Every day skiing is a great day: Reflecting on a thin winter

Apr 18

As I was looking back on how this ski season began, I found a photo in my camera roll from December 11th that I had sent to a friend working out in Sun Valley. It was a shot of the base of KT-22 with just a mere dusting of snow. Snow blowers were running, but hardly making a dent in the brown mountain underneath. On a day when ski season is typically in full swing, it still looked like early fall.

I remember texting him, asking if Idaho looked the same.

It did.

It was both of our first seasons working at a resort and all we could do was wait for the season to start.

Fast forward four months to April 13th, and I was standing atop Siberia Ridge at Palisades Tahoe on a bluebird Monday morning, looking out over a blanket of fresh snow with almost no tracks. It didn’t make much sense as April is typically spring conditions. The mountain didn’t even seem to belong to the same season as the one in the December photo. But that was exactly how this season went, out of order, inconsistent, and somehow still memorable.

It wasn’t just a Tahoe thing either. Across the West, places like Sun Valley and beyond, the story was the same: a thin, inconsistent winter that never fully arrived when it was supposed to. Storms came late, underdelivered, or missed altogether. It wasn’t just one mountain’s problem, it was the season we all got.

There weren’t many storms, but we learned to take full advantage of the ones we got. Scarcity has a way of sharpening experience, and this year every good turn felt like it mattered more.

I worked in the Demo Shop at Palisades Tahoe this season, and if there’s one thing that defined my winter, it's a quote that came from one of our regulars.

Dave would come into the shop quite a bit, grab his usual pair of Blizzard Anomalies, and head out for the day. When he came back in to return them, we’d always ask the same question:

“How was it out there?”

And without fail, he’d smile and say, “You just have to have the right mindset. If you shift your perspective, every day is a great day.”

At first, it sounded like optimism meant to compensate for conditions. Over time, it started to feel like something closer to a guiding principle.

Dave is in his 60s and skis almost every day with his wife. Whether it's fresh snow, hardpack, or slush, it doesn’t matter. He’s simply there to ski. Meanwhile, the rest of us spent the winter refreshing forecasts, waiting for the next storm, measuring the season by what it wasn’t delivering. Dave likely checked the weather just as often, yet he never seemed disappointed. And slowly, that changed how I saw the mountain.

Reflecting on this season was easy. There was so much variation that every day on the hill was memorable. I remember the first storm as vividly as skiing “the wiggle” in March.

December felt like a false start. The resort opened the day after Christmas, but just barely. The demo shop didn’t even open at first as there wasn’t enough terrain to justify it. Then came a small “Christmas miracle” storm, just enough to get things going, just enough to make it feel like maybe winter had arrived after all. At least it was enough to give me a consistent job.

This storm created crazy anticipation for the winter to come. Not only was I thrilled, but the energy on the mountain was shifting into “go” mode. The first day I clocked out of work and returned to my car fully buried in snow only raised the excitement. I was stoked to simply dig out my car.

January started strong with a New Year’s storm and a decent base, but the warm weather came quickly. By the end of the month, it felt like spring. Slushy laps, soft snow by mid-morning, t-shirt weather in what should’ve been midwinter. It felt a little wrong, but if you stopped expecting something else, it was still fun.

February finally delivered and we got a taste of what we’d been waiting for. Two storms rolled through, the second dropping nearly 10 feet in a week! The mountain shut down for a few days, and when it finally cleared it was chaos. The stormy week turned into a bluebird weekend. Patrol was still working on avalanche mitigation, and lifts needed to be dug out, so the lines for the limited terrain were wrapping around the resort. I had never seen the KT line and the Red Dog line connect until this day.

I managed to snag a few laps of the storm, and the snow was unreal. It was some of the lightest, deepest powder I’d ever skied.

And then it rained. Within days, almost all of it was gone, Ten feet of snow melted away, and just like that we were back to spring.

So we adapted.

If it wasn’t a great ski day, it would become a “learn to snowboard” day. If conditions were thin, it became a day to explore something different. Ski blades, side hits, anything that broke our expectations. Like Dave said, shift your perspective.

March was supposed to save the season as “Miracle March,” when Tahoe always delivers. Instead, it became the driest March on record in Lake Tahoe. Coverage thinned rapidly, lower mountain terrain closed, and resorts around the basin started shutting down early. The questions shifted from when will it snow? to is this it?

Still, we kept showing up.

Still, we stayed hopeful.

April, somehow, brought a taste of winter back and a final reminder of what the season could offer. Not in a dramatic way, not enough to redefine the season, but enough for a few genuinely great days. Enough to remind you what it’s supposed to feel like. After expectations were out the window, I felt like I was on top of the world.

Looking back, the season wasn’t defined by consistency, rather it was defined by contrast. Spring skiing in January. Waiting for powder in March. The best laps of the season showed up in February and April when they weren’t necessarily supposed to. But more than anything, it was a lesson in attention.

Dave’s mindset stopped feeling like optimism and started feeling like awareness. Not pretending every day was good, but recognizing what each day actually offered. It made slushy January laps feel intentional, made low-tide March skiing feel like an obstacle course, and made the rare powder days feel earned.

By the end of the season, I stopped thinking about what didn’t happen.

It was a thin winter. No way around that. But it was also a season where every good day stood out, where every run felt more deliberate, and where perspective mattered more than storm totals.

Standing on Siberia Ridge in April, looking out over fresh snow that shouldn’t have been there, it was hard not to think back to that December photo. Same mountain. Completely different season.

Seasons like this are a reminder that the mountains don’t always give you what you expect, but they always give you something worth showing up for.

Not every day of the season was perfect, but Dave was right.

It was always worth it to go skiing. A day skiing is a great day.