Mountain Dew addiction. Things got pretty bad for me. I spent an entire afternoon out on our Nordic trails trying feverishly to cross-country snowboard. People tell me I claimed to be “training for Vancouver”. But I make no apologies for wearing that American flag spandex unitard.

In this issue:
~ Weekend Projections: Strong, To Quite Strong
~ Backcountry Adventures: The Free-Heel Conspiracy Grows
~ Deals: Ski-And-Stay And College Day
~ Bolton After Dark: Exactly What It Sounds Like
~ Contest: Haiku

Weekend Projections: Strong, To Quite Strong 
Last week, I famously* predicted that our conditions for that weekend could best be summed up by “picturing a unicorn skiing down a rainbow”. Judging by the fact that no one talked to me for a few days after that, I think I really nailed it. We’ve picked up just about 3-feet of snow since New Year’s Eve, and this stable, wintry weather pattern has the mountain in mid-season form. Add in the coating of rime and snow on just about every tree branch, and this place is looking supernaturally white. Which is great for shutterbugs like me. Wait, “shutterbugs” are people who dress up like stuffed animals and re-enact famous medieval battles, right? Because the shutterbug newsletter I write has been getting some very negative feedback.

The forecast for the weekend is no less wintry than what we’ve been enjoying, but will be a bit colder. Saturday’s highs may struggle to climb out of the single digits under clearing skies, while Sunday should bring temperatures in the low teens and more sunshine than we’ve seen in a week. I’ll probably spend that day squinting and shielding my eyes like I’ve just escaped from an underground prison. We plan to be at maximum lift capacity all weekend long, running all 6 of our lifts. Expect surfaces on our groomed terrain to be excellent packed powder, with ungroomed trails holding powder, windblown powder, and some thin cover. “Some Thin Cover” is also the name of my album, where I re-imagine swinging classics from the Great American Songbook. The action will start off each morning with the Vista Quad at 8:30am, followed by our other lifts between 9 and 10am. We’ll keep spinning four of those lifts until 8pm Saturday evening for night owls like me, who spend the daylight hours painstakingly sewing stuffed animal costumes and building historically-accurate counterweight trebuchets. We hit a new peak trail count Friday, and we hope to stay there, with 61 of our 64 trails open. Upper Tattle Tale, Show Off, and our terrain parks (where snowmaking is in progress) are the three holdouts keeping me from saying “we’re 100% open”. The “100% in 2010” T-shirts I made for everyone are starting to seem like a cruel taunt. Which is ironic, because on the back of those shirts I wrote a different cruel taunt for every mountain in the state. Example: “Hey Stowe, that Gondola makes you look fat”. I’m not proud of it. For daily updates, sign up for our snow report here. And if once a day just isn’t enough, you can now follow Bolton Valley on Facebook and Twitter.

Backcountry Adventures: The Free-Heel Conspiracy Grows
Since we’re all here in this safe, trusting place, I feel like I can admit that I wasn’t being completely serious in past newsletters when I called free-heelers “Viking hippies” and claimed that I don’t trust Nordic skiers because one burned down my house. Of course, those are just jokes. The real reason I hate Nordic skiers is because we’ve known since ancient times that people were meant to wear heavy, stiff boots locked into burly bindings. It just makes sense. That’s how it was when the Spartans battled the Persian hordes of Xerxes in the giant slalom at the very first Winter Olympics, and that’s how it should stay. I may be misremembering parts of that movie. But if you don’t share my totally defensible position, then it’s worth checking out the Backcountry Festival at our Nordic Center this Sunday, January 24th. We're teaming up with the Catamount Trail Association to provide a great day of backcountry explorations for anyone--from first-timers to experts. There will be clinics for all abilities, guided tours, gear to play with, and probably lava lamps or tie-dye t-shirts or flower hats or whatever it is you hippies like. The relevant details can be found here. I should also mention that, despite my efforts at sabotage, we also have a brand new fleet of backcountry rental equipment for this season from Rossignol. Somewhere, the Spartan king is weeping. Or dead. Probably dead.

On the other hand, I’ve always liked rock climbers--probably because I was raised to believe that huge forearms were a sign of wisdom. Until I was 14 years old, I worshipped Popeye as our hot-tempered, but benevolent, god. Which is why I fully support the Petra Cliffs/Bolton Valley alliance. They’ve already been running their Bolton Adventure Center up here for some time, and now they’ve decided to offer guided winter backcountry adventures. They’ll take groups, both small and large, out into our hills to sharpen backcountry skills and sample our secret stashes. The also have something for the ladies called “Backcountry Betties” that I’m pretty sure was set up strictly to exclude me. A wise choice. This all sounds kind of awesome, and puts me in a tough position. I like climbers and winter exploring, but I hate Nordic skiers and free-heeling. If only cross-country snowboarding was more than just an impossible fever dream.

Deals: Ski-And-Stay And College Day
My love of deals is also no secret, and is almost certainly one of the reasons that I have an entire closet full of collectible ThunderCats figurines. The good news: I have two deals for you this week—one of which is technically from last week. In that newsletter, I discussed (poorly) our tantalizing $99 MLK Holiday ski-and-stay special, mostly by talking about myself. I’ll take your silence as stunned amazement. It was notable for a reference to living both above and below two separate bowling alleys, which I’m pretty sure I stole from somewhere. Probably a TV show (I’m not a “reader”). Anyway, you can find the details on that lodging package here, but the main idea is: you get a lift ticket, a hotel room in the Inn at Bolton Valley, breakfast, and maybe a pony…I don’t know, I didn’t read the whole thing. Either way, it’s a ludicrously affordable way to maximize your holiday snow-time. A less-affordable way? Cloning.

This week’s other deal is just for lift tickets, and just for college students. Because being young, full of potential, and free from the ravages of Time’s cruel touch, isn’t quite good enough. On this upcoming Wednesday, January 13th, skiers or riders who present a valid college ID will pay only $19 for their lift ticket. I’ve crunched the numbers, and this means, in practice, that students can ski from 9am to 8pm on Wednesday, for less than half the cost of a Duran Duran concert ticket. College kids still must like Duran Duran, right? “Hungry Like the Wolf” is how I close all my e-mails. And all of a sudden I feel a thousand years old. I think I’ll spend Wednesday standing on our Tavern deck, shaking my fist at the slopes, and shouting at everyone to “get off my lawn”.

Contest: Haiku
The Newsletter Contest is back by the popular demand of no one. I don’t know how we made it through December without giving stuff away via poorly-conceived contests, but we won’t make the same mistake in this new year. As I’m sure you’ve all noticed and discussed amongst yourselves, I’ll occasionally post a Snow Report haiku on Twitter and Facebook. I mostly do this because they’re easy to fit on Twitter, and they make me seem like a soulful artist. Much like my dark turtlenecks and cool pointy beard. This week, you’re task is to write a Bolton Valley-related haiku. The 5-7-5 syllable structure makes them quick to write, and as always, I’m open to well-crafted submissions that don’t technically fit within contest rules. So, if you have a 430-line free verse poem about Bolton, patterned after TS Eliot’s “The Wasteland”, you’ll almost certainly win. And almost certainly end up on some watch list somewhere. Anyway, Bolton Poets, do your best haiku-ing, and send the results to me at jthibault@boltonvalley.com. I’ll consult the Bolton Valley Literary Guild, declare a winner, and send that person a free lift ticket accompanied by a congratulatory letter that will bear a striking resemblance to the most popular Google search results for “congratulatory letter”.

That, mercifully, is all I have for you this week, Newsletter Heroes. I hope, after you finish reading this, there’s still time left in the weekend to get out on the mountain. Because the white trees and snow-covered trails look unreal right now. With a little more of this generous, snowy weather, we might just see the debut of those “100% in 2010” T-shirts. Which would be great. Because this spandex American-flag one-piece makes me look like a patriotic Gummi Bear. Not in a good way.

Hungry like the wolf,
Justin

* Among my immediate family members and household pets.