First published in Volume 21, Issue 3 of The Snowboarder’s Journal

There’s a scene in the 1954 musical White Christmas in which the four main characters are on a train to Vermont and they burst into song spontaneously about how “It won’t be long before we’ll all be there with… snow!” 

And maybe it wasn’t crazy to write a song like that about 1954 Vermont. Maybe even in the late ’90s or early millennium you could get someone on stage and tap dancing about how deep the stake was on Mt. Mansfield. Sure, it’s never looked like a Mt. Baker 100-year storm, and Brighton will get more in a weekend than we’ll get in a month. But talk to folks who have been around Vermont for a while—there are powder turns to be found. 

Here in Vermont, we have a lot of faith. We’ve got to in order to stay sane. We have to say that next winter will be good. And yes, it will be. Snow will fall and it’ll stay cold and more will fall on top of that. This winter, for example, is gonna be great. But the past decade has had its ups and downs. Those of us who enjoy turning on anything other than manmade hardpack have had to get creative. That’s how, in this little corner of the snowboard world lovingly nicknamed the “Ice Coast,” a handful of riders have leaned into the joy of powsurfing. 

How do you stay hydrated in the desert? Camels have evolved to be able to go 15 days without water. Well, in Vermont we regularly go 15 days without new snow. Powsurfing is a natural adaptation for keeping our tanks full.    

We’re just following old wisdom. When Jake Burton Carpenter was cutting up his first Burton boards in the late ’70s, sure, some of them had little straps for the feet, but with the lack of edges, short running lengths, concave tails and sometimes even fins—those were powsurfers. They were all tested and ridden on back hills, sand pits, pastures, sugarbushes and closed resort trails—the exact terrain we still surf on today.   

Note the context of these origin stories. Jake in the foothills of Vermont creating his BB prototypes—short, stout, inspired by Sherman Poppen’s Snurfer. Meanwhile in Utah, Dimitrije Milovich and the Winterstick crew were experimenting with more surf-inspired board designs. Instead of looking like fat skis they looked like sci-fi spacecraft because they were designed to ride deep Utah powder. 

There’s a trap that some East Coasters fall into while defending their beloved Green, White, or Adirondack mountains. They start making comparisons, saying things like, “So-and-so on the right day is like Japan!” And they’re wrong. No, the best backcountry line on the East Coast is not “just as good” as what you’ll find in the Rockies, the Sierras, or the Cascades. But the feeling you get? The joy? Now that’s something. If you’re asked, “How did your turns feel today?” with the right approach, you can answer “great” every time. 

Nowadays, when it snows, the group text is less about racing for first chair (a hundred people were there at 4 a.m. to skin up anyway) and more about what spot we’re going to hike. Where did the snow fall? Is it light or heavy? Five inches or 12? What boards are you bringing? Verts, skins, or bootpack? 

The key is flexibility—having the tools and knowledge to adapt to whatever winter throws at you. So you always keep a few boards in the rig. You pay attention to the radar, the snow stakes, trail cams and the rumor mill. You develop a mental map of spots and zones throughout the region. Of course, everybody knows the popular ones, but your lesser-known honey holes—we don’t talk about those. The mentality is more like flyfishing or actual surfing, constantly learning and sniffing around so you’re equipped to find uncrowded goods on any given day.

Then again, the best days aren’t always the ones in which we score the secret spot all to ourselves. In fact, the days we tend to reminisce about are the ones where a few crews bumped into each other at the same zone, say an open field on a hilltop somewhere. We all hike and hang together between laps and it feels like a session. When someone laces a good run and you see their smile at the bottom, you know they’re riding a high that will keep them satisfied until the next snowfall.  

Nothing we ride is huge. The hikes don’t take long. People splitboard plenty out here, but my thought is, if the snow’s good enough to warrant the hike, why strap in? Make six inches feel like 12. Get puckered down a riverbed, hike back up three more times, and call it a day. Say what you want about the East Coast, but that doesn’t suck.