STOWEBOUND

Better late than never.

Good things come to those who wait; patience is a virtue; haste makes waste… we’ve all heard these clichés touting the karma achieved by those who quietly bide their time, waiting for life to fall into place. And that advice may indeed be true if you’re investing in the stock market or planting seeds or watching a bottle of ketchup pour its slow-moving contents onto your burger, but when pending the arrival of deep blankets of winter white in Vermont, it doesn’t matter how cold the air temperature is; I don’t want to have to hold my breath for even one icy minute.

Well, for those of us who have been blue in the face for the last few months in breathless anticipation, the first real gulp of powder filled face-shots was finally had in Stowe this past weekend. On Wednesday, February 9th a solid Nor’easter pushed into New England driven by a snowmaking system that delivered the year’s only big dump to the Green Mountains. Two weeks before, a similar, albeit southerly storm dropped heavy accumulations in Massachusetts all while teasing Vermont and New Hampshire with a measly few inches. But not this time. All told the three day storm left upwards of three feet of fresh in the North Country just in time for a sunny bluebird Sunday that had anyone motivated enough to get first tracks laughing all way down the mountain.

I happened to push my way onto the second Gondola ride up Mt. Mansfield just as the early morning sun burst through the clouds. Yes, it may only be the East Coast, but a foot of fresh is a foot of fresh. And as anyone who’s ever scored on a powder day can tell you, all it takes is one bottomless blower turn to etch a mile-wide smile on your face that lingers long after your legs are burnt and the slopes are scraped clean.

While scraping wax off my base on Saturday night, I had one place in mind for the ‘morrow—Big Spruce. Usually sun-baked and often hovering at low-tide, Big Spruce came alive on Sunday the13th. The 19-minute lift ride may be long, but whacking the feathery windlips of the four-foot snowdrifts along Main Street more than made up for it. A few hearty souls even settled the Tusk—considered one of the burliest off-piste lines on the East Coast, which is untouchable in anything less than 2 feet.

Of the Seven Deadly Sins, greed and gluttony are two of the most despicable. Well, God forgive me because I hoarded every stash and swallowed every swig of Utah-like dry I could bury my board into. And judging by the fact that the entire mountain was tracked out by 10 am, I wasn’t the only sinner is Stowe. Thank Heavens.