Whistler, British Columbia, Canada

Unbelievable! What month is this again? Surely it must be February; certainly it is not April. Three straight days of on and off snow covered up the slush and ice that had preceded it the week before. And I was there! The fresh snow was there—just in time for Telus 2006.

The first day, I stayed on the easier slopes and kind of checked things out... I wasn’’t all that impressed, but the next couple of days, I trekked up to some of the back bowls and off-piste areas. Man! Just like the posters. On one particular day, I tried to keep up with my adventurous friends, Lani and Danny. Taking me out to back slope, it was so windy I couldn’t see, but I could tell it was pretty steep. So steep in fact, that as I carefully took turns, twisting my skis around in the wind-blown powder, I kept hitting the mountain mountain with my shoulder!
I should mention that I ski Alpine because I like the idea of lifts carrying me up the hill and letting gravity carry me down. With the crazy Lani and Danny, who prefer to pay for the priviledge of hiking in deep snow across mountains, I followed them on foot for the longest snow trek of my life—longer than all my prior treks combined. We made it out to the Flute Bowl (currently undeveloped and therefore untracked). It was the longest untracked powder that I have ever skied.

I might have been tempted to do that again, except that the long trek out of the bowl reminded me of how much work it was to get in there. A beautiful experience, none-the-less.