I was jonesing for some outdoor exercise, so I looked at the snow reports for my area nordic centers and found that I needed to "go high" to find some trails that were doing OK after last week's thaw. And none are higher than the Bolton Valley nordic center. So off I went for a lunchtime skate.
I saved this tidbit about elevations from a recent Bolton nordic newsletter:
If you are looking on the NOAA.gov weather site, Bolton is located at approximately Lat/Lon: 44.42°N 72.85°W and Elevation: 2276 ft. The Bolton Valley base area elevation is 2150 ft., Bolton Lodge on Broadway is at 1600 ft., Bryant Cabin is at 2690 ft., Harington's View is 2600 ft., Raven's Wind/Catamount Trail Intersection is 3100 ft.
Why is this handy? Because when the weatherman says there will be x amount of snow above 2,000 feet, you have an idea that Bolton is going to have snow on their trails.
Today I found 8 km of groomed trails to ski on. You could tell that under the one to two inches of fluffy snow on top, the groomed snow surface was very firm. Liz at the cross-country center said they opened as much as they could considering the recent thaw-then-freeze weather.
I was enjoying that cool kind of weather that alternates between sunny and flurries. The coverage was good on Maple Loop, Broadway and World Cup, and just a little rough on Picnic Loop. As Liz said, "It's amazing how thin the snow is, but how good the skiing is."
