Alta

The storms that covered Tahoe the weekend before Christmas rolled out the white carpet as we traveled east together, the snow and me. And while Salt Lake City was bare, as I drove up Little Cottonwood canyon the minute my mom handed me the keys to her Subaru, brown turned to grey turned to white and I was back deep in the snow in one of my happiest of places.

(Twas the day of the night before Christmas and Alta powie reigned supreme.)

There's something truly special about Alta. Maybe it's the simple lift plan; the sweeping, open expanses of Catherine's, the Devil's Castle, and Ballroom; the dozen runs off the jarring High Traverse; the view down the canyon and across the valley. Maybe, and at the risk of offending my snowboarding following, its because it's still a skier's mountain. No boarding, no half pipes, no terrain parks. A legend fairly unchanged.

(My cousin Liz coming down Stonecrusher)

Mostly though I suspect it's because Alta captured my heart from the get go. I came to it feeling pretty good about my rad abilities as an east coast skier. I'd "ripped it up" over the years across the Poconos, at Killington and Whiteface. I'd traveled to Courmayer, Italy for a week in high school with my friend Amy on a ski/american-teenager-with-suddenly-easy-access-to-alcohol adventure and for spring break to Utah senior year with Riley. I'd skied on ice, in rain, in sub-zero temps and had a sweet pair of Vuarnets. So I was feeling pretty stoked about myself.

But Alta turned everything upside down. My Hart Honeycombs broke the first week I was there, the powder throttled me and the altitude sucked the life out of my senior year-weakened system. I was all edges and no finesse. But I skied almost every day of the season for two years, doing the dance, trying to keep up with the mountain's lead. I followed better skiers, picked steeper lines, learned to turn over moguls and not in between. I watched and I skied and I inhaled everything about the mountain until Alta felt like mine; a place where we conjoined and I felt incredibly free, incredibly empowered; strong, athletic, graceful, fearless, indestructable and in love. It remedied everything - angst, frustration, heartbreak.

I suspect that's why I've tried to keep that feeling nearby ever since then. That freedom and passion and breathless exhilaration. It's what makes me almost hysterical at the edge of a snowstorm, waiting to get out on the mountain. Impatient. Me at my worst. But it's also me at my best and at Alta, me in one of my happiest places.