It didn’t take much fresh, fluffy powder to bring out the powder hounds today.

A crowd of smiling faces was cued up this morning waiting for first chair.

It didn’t take long for those smiles to turn into grins. Officially, we had 4′ of fresh snow today, but the folks I rode with on the chairlift  told me it was “skiing like 6 or 7”.

This guy plunged in under the BlueBird lift line and kicked up fluff with every turn.

Despite my natural instinct to let it rip, I stopped to take some photos and was taken aback by the giant rooster-tails following the bodies down the slopes.

This tele-master was charging down Engen, with a trail of sweet goodness wafting up in his wake.

This is technically a ‘groomed run’. Thankfully, many of our runs were groomed last night, creating a nice, smooth foundation for the 4+ inches of powder.

I was pretty envious of all these rippers, as I couldn’t spend all day on the slopes (darn that four-letter “work” word). But I do consider it my duty to do some research for these blog posts and snow reports. For those who like lots of details, here’s my assessment. Disclaimer: you may not agree 100%, but this is “how I ski it”…

Groomed runs were smooth, velvety corduroy. Great to connect some big, fluid turns without fear of crust or bumps sneaking up underneath you. The new snow really buffed out the corduroy. The runs groomed last night were downright heavenly, and after a bit of a powder-drought, it felt amazingly good to have that fresh snow smack me in the knees as I angled some big rolling turns.

Off-trail, I was wary enough about what kind of crust might be lurking underneath to dial it back a bit and shorten my turns. I soon found myself gliding joyously down the open glades and floating through some sacredly secret spots where wind drifts had blessed the slope with 6 or 8 inches. It may not have been one of those powder days that smacks you in the face, but it was certainly one that was good for the soul.  — April