It reminds me, I always have these epic powder dreams, but rarely get there!
It doesn’t help to live in lowland western Oregon below the snow line. The parking places aren’t really that high up in the mountains. The snow is often rained on and messed up. There’s a ton of trees (but not so much old growth) so it’s hard to get those wide open powder fields. You can go resort skiing but the off-piste is often terrible crud and you are stuck carving groomers. Most backcountry skiing is on trails through the woods, it’s often terrible snow off trail. Or too low angle or too tight trees to have some epic powder descent. Nordic backcountry trail skiing can be fun though. Not too bad. When the access to the high mountains finally opens up in the spring, it’s not powder. So good corn ain’t bad anyways. Besides, if you finally hit the steep and deep, you could be killed by avalanche. Do you really know how to predict an avalanche? Does the beacon and shovel really help all that much if it gets bad? Do you have a friend with a beacon that can dig you out? Oh, and some of my best powder skiing has been lucky days at the ski lift resorts. Actually. Some unusual circumstance where weather and timing and crowd avoidance worked out. But one of these days I expect to skin up somewhere and drop in on some epic powder where the trees aren’t too tight and there’s no avalanche. !!!
Sorry just venting.
