The Skimeister and I headed for the woods on the west side of Mt. Mansfield today. We parked at the Stevensville trailhead in Underhill, Vermont — a popular backcountry skiing trailhead where parking often gets tight — and we put climbing skins on our telemark skis. We climbed through the hardwood forest toward the Overland Trail.
At a fork in the trail where many people head for Dewey Mountain, we turned left to stay on the mellower, red-blazed Overland Trail. We climbed to a saddle at about 2,660 feet. From there we pointed our skis downhill to make powdery turns to the left and right of the trail that we ascended.
With two nights in a row of about four inches of new snow, the conditions were quite good. You could definitely feel the breakable crust underneath sometimes when you got farther away from the trail.
Here are a few shots from our late-morning ski.
