I skied Powder Mountain yesterday, guided by Joe, a fellow ski instructor and friend of long standing. He has been "retired" at PowMow for a few years now and works as a backcountry guide and on the search and rescue team. He has a trained avalanche dog. Everyone should have friends like Joe. I skied at Alta on 3/7 in 38" of new snow. I had intended to rest up for the backcountry day with Joe but didn't have the discipline to do that. I told myself just 2 runs but did 5. No discipline again. In the evening I had dinner with JohnL and told ski stories and maybe a few lies.

Powder Mountain is big, 8000 acres, the biggest single ski area in the US. (That's about 10 Killingtons). 2700 acres is set aside as Powder Country and is never groomed. Much of it is easily accessed from the lifts with some traversing and hiking. They got a bit less snow than Alta and to my distress much of the easily reached Powder Country was cut up. JohnL is right, it is no longer undiscovered. The disturbing part is that a great many of the tracks are simply traverses made by people who lack the skills to be there, shopping for turns. They traverse like pecking chickens, looking at each possible place to turn; "Nope not there, let's keep going." These tracks are a lot more disruptive than nested turns in the fall line. To ski the fall line you have no choice but to cross dozens of them. It is particularly nasty when they are wide snowboard tracks.

We ranged further afield and found untracked snow. The highlights were Sanctuary Ridge and Lightning Ridge, reached by a snowcat ride. Snowcat rides are available to the public at $15 each, over and above the lift ticket cost. It was a great day. Today I will rest and my legs are grateful.