Yes we have powder

Only five inches overnight, but 18 inches over the past 72 hours means a lovely packed powder base. It's a little wind blown and crusty in places, and not really Steamboat's famous light and dry champagne powder, but when your skis disappear into it and you start to feel like you're floating it still feels awesome.

Marie dropped me at the Thunderhead Express early this morning so I could avoid the big weekend crowd at the gondola and it was cold, cold, cold. Plus it was windy at the top, so I headed immediately into the trees in Closet where it was like another world and the snow was deep and largely untracked. And then when the sun came out mid-morning it was gorgeous all over.

I met up with my wife's friend Julieann and her husband Bruce around 9.30 am and skied with them the rest of the morning. Bruce is a brilliant skier which is great, because I find when I'm with a really good skier I ski a lot better. I think it's because I'm more aggressive and tend to ski a more direct line as I attempt to keep up.

Here's the map of today's runs for a total of 15,776 vertical ft and a season total of 256,049 vertical ft (or 25.6% of my season goal of skiing one million vertical ft).