Backcountry Skiing Around Stowe: Where to Start
Backcountry Guide
Backcountry Skiing Around Stowe: Where to Start
Touring advice from the shop on the Mountain Road in Stowe, Vermont
Spend a winter in Stowe and sooner or later you start looking past the lift line, wondering what it would take to earn your own turns. It is a great question to ask. It helps to know, before you ask it, that this is not an easy place to learn.
Steep, tight and demanding
The terrain around Stowe is steep nearly everywhere you look. The woods are tight, the fall lines run long, and the snow can go from soft to bulletproof overnight. A thaw followed by a hard freeze turns a great run into a sheet of ice, and a midwinter rain can do the same. Early in the season, rocks, stumps and running water hide just under the surface.
None of that is a reason to stay home. It is a reason to build your skills before you head into the woods.
Learn on the resort first
Our best advice for new tourers is simple: learn to tour at a ski area. Many Vermont resorts allow uphill travel under their own rules and passes, so check the uphill policy before you go. Climbing alongside a groomed trail is the best place to learn the basics. You will figure out how your bindings switch modes, find a pace you can hold, practice kick turns and get your transitions quick.
It also teaches the skill the woods will test hardest: skiing steep, variable snow in touring gear, with a pack on, at the end of a long climb. Get comfortable with that on the resort, and your first days in the backcountry will be safer and a lot more fun.
Then build your backcountry skills
When you are ready to step off the resort, go with partners who know the terrain and are happy to turn around. Take an avalanche course and a mountain first aid course. Learn to navigate in the trees, where every hillside starts to look the same. And start small. A short tour you finish with energy to spare beats a big day you barely survive.
We do not name specific spots, and that is on purpose. Access changes, conditions change, and the right objective depends on your skills and your partners on that day.
Respect the land
Much of the skiable terrain in Vermont crosses private land or public land with its own rules, and many of the glades people love exist because volunteers and landowners made them possible. Park where you are allowed, follow posted signs and support the local groups working to keep access open.
Gear from this post
How we can help
MountainOps has been part of the Stowe community since 1995, and our crew tours here every winter. We rent Alpine Touring and Telemark setups, with or without skins, so you can try touring before you buy. When you are ready to buy, we carry touring skis, boots, bindings and skins, plus ski and skin packages that pair the two for you. Our shop mounts bindings and cuts skins so your setup is ready to go.
MountainOps Outdoor Gear
Questions about touring around Stowe? Stop by the Big Red Barn at 4081 Mountain Road or call (802) 253-4531.
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