I had a pretty neat day at Whistler last Friday. The alpine had been closed for a few days, and storms had delivered a foot or so of fresh snow high on the mountain. I skied a few icy groomers, and then took a chance and headed down the cat track to Seventh. The chair opened while I was on the way there, and I got one run down on completely untracked snow. The mountain was quiet, so even the second and third runs were on pretty clean powder.

I skied Seventh till it got completely tracked out, then headed back over to Solar Coaster and had some fun carving down Springboard and jumping off cat tracks. It was quite a bizarre juxtaposition; powder and deep winter in the morning, and spring hero snow in the afternoon. The run back down to Base II was a glorious high-speed blast that I desperately wanted to repeat. At this time of year, every day is a gift and very few days start off like that one.