This is the fifth installment of my informally and personally judged awards for the past ski season. Hard to believe that going into the 2016-2017 ski season I didn't even know what backcountry skiing was. Now, just over five years later, it is difficult to overstate the importance of ski touring in my life. Backcountry skiing takes me to magical places, challenges me physically, strengthens me mentally, and catalyzes friendships that will surely last a lifetime.

The past season continued my trend decreasing the number of ski days while increasing my average ski day length. I skied "only" 47 days in the backcountry, a paltry amount compared to two years ago when I tallied almost 90. At the same time, I averaged ~5,000' per tour, a metric I think better reflects my efforts and focus. A couple of years ago I was more rabid to spend every possible minute between sleep and work sliding on two planks. In reality that meant that I spent a LOT of days skiing very poor quality snow at 5:00am on weekday mornings before work. This past season I think I found a better balance of ski quality and ski quantity.

It was an odd season as far as the weather went. A massive atmospheric river (AR) hit California so early in the season we were able to get Sierra powder turns in October! Another round of storms buffeted the local terrain over the holidays before the tap went dry. Very dry. In fact, snow didn't fall in earnest again until mid-late spring. It is more than a little disconcerting to imagine that if we hadn't received those two early season AR events, we wouldn't have had a ski season at all. Yay climate change.

At least the lack of snowfall during the mid-season meant that we had gorgeous sunny weather just about every weekend. As always, we made the most of it.

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