The power of powder days
By Nielsen Greiner EBS COLUMNIST
Editor’s note: Ski Town Vignettes is a new monthly series taking a creative look at life in the mountains, including some elements unique to Big Sky.
If you get up early enough, maybe while it’s still dark, you have time to make coffee and breakfast, throw a snack in the backpack or a pocket.
You wait to turn onto Highway 64, jittery from caffeine or just full of powder anxiety, dying to get there and park, and rush to the lift to drop your skis or board in the line of eager powder hounds.
Once securing your place, you can relax until just before 9 a.m., shooting the breeze with your local pals about the line you skied or rode the day before: “I got first tracks down Marx” or, “The Big was sick.” Or you might chat up some tourists, maybe throw in a low-key brag here and there, or condescend enough to share a piece of terrain advice when they ask, “Where should we go? What’s the best run?” But only if you’re feeling selfless that day. You overhear two grouchy locals talking: “They overreported,” says one; the other says, “Dude, there’s more snow at my house in the meadow.”
It’s five to. Casual energy turns serious with the sound of ski boots snapping into bindings, the ratcheting of snowboard bindings over soft boots. Game on. If you’re lucky, no passive aggressive looks or shouting matches over one’s place in line. After passing the RFID gate without a hitch and some mostly friendly elbowing, you reach the automatic loading gate and catch your breath on the lift ride up. Everyone’s drooling as they look down at the untouched pow.
You reach the top of the lift and again, it’s game on. Skiers, of course, have the right-of-way while the brave snowboarders one-foot it to the tram, hoping to make it there alive. Hurry up and wait. Will it be 30 minutes or three hours? Should you wait it out, or risk it and get a quick lap in? What’s Challenger or Headwaters like? The Bowl? A gamble, which could make or break the day.
“Just another 15 minutes,” says a patroller, and you all know it could be true—or another hour as patrol does their avalanche mitigation work dictated by nature, not by our schedule.
At last, the tram opens. The door creaks open as voices hush and bodies rush and you can feel the charge of anticipation in the bone-chilling winter air. The first car loads and as it moves skyward, the big bucket is filled by either silence or excited chatter. Maybe someone’s a little hungover from last night’s party, or forgot to brush their teeth.
At the peak, the big door slides open and it’s already the third—or more—mad rush of the day and you haven’t even made a real turn yet. You agonized all morning about what line to rush to first and now you’re seized with a momentary decision paralysis. You push through and make a call, knowing that whatever you ski, someone in the next tram line will brag that their line was better.
Will it be bottomless or blower, or dust on crust? Will you get first, or at least second or third tracks on your line of choice? Will reality match your expectations, or miss or exceed them?
There’s only one way to know.
The early morning rise when you just want to sleep in, the insufficient breakfast and caffeine intake, the three—no, four—mad rushes before you even reach your first real line of the day, the powder anxiety building for hours and then vanishing the moment you start making your big arcing turns on the alpine canvas as if floating on a cloud and the whole morning disappears and time stands still and nothing else exists as you move under the weight of gravity over frozen white water crystals.
This is why. This is why you do it.
Nielsen Greiner is an aspiring writer, outdoor enthusiast, and small business owner based in Big Sky. He loves snowboarding and splitboarding, mountain biking, long day hikes and truck camping in the woods, and has a thing for books, coffee, trees and birds. This summer, Nielsen lived out of his truck while traveling through Canada and Alaska for two months. To read more, visit nielseninthewild.com.
