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Photo by Christy Pelland.

Ahh November. For those of us who do Turns All Year, it marks the beginning of the glorious season where snow is abundant and chairlifts are spinning. You can go as easy on yourself, or as hard, as you want.

The past few years, November turns have been mixed. In 2016, I accompanied the Sipple Sisters (which I still argue would make the best band name ever) to Naches Peak with underwhelming results. In the previous year – the year which shall not be named because the snowpack was so abysmal – I made three trip to Zee Mountain and again, it was a bit of a mixed bag. November 2014 started out promising only to freeze all of our hopes a few weeks later. You get the picture.

The snow gods blessed us with a bounty of pow this November just as the as-if-2017-weren’t-bad-enough gods bestowed upon me a sickness so devastating I actually stayed home from work for not one, but two days in a row. Nearing the end of the month, I had no choice but to take off another day from work (don’t worry, I worked both days that weekend) to go skiing at Crystal Mountain with Christy and Cailen, where we also ran into and skied with a big crew of shredders, including my faves Cori and Reid.

Anyway, the mountain wasn’t even fully open when we arrived, but the goods available were GOOD. We kept lapping this untracked pow, which required a slight uphill sidestep (we’re talking 50′) to reach. By the second lap I was panting. By the third I was toast and set out to find another stash. Only the search for pow could keep me moving.

Photo by Christy Pelland.

Why is Christy’s camera so much better than mine???

In all we skied 15 (mostly short) laps in 3 hours before I had to be carried into The Elk for apres and driven down the mountain. I’d like to take this time to thank my #skisquad for tolerating my snotty-nosed sickness and not being offended when I nearly lost a long on the chairlift. Ya’ll are the best.

It helps to have views like this too….

….happy SkiVembering!