SOCIAL MEDIA IMAGES SHOW you the good stuff. That arcing spray of white powder against a bluebird sky, fronting a glimmer of color, offering assurance that there’s a skier back there somewhere, kicking up this brilliant curtain of virgin snow while plummeting down an Adirondack slide.
What’s it like?
“Euphoria,” said Will Roth.
“Pure exhilaration,” said Caitlin Kelly.
“I get a tingling feeling just hearing the question,” said Charlie Wise.
What social media doesn’t show are the hours of arduous, uphill terrain skiers must tackle in order to experience a thrill that lasts only a handful of seconds. And there’s another catch. At any given moment the snow may literally shift beneath a skier’s boots. To someone gingerly balanced on a mountainside with precious little in the way of emergency exits, cracks appearing in the snowpack or the of settling snow “are like an injection of adrenaline straight to the heart,” said Roth.