New England Updates On Vail Resorts / Stowe

[KevinF]

Ha! I was at Stowe on MLK weekend of 2017. It was typical cold for Nothern Vermont in mid January; cold, but not "Oh My God, I'm going to die". High's were in the positive single digit range.

Anyway, I had a couple chairlift rides where people were commenting on how cold it was, etc. Ummmm, Northern Vermont, mid January, mountains, it's going to be cold -- this should not come as a surprise.

At any rate, I had one chairlift ride where it was me, a patroller and some random customer. Random customer looks at the two of us and just says "Is it always this cold here?". Before I could come up with some sort of diplomatic reply the patroller just turned and deadpanned "Yes. Yes, it is".

Alrighty then! Can't add much to that! There you have it!

 

[Lorenzzo]

Well, without sounding like a jerk, I've logged a few days at each. The better part of 35 years at Stowe, and coming up on 30 at Sugarloaf. Family owned a home in Stowe, then we owned one, have owned three at Sugarloaf. Least we have skied in all of these years is about 60 days in a season. Most....twice that.

I would say that neither is likely to be warm in January!! But both are about as good as it gets in March. I'll take Sugarloaf over Stowe in April. Snow tends to last a bit longer. Or, at least in our experience.

Some of the very best days that I have had at both mountains are the very coldest. Clear, still, and 25 below. No crowds!

As a Johnny Dangerously fan I would concur by saying as a student from CA I skied Stowe in January once. Once.

 

[SkiEssentials]

High's were in the positive single digit range.

Sounds quite nice for Stowe in January

 

[Read Blinn]

What's a little cold? Heck, Iowa in January was worse when I was a kid.

I remember a -10 day at Sunapee two seasons ago. I was one of maybe six people on the mountain (most of the others I never saw, except occasionally at the base), and the snow was as smooth as milled marble, very firm, perfectly edgeable and clean — hard to see in that light, because it had no texture, but there were no hidden dips or traps, and you could just lay them over and zoom, over rolls and moraines and into the valleys, as if you were on rails, as if you were in some kind of ideal world.

If I could remember the combination of circumstances that brought about those conditions, which I'd never seen before and have never seen since, I'd watch out for them. It was magic. Maybe I'll never see it again.

 

[TonyC]

Random customer looks at the two of us and just says "Is it always this cold here?"

The correct answer to that question is, "Except when it rains."