I have been skiing since the age of 5. I am one of those die-hards that people around me just can’t understand. I developed my skiing skills on sheets of ice in the northeast part of US. Powder days meant 3 inches of snow and sometimes we got lucky with more. I didn’t experience powder until I took a 10-hour drive from Los Angeles (Redondo Beach), where I lived, to Alta, Utah. My friend spent two years as a cook in their mid lodge and knew all the great places to find powder on a non powder day. This is where I felt my first sensation of jumping a cliff and falling into a white bed of feathers. I skied for two days on a pair of skinny east coast park skis and thought I found heaven. The next season I was determined to go bigger. I went out and found a cheap pair of used fat skis, cleaned them up and tried powder again. This time, I was only an hour outside of Redondo Beach in a mom and pop mountain named Mt. Waterman. When Los Angeles gets their wintertime rain, Mt. Waterman, which stands at 8,000 feet, gets dumped on. As you read this, their website says that they cannot open because there is no cleared road to get to the mountain. This was great! This was my first chance to get some backcountry and get away from lift lines and base lodges. Before we drove up, we had back-to-back storms dumping 3 feet of snow on the mountain. There is barely a parking lot, and a small shack to sell tickets. I took the lift up and went straight to their backside. I get chills when I think about how perfect the terrain and snow was. The feeling of having fats skis, staying on top of the powder and knowing that I am alive! Right then I knew that powder and backcountry was where I wanted to drive my passion. The same season I ended up meeting a friend at Jackson Hole Wyoming and then really got a taste of ultimate terrain. Jackson was the first trip that actually scared me. I almost flew off of a 40-foot cliff that had a really shady landing. We found many other awesome features that made me feel like I was pushing myself to be a better skier. I was thrilled with my powder experiences, but sucked it up and moved back to the east coast to be with the other love of my life (and she’s worth it). So this season I get calls from my friends still living in California that they receive 10 feet of snow and I debate driving 8 hours north to find a mountain that got 8-12 inches. But this is not a sad story. My master plan is to move back to the west coast to chase a skiing career. I am in the IT business and work remotely for a company named EMC. I have been saving as much as possible for two things. One, a trip to Lake Tahoe in March to see what Alpine Meadows is all about. And two, to be able to quit work and chase my dreams of being able to ski for a living. When I first read about this contest, I took it as a chance to get to meet the Mustang Powder crew and see if there are any possibilities for employment. Even if there is no possibility for work, I would be able to be exposed to the best skiing in the entire world, something that I dream about every day.
For more information about Cat Skiing at Mustang Powder, check out their website at www.mustangpowder.com
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