The past two months have been off the rails at work. I haven’t been able to enjoy the storms of the past month. I haven’t been able to enjoy much of anything. Endless twelve hour days and unrelenting stress culminated with a twelve day work week. I was exhausted physically, mentally, and psychologically.

Going into this weekend, I had given up on the idea of skiing Saturday. I needed rest. I needed to stop. I needed anything other than yet another 5:30am alarm and five hours round trip behind the wheel. But seeing the new snow reports trickling in Friday afternoon, I realized that I needed to not let lingering effects of work stop me from enjoying my passion.

And what better place to feed that passion than Smuggs? I had written off Smuggs as an option. Mid-season Saturdays following a storm are normally liftline hell at Smuggs. But with temperatures starting in the negative double digits and barely warming to zero, I realized that the typical Smuggs skier would spend more time indoors than outdoors. The lodge was packed to the gills but the lifts were almost ski on all day.

Smuggs reported one foot of new snow on Friday but it was skied all day yesterday and strong winds blew around what much of what remained. I went right into the woods where I found a wide variety of excellent conditions but mostly packed powder with pockets of loose powder. At least once per run, I found untracked boot deep lines which were significant enough in quantity to justify a powder day tag for this report.

Many of the steeper and tighter lines at Smuggs could still use more snow. Occasional ice flows, downed trees, and rocks made things interesting in a few places. But many of those lines never have stellar conditions unless you are one of the first dozen skiers. Lower angle off map woods were sublime with supreme flow. The trees at Smuggs continue to speak to me.