Printable View
Hello, This is my first post. Been hiking the northern sections of the LT from Mt Mansfield to the Canadian border for years but only just recently found this forum.
Anyway, I am heading up to do some hiking this weekend and was wondering if anybody could tell me if there is snow on the peaks yet? Particulary Mt Mansfield and Jay Peak? Also does the Taft lodge shut down before winter at some point?
Thanks,
Paul
There's 10 inches on Mansfield (at the stake near the nose), good bet there's jsut as much or more on Jay Peak. The mountains are white above 1500'.
Taft lodge is always open.
The Long Trail shelters/lodges are always open. Watch you head going into Taft, it has low clearance! In addition to some snow, I imagine there would be a lot of icy spots lower down too. There will be some thaw/freeze cycles going on during next week. This is a tricky time of year, just enough snow and ice to make the going tricky and not enough to take advantage of snow shoes or crampons effectively.
Thanks Deadeye and Slo-go'en, very good know before going. More than one trip has been foiled by arriving to find more snow than anticipated.
Taft Lodge is always open, thats great I have only been in the summer and thought it probably shut down around October-November. This opens up the possibility for a winter trip!
As Slo-go'en said, the lodges and shelters are always open, but there are no caretakers in the winter. Open shelters are sometimes full of snow, and you may need to dig out the door to get into a closed shelter/lodge. Won't be a problem just yet!
ahahahah, that makes sense...the caretakers aren't there in the winter. All day I kept thinking, theres no stove in that place, man it must be cold being a caretaker there during the winter!
Many of the closed lodges used to have wood stoves, but they had a nasty tendency to burn the place down.
There is one lodge left with a wood stove, but I woun't tell you which one ;)
We got a few inches of wet snow last night, it looks like the Green Mtns might have gotten a bit more then we did. But it's suppost to warm up mid week, so who knows what the heck is going on...
Here be the snow -
http://www.weatherstreet.com/weather...snow-cover.htm
Heading out this weekend myself. 3 days on the southern LT, weather is supposed to be great!
I'm in Bennington but headed back out in the morning. There are lots of blowdowns on the AT just north of Killington summit, heard it was next to impassable but I hiked that pre Sandy. There are also lots of blowdowns between the road south of Stratton and Bennington.
A bit of snow fell from the noreaster last night but prior to that it was just a dusting and quite impressive snow blasting of trees on top of Bromley and Stratton. The windchills were nasty this week but the Vermud was mostly frozen.
Layer, stay dry and stay warm. Happy hiking!
Just got back from an overnight hike from 242 Jay Pass to VT 118 south. Had snow the entire way. Last night and this morning at Tillotson Camp was freezing cold.