I skied today at the Stowe Mountain Resort cross-country center (still
popularly known as the "Mt. Mansfield" cross-country area). Conditions
were very good on the groomed trails, and suprisingly good on the two
backcountry trails we skied on: John's Road and South Road. Although
there hasn't been a major snowstorm here for about a month, it has been
below freezing - well below freezing, in fact - for the whole month - no
"January thaw" this year! (none last year, either). Little bits of snow
over the month have been packed down into a very pleasant base on the
groomed trails. On the backcountry trails, the snow had been blown
around somewhat, so that in places there was a crusty (not icy) surface
but in other places there was perhaps a half a foot of snow for us to
break trail through.

This was our first time skiing John's Road, a fairly new trail named in
honor of the late John Higgins, who ran the cross-country center during
the 1990s before his untimely death from cancer. I hiked (and
GPS-mapped) the trail this past November, so I knew generally what the
trail would be like, but you never really know just from hiking a trail
what it would be like to ski on. John's Road seemed to be a little
steeper than South Road (but not as steep as the Bruce Trail), so we
skied up John's Road and down on South Road, forming a loop off of the
groomed trail Bear Run. People with better downhill skills would enjoy
skiing down on John's Road. There were a couple of water features on
both backcountry trails that I would expect to have been filled in if
there had been more snow.

Lew Lasher
Stowe, Vermont and Cambridge, Massachusetts