As skiers, we live for powder days. We dream about those 21-inch mornings, we fervently refresh the weather forecast, and we endure electricity-crushing storms just to be there on the other side, when the sky miraculously dawns blue. On those glorious days when everything lines up perfectly, the whole thing feels unreal.
But, let s be honest here. The truth is those perfect powder days are hard to come by, like spotting a yeti in the wild. The majority of the days we click into our skis, we re hunting week-old powder in the trees, scraping two inches off hardpack, or skinning for sun-softened corn. We re enduring sleeting wind, sweating through feels-like-June-in-January temperatures, and waiting weeks for the next storm to materialize.
When you re on skis, it s not always bluebird and neck deep like the magazines and ski movies make it seem, but that s part of why we love this sport. You never know what you re going to get out there. And sometimes, it s the sleeper days the days nobody else expects to be good, so they all stay home, and then those four inches feel like a foot of fresh that surprise us the most.
You could be anywhere. Your office. A traffic jam. An airport. Your in-laws house for Thanksgiving. But you re not. You re in the mountains. Surrounded by snow-covered peaks. You might be on your once-in-a-lifetime trip to Alaska, which you emptied your savings account for, or you might be scraping an early-season blue-ice groomer at Loveland. No matter where you are, if you re on your skis, there s simply no better place to be.
