Issue link: http://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25062
BLUE Whistler/Blackcomb, British Columbia. Late April, late in the day. No one left on the mountain. I'm skiing with down hill legend Rob Boyd and Dan "Big Air" Treadway. We boot pack up Disease Ridge, under Blackcomb Peak, in the backcountry area just outside the resort. Vokyl Snow Ranger in a 190 over my shoulder. All day on ice and slush and hard-pack halfpipes. Spring con ditions in Canada. At the top of the ridge, the sun setting in long streaks. The afternoon is warm, the conditions uncertain. Boyd drops in first. A hop-turn off the cornice at the top and launches off a half-submerged rock. I hike a little higher, ten feet of cornice, rushing air, legs sucked high and snow leaping on the landing. Thigh-deep turns back to the bottom. The skis provide huge platform, solid and ready to land the long fall. The boards are great through the crud and not so bad on the ice, but now, in the super deep, they're floating like a dream; this is, after all. the very moment they were designed for. Squaw Valley, California. Kent Krietler, besides being one done with just a shadow of the mountain's permission. It is the place of the best big-mountain skiers in the world, is one of the fastest. He for a fast ski, a responsive ski, a ski that's going to carry me through is downhill-racer fast. He is superhero fast. His skies are made for and back. I set and edge and let them accelerate, driving knees, legs speed. I head over to Red Dog Ridge, a slow roll drops away to a shaking and still cold. A hard wind blowing snow. The trees below steep section then into the trees for a few untracked turns. A favorite opening wide and then swallowing me in shadow. Top to bottom with spot. Heavy snow today and patches of ice where wind has scraped huge, wide turns through variable conditions. A fast, fast. fast ski. it bare. Definitely not a place to dally. An in-and-out stealth mission Nothing tries to eat me alive. Thank God.