Conditions Report
Conditions Report from Saturday, January 3, 2026
“Search for everything except Love and Death. They find you when the time comes.” – Unknown
Twenty-twenty-six.
F***!
How did we get here?
A life of chasing snow brought me to this moment:
clipping into skis
saying hi to cute lifty
sitting down on Peruvian Chair
—It’s open! (finally)—
and soaring up through the air with 2 friends on a powder day at Snowbird.
The Wasatch has been slow to get things moving this early season in terms of snowfall.
She’s not a morning person.
But finally we caught a couple of powder days in the last 2 weeks with a solid dump opening the Peruvian Chair on Saturday.
The mountains are looking right again.
The energy in the liftline was electric.
On the chair ride up my two buddies Dustin and Haley Ray were chatting about stuff but I was scanning the mountainside like a hawk looking for prey.
There was going to be an untouched stash of powder and I was going to ski it.
Then I saw it.
We cut over all the way skier’s left from the top of Peruvian and skied soft bumps and hit little airs over baby Christmas trees.
The snow was soft as ever—softer than the silkiest sock I could ever dream of wrapping around my cold toes.
We skied down the gully to the piste, smooth, like a penny that you would roll into one of those big bowl/funnel machine things as a kid, watching the coin go faster and faster as it lay more horizontally the closer it got to the hole at the bottom.
From there we cut direct to Mach Schnell.
This is where I saw from the chair, on the far left side of the traverse through the trees, the virgin powder fields of Valhalla.
Journeying there, Dustin broke off from formation first, throwing up snow as he plowed through feathery snow.
I took the traverse further left in the forest and pinpointed a little send over a powdered-over tree.
It plumped me into soft snow and I skied the rest of the zone at terminal velocity.
Too good. More please.
Dustin and I went back to Mach Schnell 2 more times before it was time to go down to the valley and assume responsibility.
But this was only after we skied a heinous gully of bushes and bricked-up snow in one of those tight little gullies under the cat track directly below Mach Schnell, which made us strong.
Gotta pay the Troll Toll…
Then I found a little cliff upon second venture to the soft zone, hit it, and fell.
I shouted in frustration, swearing to come back one day and land it.
So I did on the next run.
Afterwards, Dustin and I parted ways at the bottom of the chute.
It would be the last time I’d see him or Snowbird in God knows how long as I departed for the French Alps the next day.
I made sure to really soak up those last few turns.
And now I’m leaving home with mixed emotions:
Stoke & Sadness.
My two friends.
I’m stoked for all that lay ahead with another Euro-winter.
Yet I’m already longing for home and the individuals who make it what it is:
The stomping ground where I cut my teeth and sharpened the ski edges of my mind that made me the skilled skier that I am today.
Where I experienced so much beauty and joy among friends and powder days that stay engraved on the hallways of my memory, timelessly, like mental petroglyphs.
And now I’m leaving it all behind.
They say search for everything except love and death because those find you when the time comes.
Yeah, sure.
But I suppose in that sense I also need not search for soft snow nor good company.
Because those will be right there where they have been all along, at Snowbird, in Salt Lake—back Home.
Where they will patiently remain.
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