More Snow Than Utah: Remembering Vermont's Epic Ski Season of 24/25

This story originally appeared in the print magazine POWDER 2026 Photo Annual. Copies are still available while supplies last. Click here to get yours.

Our Deep Little Secret

“You need to get up here. Now.”

My friend Greg was texting me. I was still in bed. I checked the time: 6:30 a.m. 

I checked the Stowe snow report: 4 inches. 

Seriously? Did he really think I would cancel work, postpone meetings, and move deadlines for a mere 4 inches? 

“See you at the quad at 8,” I replied reflexively. Then I went back to sleep.

Two hours later, Greg and I were charging down Angel Food, Stowe’s signature off-the-map glade run. Snow boiled up over my knees and splatted off my chest. As I charged across a horizon line into a steep drop, a place that I knew suddenly looked unfamiliar. It was a landscape transformed by a vast amount of snow. An exciting half-pipe that I headed toward was now just a broad tunnel of snow. A favorite kicker was now a creamy rollover. 

Here on my home mountain, a place I know intimately, I felt like I was skiing it for the first time. 

I looked up to see Greg 25 feet to my left, letting out involuntary yelps as he flew down his own white room. 

We reconnected at the bottom of a steep face, both of us smiling and breathing hard. “What the…” I began. 

WTF indeed. There were no massive No’reasters in January and February, those monster Eastern storms that giveth tons of snow, but taketh your electricity for a week. 

This is the story of how persistent cold, a thawless January, and lots of 3-to-5-inch storms quietly stacked up to become the Secret Epic Winter of 2025 in a small zone of Northern Vermont that extended from the Canadian border down through the Mad River Valley. In the epicenter of this snowy maelstrom, powder days added up, and records fell fast:

Jay Peak: Had a season total of 475 inches of snow, the second highest in its history. By late February, Jay Peak had already eclipsed 350 inches, more snow than Alta and Jackson Hole at that point. 

Stowe: The fabled summit snow stake hit 93 inches on Feb. 20, in the top 5 deepest for that day since records began in 1954. On March 3, it reached 103 inches — 36 inches above average, and just 9 inches shy of the all-time record for that date, set in 1969. The season total snowfall was 362 inches, top 5 in at least the last quarter century.

Bolton Valley: Some 10 feet of snow fell on Bolton Valley in February, nearly triple the amount that fell during the same time in the two previous winters. BV ended the year with a season total snowfall of 375 inches, 133 inches over its annual average.

Throughout January and February, skiers could only exchange furtive looks in lift lines and at iconic après ski haunts like the Matterhorn in Stowe, The Belfry near Jay Peak, and James Moore Taven at Bolton Valley. 

“Ski this morning?” a friend would ask, in a typical exchange. 

A knowing smile came the reply. 

In the valleys, it was New-England-postcard-pretty. 

Up high, it was going off. Only skiers knew. And no words could capture it.

But I will give it a try. 

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LOST IN BOLTON VALLEY

I followed Adam and Eric DesLauriers as we climbed slowly above the lifts at Bolton Valley. This place has had many lives: their dad Ralph, 90, started Bolton Valley in 1966. It thrived in the 60s and 70s, struggled in the 80s, died in the 90s, and has been brought back to life by Ralph’s kids. They have refashioned the small resort into a vast lift-served and backcountry skiing playground area, where you can cross seamlessly between worlds. 

These days, Ralph’s daughter Lindsay runs the busy ski area, Adam oversees the backcountry program, and Eric left his gig as freeride coach at Palisades Tahoe to become the GM. Adam and Eric grew up ripping the trees and hucking cliffs here as kids and parlayed that into gigs as Warren Miller ski stars for a couple decades. I asked Adam what it was like working for his kid sister now.

He threw me a side eye. “She’s not our boss,” he said about his boss. Eric muffled a laugh.

It had been snowing steadily, and Adam and Eric needed little coaxing to take a break to ski powder. My wife Sue rounded out our foursome. Adam had a line he wanted to ski in Bolton’s expansive backcountry. 

It’s skiing beautifully and no one knows this spot, Adam promised. He scouted it two days earlier. 

“This is it,” said Adam, pushing into some thick trees. Branches caked in snow released a cold load onto Eric’s head, eliciting some choice words. It seemed like these brothers had a little history doing this to each other. 

“He’s lost,” I whispered to Eric. 

“Not for the first time,” Eric replied, shaking off his cold shower. 

Adam hesitated. It had been snowing steadily for the past few days. Tracks were gone and secret glade entrances were now impenetrable walls of snow. We would just have to take a leap of faith. 

Adam volunteered to be crash test dummy. He accelerated into a white and green curtain of trees and then vanished, like a magician’s disappearing act. The three of us watched in amazed silence. The cold silence was cut by whoops of pleasure far below. It was go time.

I followed and was soon accelerating through thigh deep powder down a woody corridor. The glades opened and closed and gravity pulled me relentlessly forward. In my peripheral vision, I sensed another body moving at high speed. It was Eric, arcing turns faster than I would ever dare go, charging for the forest floor. Sue was close on his shoulder. 

At the bottom of the glade, the four of us stared at one another in amazement. This was a full-on powder party—one that no one expected. I mean, how deep could it get when it was only snowing 4-inches at a time?

Damn deep, it turns out.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE SNOW

What explains the record shattering winter in northern Vermont in early 2025?

I posed that question to Robert Haynes, lead meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Burlington, Vermont, a small city that experienced its fifth-highest snowfall last winter. Robert’s explanation was TMI but enlightening. 

“One of things that drove up the high snow values was that we had a large number of upslope snowfall events—that’s the idea that as you move air up a mountain range it will deposit snow on higher elevations but maybe not in the valleys.” Temps were also 1.5 to 2 degrees below normal and snowfall was 100 to 150-percent above average. 

Simply put: It dumped and the dreaded January Thaw never happened. 

Something else happened: we have plenty of powder days in the East. Some are deep and light, some are wet and heavy, some are wind hammered. But day after day after day of blower powder? That lives only in my fantasies. 

That’s just what happened in Vermont, according to Haynes. He explained that it has to do with the snow liquid ratio—the ratio of how much snow to how much water it contained. A 5:1 ratio means that there were 5 inches of snow for every inch of water, typical of warmer and wet conditions in the northwest and northeast. The higher the first number, the lighter the snow. Snow liquid ratios of 12:1 to 20:1 describe the light stuff of Utah and Colorado dreams. 

Haynes told me that in Vermont, “Some events feature 30:1 ratios. That fluffy stuff is really aerated. In January, we had some 70:1 events—they were high in fluff factor.”

I Googled what skiing 70:1 snow is like. The first response was “that almost never happens.” The second described something I’m pretty sure I said at a bar one night last winter.

“Imagine skiing on what feels like pure air.”

PASS THE JAY

“The Jay Cloud is real!” That was the first thing that Jay Peak local Sam Thompson told me when I asked her how her winter was.

Thompson would know: she practically lives inside the Jay Cloud. That’s the cloud that parks on top of Jay Peak, the Vermont ski area hard on the Canadian border. The cloud is a natural snow maker that buries Jay Peak beneath the deepest snowpack in the northeast. 

Thompson has been skiing Jay Peak for four decades. Seven years ago, she and her husband shortened their commute by purchasing The Belfry, the iconic après ski bar near the base of Jay Peak that was a school house in the 1800s. I’ve staggered in there, snow plastered, after powder missions on Jay Peak and felt right at home mixing with the skier-and-Carhartt crowd. 

“This past season was one to remember!” Thompson told me. “The snow came and there was never the January thaw…no rain. You would wake up every morning and OMG there was another foot of snow. Day after day after day. This year I skied so many powder days,” she said, rattling off names of Jay’s signature glades: Beaver Pond, Everglade, and River Quai. Those runs, Thompson noted, “handed us our asses.”  

“All so deep!” She knew people sometimes thought she was blowing smoke. She added emphatically, somewhat at a loss for words, “It was that good!” 

“When you finish a great run and get to the bottom and your friends’ beards are frozen and the hoots and hollers —It does not get any better.”

BIG LOVE AT STOWE

It was mid-February at Stowe Mountain Resort, and by now we were hip to the program. A fresh 4-inches meant knee deep skiing. Seven inches meant face shots. 

Word was traveling quickly. Powder.com had just published a story revealing that Jay Peak had more snow than Alta and Jackson Hole. Our secret was out. 

A 7:45 a.m. lift delivered me to Starr, one of Stowe’s fabled Front Four and one of my favorites. The sinewy trail looked soft and alluring beneath its blanket of snow. I dropped over the edge and began a rhythmic dance. Come up, inhale. Go down, submerge and exhale. Snow billowed up around my waist and soon obscured my view. I focused down the fall line and skied by Braille, following the contours of the trail from memory. 

I couldn’t see where I was going, but I could still feel it. 

On the next run, I headed back out to Angel Food. I ran into a gaggle of skiers by The Bench, the traditional meet-and-greet spot in Stowe’s fabled phantom glades. A woman wearing a red puffy parka told me that the group had come from North Conway, New Hampshire, the ski town near Tuckerman Ravine. They had plenty of good terrain where they lived. Why had they come to northern Vermont? 

“We heard what was going on here,” she replied with a sly grin. She said it as if she had just learned the secret that everyone had been trying to keep from her. 

Evidently the skier’s bat signal had been flashing in the skies over the northeast directing skiers to the best powder party in the country. She beamed, a happy member of the tribe of skiers in the know.

We parted and skied off toward different glades. I heard her let out a happy whoop. 

Or maybe it was me, out reveling in more face shots on another 4-inch powder day.

This story originally appeared in the print magazine POWDER 2026 Photo Annual. Copies are still available while supplies last. Click here to get yours.