Return of the Jay Cloud | December, 2016
There's an old expression in skiing "no friends on a powder day." It means that if the snow is deep you shred it, no if, ands, or buts about it. Friends too slow? Leave em behind, you gotta get the freshies. I've recently come to disagree with that. Having friends on a powder day is the bomb.
There's something truly euphoric about ripping that first powdery run with your buddies, hootin' and hollerin' the whole way down. It channels an inner happiness you can't get from many things in life, similar to the way you may hear a surfer describe riding their first barrel or a skateboarder landing that one trick they've been trying to get for months. Having your friends their for that moment only makes it that much better.
After the travesty that was the 2015-16 ski season, getting a weekend at Jay Peak like this one tasted even sweeter than it normally would. We spent Saturday charging all around the mountain and returning to our favorite trails and glades we didn't get to ski last year. On Sunday we decided to explore the sections of the mountain that were not open yet and see what we could find.
Skiing deeper and better snow than we got all of last season resonated an intense level of stoke in all of us. At the end of the day, with ear to ear grins, we talked eagerly about the days on the slopes ahead.