STORY
A Strange Start to the Season (Lapping Reds)
The first real snow came three weeks late. When it did come, it came fast — fourteen inches overnight and another eight by noon the following day. The mountain opened Red Line and Lower Unbound for the first time this season.
We lapped the same run eleven times. Not because we had nowhere else to go — the whole mountain was open — but because the run was perfect. A slight left-hand roll at the top, two hundred feet of open pitch, then a compressed choke into the trees that ejected you onto the cat track at thirty miles an hour.
At three in the afternoon the snow was still good. The crowd had thinned. We did two more laps and called it. The season had started.
