The report this morning said 15 inches and that was on top of an already soft base, so the snow was deep today - at least knee deep and waist deep in places - and as light and dry as you can imagine. The weather was also perfect. A comfortable 20F / -6C, no wind and plenty of sun.
So the conditions were as good as you could want and today I was ready to ski them. My mind was right, it's far enough into the season that my fitness is coming together, and in my fourth season living in Steamboat I'm now completely comfortable skiing powder.
I was a little slow getting started this morning so I didn't reach the top of Thunderhead until 9 am. I went right past the long line on the Storm Peak Express to the Pony Express which is where you want to be first thing on a powder day. My first run was to skiers' right. I was really excited about the untracked waist deep powder I found until I got to the bottom of the hill and realised I'd gone out of bounds and had a 200 metre traverse back to the lift ( in deep powder)!
Fifteen minutes and three buckets of sweat later my second run was straight down the middle followed by a run to skiers' left of the chair and then finally a run across through Nash Junction to the Bar-UE Chair. That was followed by Triangle 3 and then the trees between Twister and Hurricane where there was deep untracked snow that really shouldn't have been there by 10.30 am.
From there I took Moonlight down to the Sundown Express, deciding that on a day like today I had to ski one of my favourite tree runs. I chose Closet which was just awesome, before picking up some more powder lines on Oops and Vertigo on the lower mountain.
An awesome, epic day. Epically awesome. Awesomely epic. Wow!
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