My Best Powder Day of the Year

I definitely had an awesome day today. After having a traffic jam heading into Little Cottonwood Canyon, which caused me to be extremely irritable, I eventually had my best ski day of the year. And that has put me into an extremely good, chipper mood.

I could not believe how many people were up at Snowbird. Seriously, half of Salt Lake City must have called in sick to go skiing. My dreams of a desolate Tuesday powder filled resort were smashed. To make it even worse, they all seemed to be in the tram line. There was no way that I could sit in a line and let all this new fresh blower snow get skied out right in front of me. Plus I'm on my sweet Pontoons for the first time and these bad sticks are designed specifically for deep powder steezefests.

Andy and I decided to forgo the tram line, went straight up Peruvian, and then through the tunnel out to Mineral Basin where the sun was poking through. After getting in two runs in some already adulterated snow, we headed back up to go Regulator Johnson. After flying down through that run, our luck changed. We were just getting off of Little Cloud lift low and behold, ski patrol dropped the rope to Road to Provo.

YES!!!!! Only 15 people in front of us on the way to unadulterated powder. "What did you just say Andy?!!?!?!?!?! You have to adjust your sock??!?!?!" So now I'm sitting there waiting on Andy and my legs are just twitching. I'm looking at the powder in front of me, a high priced, very rare commodity, about to be stolen from me, and getting extremely frustrated. That's it, I'm invoking the first rule of powder days:

1. "There are no friends on a powder day."

So I told him I'd meet him down at the first loll, and skated off. Luck hit me again: Everyone in front of me was traversing out as far as they could, and those right in front of me were getting stuck in the deep snow piled thigh high on the usually groomed cat track. This is my sign. I couldn't believe that people where going out far for the lower angle lines. I stopped after about 100 yards, spotted an open, untouched line, and made ready.

I drop onto a 40 degree slope and straightline it for a bit to gain speed. Now that I've opened it up it's time to turn. Turn one: face shot, I smile. Turn two: huge face shot, over my head and into my throat. I'm choking. AWESOME!!!! The face shots were now all coming in over my head. I had to hold my breath and try to keep my mouth closed while the biggest smile of my life kept sneaking through. This is the first time that I've been choked and blinded from face shots. Instant euphoria.

That single run made my entire day and it was only the fourth run of the day.

Oh by the way, these powder skis are awesome! I felt like I was cheating. People around me were tip diving and getting stuck. I was floating through all of it with my rockered tips floating high, keeping me upright.

We really killed it today. I hit a couple of cliffs, got a ton of face shots, got reckless, got exhausted, and just slayed the powder. Here are a few shots from the day.

Cliff Drop (Andy sucks with a camera and zoomed in way too far to see the rest of the cliff, which was only about a 10 footer)


Andy's self portrait of his powder stokeage


A perfect snowflake on my glove: Life is good