Intrepid skiers find the first cut is sweetest

I HAD BEEN WAITING FOR years to taste the pleasures of the season’s first powder, minus a throng of other cubicle escapees, so when the clouds parted one morning between storm cycles during the two-week deluge of early January, I knew I had to make my move. The roads were a mess, drivers shell-shocked, the next monsoon imminent, perfect conditions to beat the pack. With a couple of buddies, I pointed the car north to Frazier Park.

The target was the tallest mountain in the Los Padres National Forest, 8,831-foot Mt. Pinos. But when we got a clear view of the Signature Bowl, on Pinos’ southeastern slopes, my friend Mitch Weber, who’s got a keen eye for slope trouble as proprietor of skiing website Telemarktips.com, pointed out the warning signs for an avalanche. A wind-driven cornice -- a wall of crusted snow looming in the shape of the letter C on the ridgeline -- spelled out a clear message: Look out below.

To make sure my first powder of the year wasn’t my last, we decided to ski the lower, forested slopes and the law of serendipity led us to the place we were supposed to be: Mt. Abel, Pinos’ sister peak. At 8,280 feet, it’s equally stocked with plunging slopes and the conifers that give Pinos its name.

Also known as Cerro Noroeste from Spanish days, Abel is special to powder buffs because it was once a top hill for the hardy skiers of the World War II generation. They cleared many of the slopes above Camp Condor, a group camping facility, and set up a rope tow near the top of the mountain.

There were a few snowboarders nearby, building a kicker for aerials, but the upper slopes were deserted under a seductive blue sky. If we could climb out of the gully behind the camp, we thought, the ridgeline above it would be easy to access.

The return to the slopes each year is part of a welcome cycle of renewal for me. The eternal sights and sounds of fresh snowfall and skis upon it are touchstones I count as great recurring gifts.

The joy of fresh powder lay in the Zen lightness of it all and the canvas it offers to etch a tangible record of my fun. If the tracks resemble a corkscrew, I feel saintly, wild as a bird and in complete control. If I fell on that run, the lumpen evidence of spills has been recorded too.

We hiked a ridgeline above a forested slope recently hit by wildfire. About 1,000 vertical feet below the summit, we hedged on whether to hike up to the old rope tow. The risk on the higher slopes was that our skis could sever the intricate support network of new-fallen snow, causing a chain reaction and slab avalanche. As we pondered whether to go up or down, the enormous load of snow clinging to evergreens around us would occasionally give way, dropping craters in the powder.

In the burned area below, though, there were no branches or brush to collect snow, leaving the 5 feet of powder smooth even under the noontime sun. Nobody else was around to share in these spoils, and the matter decided itself.

I took off downhill, slow and ungainly at first in the deep soup but as I eased over a rise, I picked up enough speed to launch my skis in and out of the snow. Then a change in the terrain -- a tree ahead, or a sudden steepness -- and my instincts took over, hips snapping side to side as needed.

Telemark skis and the climbing skins affixed to them gave us traction uphill, and built a neat little track we climbed again and again with relative ease. The sweat of the uphill made the ski down sweeter, and the lack of crowds on this nongroomed slope meant I had plenty of blank slopes to spell out my adventure.

After my best run of the day, I looked back to see how nature had chronicled it. The tracks were neat and wiggling, disappearing over a rise where I remembered the snow was especially deep, up to my waist. My art will be lost in the next storm, I mused, but I’ll take it over the best sand castle on the beach.