Wow. That's all I can say about the skiing at MRG yesterday. As I rode the Single all I could see around me was an inviting blanket of untouched powder. That meant one thing - head straight to the 20th. I was pleased to see that I was the first one out there so I had the chore of breaking trail. <BR> <BR>Even though it's a chore to break trail out there, you get rewarded in the end. My reward - first tracks down Mad River Glen's best powder run. The middle section was the best as it was where the snow was the deepest (up to my thighs in spots) and where I linked turn after turn in the wonderful fluff. It felt like poetry in motion. My second run took me back out to the 20th, this time as far out to the right. Unfortunately, I snapped a pole on the traverse out so I had to make do with one pole. Not a problem since the deep snow made turning effortless. Back down on the ground I grabbed a pair of rental poles and got right back in line and then spotted Cousin Jerm. After meeting him at Stark's Nest we made another pilgimage to the 20th. This time we started even higher and farther to the right and once again found untracked powder. Powder so deep it made skiing difficult unless the terrain was steep enough. I remember one moment in particular as we took turns descending through the trees. I had gone ahead of Jerm and had turned around to watch him blast through the trees. It was surreal. He was linking flawless turn after turn, powder was cascading up past his waist, flowing past him in billowing white contrails. It was one of those picture perfect images you see in ski movies, only it was here and now and we were the lucky skiers. <BR> <BR>As we traversed back along the path after finishing Lower Antelope we looked up at a particularly nasty looking cliff band marked with orange ribbon and wondered aloud if a route might come down through it. Little did we know that we would be skiing that line on the next run. The run started off great with a series of steep and deep turns down through the trees of TNF. We then headed into Devil's Elbow and promptly took the wrong exit. I came back out onto the trail, Jerm stayed in the woods. I got back into the woods, skied a nice gully with a rock wall to my right and met Jerm again. We then bushwacked until we came to a big drop - the cliff marked with orange ribbon. We weren't quite sure how it would go, but I figured I'd go first. It wasn't pretty. It was a steep 10 foot drop to a small three to four foot ledge. That was the easy part. Once on the small ledge we'd have to negotiate an ugly cliff with and even uglier landing. I tried to sluff off as much snow as possible on the initial drop so I could see what was underneath. That didn't work so well, so I hopped in, hoping to sort of slide down to the ledge. That didn't really work so well either. In the process I scraped it clean down to the roots and got hung up on them. I was hoping to push away from the roots and then stand up on the ledge. Once again, that didn't work too well either. I ended up pushing away but I couldn't completely free myself from the roots and they ended up turning me upside down as I fell towards the cliff. I remember slipping off the cliff but I couldn't see anything because the powder obscured everything. When the snow settled I looked to my left and saw a stump and jagged rock. To my right was the cliff. Somehow I managed to turn in the air and came to a seated landing in the only safe spot around. Talk about getting lucky, I skied away without a bruise or a scrape.