It was snowing steadily when I arrived at Stowe Mountain Resort last Tuesday. I was surprised by the absence of lift lines as I walked onto the bright red gondola. I was even more surprised when I dropped into a favorite ski run and snow boiled up around my thighs and a cold spray of snow hit my face.
A storm that had been forecast to deliver four inches instead dropped almost three feet of snow on Stowe over three days. The same storm buried Mount Snow with four feet and set a precipitation record in Burlington, Vt.
“This is by far the best week I’ve ever had riding,” said Emily Dierks, 44, a snowboarder from Boston, as we rode the gondola at Stowe.
As the spring equinox arrives, at a point in the ski season when many areas wrap things up, snowfall records at ski areas across the country are falling as fast as the feathery flakes, especially in California and Utah. Skiers are reaping the bounty — if they can get to the slopes and the lifts are running.
Ski areas nearing record snowfalls include Palisades Tahoe (662 inches, or 55 feet) and Mammoth Mountain (618 inches) in California, and numerous resorts in Utah: Alta (681 inches, the most snow recorded by this date), Park City (479 inches, a record), Deer Valley (485 inches, a record), Solitude (623 inches, near record) and Snowbird (625 inches, near record).
This week, Brighton, also in Utah, is closing in on its record snowfall of 751 inches, “the equivalent of 10 Subarus or nine moose stacked on top of one another,” wrote Alison Palmintere, communications director of Ski Utah, in an email.
“The snow coverage at resorts is amazing right now, probably top five all-time,” said Michael Reitzell, president of Ski California, in an email. And more snow is expected this week.
In the Northeast, the late-season snow comes after a difficult year for many areas, which faced a snow drought in the early part of the season. Mike Solimano, the president and general manager of Killington and Pico ski areas, told me that the mountains’ accumulation is about even with the five-year average. But they got very little of it in December and January, when snowfall was 30 percent below average. “We are getting it all in March,” he said. “The annual total doesn’t tell the whole story.”
Are skiers paying attention to this late season bumper crop? Sam von Trapp, who runs the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, bemoans the fact that by late March “a lot people have moved on to the next sport. But it’s a…
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