Conditions Report
Reports from Sunday, January 21, 2024
The stories I could write about Jay Peak, Vermont, might fill a book. It’s that kind of place, and I’ve spent many years of my life there. In the late 90s, I moved from eastern Ontario to Montreal. Though I was born in a big city, my growing up happened in the most beautiful natural places in central Canada … Georgian Bay, Muskoka, and the Ottawa Valley, to name a few, all magnificent, all lacking in that one thing that feeds my soul the most: big mountains.
When I moved to Montreal I met someone whose family had a chalet in northern Vermont on Jay. Like so many from our generation from Quebec, he was an avid snowboarder from the earliest days of the sport. Where I come from, it’s not common to cross the southern border for outdoor recreation; on the weekends, you head north. I didn’t get it, but with that first trip to his family’s chalet in Alpine Haven, my eyes opened wide to a region of the northeastern United States – the Green Mountains, ‘Vert’mont’ – which very quickly became my happy place and still is to this day.
We had two daughters, now teenagers, who spent every weekend and holiday of their early childhood at their grandparents’ chalet on Jay Peak. Our closest social ties were made there with local Vermonters, and folks assumed that we were locals, too. Sacrifices were made leaving the city as often as we did, but for me, the chance to give my kids a childhood in the Green Mountains, to ‘Raise ‘Em Jay,’ outweighed any benefits of staying home. Every day, I dreamt about how to make our life at Jay a full-time thing.
This is where I honed my mountain lungs and snowboard skills. I practiced as much and as often as I could. Sometimes, I would go to the resort, but with two babies napping, I would also find lines to ride on vacant properties that sloped towards frozen ponds in and around the chalet. I still remember the first time I caught air off a neighbor’s back deck, my audience the wildlife, trees, and near eerie quietness of my surroundings. Snow defuses sound. Thanks to the famous ‘Jay Cloud’ there always seemed to be fresh, powdery snow to land in off a jump. I was late to the plate on this sport, but this is an ideal environment to fall in love with snowboarding.
My daughter Em is now a student filmmaker. A very talented one, and that is before any maternal bias. She loves these mountains as much as me but hasn’t inherited my particular form of adrenaline addiction. When I saw Jay Peak on the list of Indy Pass resorts in the East, I knew I wanted to get back there this season – it’s been nearly a decade – and I wanted to bring Em as my filmmaker/photographer, car DJ, and travel companion.
Jay is a mountain unlike any other in the northeast. What makes it so special is hard to pin down to one thing. First off, it’s big, and it’s snowy. Its vertical drop of 2,153 feet is the eighth largest in New England and the fifth in Vermont. Known around the globe amongst skiers and riders for glade skiing, the resort offers 81 trails, covering nearly 385 acres of skiable terrain, and is home to the famous “Face Chutes,” four narrow skiable lines, all of which include a mandatory cliff drop. This is a place for folks of all levels who are serious about skiing and riding. It’s also one place where I know nearly every trail, every hit, and that’s snow-covered and not (in a previous life, I was a trail runner). This is a four-season resort featuring an indoor waterpark, a state-of-the-art ice skating arena, beautiful hotels, cafes, and restaurants, and a championship golf course.
Jay had a rough day last Saturday and at no fault of their own. You can’t control the weather. The area was hit with high winds and bitterly cold temperatures, and they announced on their website and social pages that they were shutting down lifts stateside due to late-morning power disruption. Included in the announcement was the offer to turn in Saturday lift tickets for a ticket to come back anytime over the next year, and Indy Pass announced that they would not deduct the day for pass holders. All this to say that no matter what weather disrupts the operations here temporarily, nothing can come close to touching the vibe.
We stuck to our plan to head to Jay Sunday morning under bluebird skies. We decided to drive a loop there and back to Montreal, approaching Jay from Montgomery Center, along the 242 highway, then carrying on past Jay village (with a pit stop at the iconic Jay Country Store), towards Newport, Vermont when we were ready to head home. I wanted to make sure I saw the resort from all angles, from below, and we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to stop by the old homestead. Our brief visit to Alpine Haven revealed that the new owners have kept the wooden ‘Hawkins’ sign that Em’s grandpa carved to hang over the front entrance. This is the house that Grandad built, and we were touched to see how the new owners have honored that.
We approached the resort with views of plenty of fresh snow in the trees and the promise of a fun day ahead. We stopped stateside to check out the conditions, and to the naked eye, it looked pretty cold and icy up there. At this point in the season, I am not willing to risk injury and put myself out ‘til next. I’m saving my knees for spring. I like it surfy, and if memory serves, spring riding at Jay Peak is majestical.
We headed towards the main lodge, where I knew it would be sunny. I got my pass from customer service, had a hot chocolate with my daughter at the Aroma Cafe, and headed to the metro quad lift. Sadly, the Flyer and Tram going all the way up were closed on Sunday, but most of the lower mountain was open, and I rode every open trail, sometimes going way back into the recesses of my muscle memory. It was like no time had passed at all.
Riding up, I met a mom and daughter from Cape Cod who were also skiing on Indy Pass. They gave me good intel that there were still freshies to be had on a tree run skiers left. That’s where I ended my day: a few quick runs of beautiful, soft, fluffy Jay cloud powder under a canopy of trees. Valhalla. Weekend warriors take our happiness where and when we can, and any day you get to spend in the mountains is a beautiful day.
After some very weird precipitation in northern Vermont and southern Quebec this past week, Jay reports that it’s snowing top to bottom today. The mountain is holding up well, and there is snow in the forecast heading into the weekend. It should be sweet for skiing and riding this Saturday and Sunday. With Indy Pass, you get two days at each participating resort and twenty-five percent off for a third day. I will be back soon, at least twice, and am saving one day for a Spring road trip, with both my girls this time.
