March 8, 2001 goes down in the books as one of the best days of skiing I have ever had in my life. Two days after a foot of snow got dumped on New England, I left home at 5:30AM for Wildcat Mountain in Pinkham Notch of the White Mountain National Forest. I picked up a pair of Volkl P40 Platinum demo skis on the way through North Conway due to my pair of Rossy 9.9 9x recently breaking at Magic Mountain and hit the slopes around 9:15AM.

A Perfect Day! Ski days do not get any better than this; especially in the Mount Washington Valley. Blue skies all day, lots of sunshine, and very little wind. The temperature was hovering around the mid 40s at the base in the morning. The snow was nice and soft under a bright sun and a perfect hard pack was found in the shade. Wildcat was completely open with about 25% of the mountain ungroomed and bumped up. The pictures really don’t do this day justice and the glare coming off the snow makes the pictures more bright than they should be which causes the details and contrast to lessen.

While skiing at Wildcat, I jealously noticed another skier making flawless turns through the bumps on the final pitch of Lower Catenary. After several years of race training, I could rip the steepest of groomed slopes but could not handle even the easiest bump field. I watched that skier effortless pick through those bumps and studied her movements. Then I followed in her tracks, beginning the process of increasing my technique towards becoming what I refer to as the All Mountain Skier. I would find two thousand vertical feet of blissful top to bottom bumps on the Gondi Line. I knew then that I never wanted to be limited as a skier by terrain or conditions.