Reports from Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Good things come to those who wait. Thanks to Indy Pass, this season, I’ve rediscovered my love for Jay Peak Resort, Vermont, where I learned how to snowboard in the 90s. Before this season, it had been about a decade since I’d snowboarded at Jay, but I remembered that the Jay cloud had a long history of serving up the goods in March and April and that if I was patient through the season, I might have a better chance of catching that sometimes elusive east coast powder day.
I’ve been watching Jay’s daily snow reports from my office in Montreal. I knew they’d had Sunday and Monday powder days, and I figured that if I took the day off work Tuesday, I might still have a good chance of catching some powder to play in. I headed out about 8:30 a.m., with plans to be on the chairlift by mid-morning. Of all the east coast resorts on Indy Pass, Jay Peak is probably the best-known to Canadians from Quebec and Ontario, famous for record snowfall and challenging terrain. It’s the most accessible to Montrealers, about an hour and a half drive from the city center.
The roads leading south to the resort, (through Frelighsburg, Quebec, towards Montgomery Center Vermont, and along the 242 highway), were still snow-swept. This gave me an optimistic outlook on what to expect when I arrived at the mountain. Freshies. When you spend enough time in a place, you get a sense of it, and this area was my second home for fourteen years, Driving along that same mountain road that I have driven hundreds of times, my mind wandered to the mornings I would leave my sleeping family to catch a few runs before breakfast, or the evenings driving out of the parking lot at The Belfry, under big white flakes of snow, knowing what goods would be on offer on the mountain the next morning. Deja vu. It turns out you can go back.
When you approach Jay via Montgomery Center, you arrive at the Stateside Lodge first. My first trip to Jay this season was in late January; it was a bitterly cold day, and Stateside was icy. We parked on the Tramside, where I rode for the day. This time, I wanted to explore the trails at Stateside again. A had a vague recollection of the lay of the land. I figured I would take my first run off the Bonaventure Quad, see the conditions, and decide from there whether to check out Tramside. Shout out to the three gentlemen from Long Island, also snowboarding on Indy Pass, for the laughs on the way up. That set the tone for a fantastic day.
The snow surface under my board was powder; nice and soft. It wasn’t crowded, and untracked snow was still on the side-hits. I headed skiers right towards ‘Northway,’ where I remembered a hidden gem blue run called ‘Purgatory,’ one of my favorite trails back in the day. It was just as fast and fun as I remembered, ‘Purgatory,’ to ‘Hell’s Crossing,’ to ‘Paradise Meadows.’ The word I heard from the chair was that Tramside was crowded with vacationers from Ontario for school break, and the Tram wasn’t running. I decided to stay Stateside, where I hit that run multiple times before it got tracked at about 2:00 p.m. I left for the day blissfully happy. I took a day off work and was gifted with bluebird AND powder. What are the odds?
In the city, it feels like spring, but at Jay Peak, it is still winter. The mountain has received snow every day since Friday, and forecasters are calling for another foot of snow to fall through Tuesday. Current conditions are 18” of wet snow at the summit and 40” of machine-groomed snow at the base, with 99 percent of the terrain open and 8 out of 9 lifts spinning. They are projected to remain open until April 28th.
See you on the mountain.
Conditions
Forecast
