I will never understand skiers that dive straight into the woods on first chair. There are few things I long for more than blasting powder turns down a flat, steep, and wide open pitch. Don’t get me wrong, I love trees. And I enjoy bumps when I can’t ski powder. But there is nothing like a steep groomer blanketed with untracked powder. It is far more rare than untracked powder through the trees.

On my first run, I found almost half a foot of untracked blower on top of scraped hardpack. A delightful surprise that affirmed my destination decision. I shamelessly made wide arcs across the entirety of JFK. A farmer harvesting the carefully planted crop I was not. The feeling of my skis planing up and surfing the fresh was sublime. The feeling of my edges engaging the hardpack at the apex of my turn was not.

Jay received approximately five inches across the entire mountain–which I worked more dynamically than usual. Instead of parking on the Jet, I spread my attention out across many different aspects. Where the blow was untracked or barely tracked, the skiing was really good. Where the scraped hard pack shown through, the skiing was really bad.

Crowds seemed light for a powder day but the untracked got sacked fast. This is likely due to the limited availability of line choices. Many lines and off map trees have yet to fill in (as I found out the hard way) and are thwacky at best, impassable at worst. I found myself on the dangerous end of irrational exuberance more often than I care to admit.