The next morning, the first morning, you wake up to glorious sunshine reflecting off crystalline white snow.

You learn the basics: How to operate the location finding transceiver. How to load the chopper. You study maps.  You imagine the endless deep powder, with no lift lines, no disco bozos, no phones. You've dreamed of this for 25 years.  You are ready.

You get up the mountain, with Bill, Tyler, Andrew; close friends from college.

You ski runs through deep untracked snow. It's been dumping up there for weeks, in one of the heaviest snow years in a decade.  (The group at the lodge the week missed three of their seven ski days due to extreme weather and avalanche risk.)  It’s all it was supposed to be: amazing skiing through untracked powder with good friends and no one else around.

You stop for lunch. A picnic in the snow with the boys and the guides.