LAST DANCE: When skiing feels like a summer sport

“You’ll be glad you’re wearing those in about three minutes,” He says with a nod towards your feet. “Our first move is a slippery log crossing.”

The Scarpas are new. So is the convenience-store Indiana-Jones hat. The rest of your gear is worn and dirty. Spring isn’t generally the time for new stuff. It’s considered the season of rebirth, but in the inverted psyche of a ski town, spring is when things get old and stashed away. It’s the autumn of the ski season.

There are a lot of beautiful aspects of skiing, moments and experiences that have changed your outlook on life. For the most part, they’ve happened in the cold, in the grips of nature’s harshest and most dangerous season. That’s what makes days like today so awesome. Your bare arms are feeling the burn of the sun your new hat is keeping off your face. The firm snow is growing a layer of corn. It’s one of those rare days when skiing feels like a summer sport.

Though there will be snow up here deep into August, most of us tend to lump our skiing into a five month period. Once May comes, we trade out for ropes or bikes or boards with fins or wheels. We move to the river, the beach, or just get back to the lives we put on hold to chase powder. We watch friends leave, see relationships we’ve worked to forge over the winter go by the wayside, jobs we busted ass at dry up. Our bustling towns turn quiet almost overnight. We move on.

What we miss out on are more days like this: the comfort of a warm, cloudless spring morning, the safety of a corn cycle, hiking and skiing for pure pleasure on a day when the greatest imminent hazard is sunburn. After a season of too many avalanches, too many injured friends and fallen heroes, a day like today is a tonic.

A season’s worth of muscle memory means you skin with ease, letting your eyes wander through the surrounding vista, and your mind stray—to tomorrow and yesterday, what-ifs and what-nows. At the base of the headwall, you sit in the sun and eat lunch, knowing it’s early enough and the snow is only going to get better. For the first time all season the landmarks you pick out on the boot pack are actually closer to the summit than you originally thought.

On the top, you rest and watch the sun cook the frozen snow, creating arguably the easiest and most fun surface ever for skiing. Your legs feel better than they have all season, and you creep to the edge and look down on your run. Like the kiss exchanged yesterday through the open window of a packed pick-up truck, or the round of beers shared in an empty bar last night with all the bros about to leave town, you wonder if this run will be the last—at least until fall, when the shadows get long, the days grow short, and a new season comes to life.