National
Geographic Adventure

Below us was a perfect powder pitch — nearly 40 degrees — studded with massive Douglas firs. Their trunks were fat and dark; the corridors between them, white and inviting. I felt like saying grace.

Three turns off the ridge . . . my weight and momentum carried me deep into the white. A cloud of tiny crystals blew over my knees, thighs, chest, and face, and I gasped for air.

There, outside of Nelson, I plummeted in a semicontrolled fall through the center of a billowing blizzard cloud, big fat trees rushing past my face like the columns of a still and darkened forest. An unbroken blanket lay before me, a cloud of cold smoke behind, and somewhere in the middle I was at home as I've ever been.

– "The Powder Triangle", February 2004, Steve Casimiro