In times of indecision I often asked my mama for parental advice. Reflecting on my childhood the answer came quickly! Mama says "You never know if you never go." Well then it must be a good idea, right? You can find great skiing on the South side (if it hasn't been sun affected). The North side is my personal favorite with a wide fan into a choke and a spit out into a big bowl. Then there is the classic East side, with morning sun, which is what sealed the deal!






We loaded into the chopper and started the 8 minute flight up to the top of the mountain. As I loaded into the chopper I felt like the fat marshmellow man wearing thermals, fleece pants, toe warmers, hand warmers and a puffy down coat under my ski jacket

As soon as we landed the helicopter took off and we were left in silence. No cars, phones, music?just the peacefulness of the wilderness and the place we were. BEEP, Beep, Beep, beacon check and quick ski cut and pit to make an assessment of the snow. Lots of new storm snow, but it was just the surface snow that was sluffing. As we started down the hill we knew Mama was right. As the nose hair in my nostrils froze and breathing became hard, the deep soft pow began to flow and seeing became difficult while making turns.











FACE SHOTS BABY! Halfway down the second run we saw Mark disappear twice in a cloud of white during back-to-back turns, and then stop. At the bottom we were giving him a hard time, but he explained that because he was subbing out so deeply that snow was pouring into his goggles and the lack of oxygen due to choking caused him to shut down all forward motion!!











We took turns skiing down to be safe and avoid sluffing each other out. The day was beautiful and once we stopped and the ice cream headache subsided we were able to enjoy the views, compliment each others lines and count the face shots. In the end we found Powlicious snow and only sacrificed a toe and a cell phone!! One cell phone died due to the extreme cold and my friend Powder Panda (Mark Lasseter) got a bad case of frost bite on his big toe. He was having so much fun that he didn't even know until he took off his boot! Two weeks off and some boot heaters fixed that problem. Even with the frostbite Mark said "I would have done it all over again if could."






Even so, I will like to limit my super cold ski days and stay skiing on the West coast. That day on Rainbow we found something better than gold in the Pot, we found deep, cold, virgin Powlicious snow!

Q.What do you call a Tasty treat?? Delicious snow we like to eat? A. Powlicious

Skiers in the POWWOW Possie: Mark Lasseter, Greg Smillie, Dave Hammer and Phil Brock and Brian Baker.
Story by Brian Baker