My Best Day Ever

By Sam Masters

Saying you’ve had your best ski day ever at a Selwyn ski area always gets a giggle from the jet setters. Those folks have been heliskiing in Canada (“Can’t wait to tell you all about it!”), discovered the most authentic pizza in the Dolomites, taken it to the edge of extreme in the Arlberg, and pretty much introduced skiing into Japan.

Thankfully nobody listens to middle-aged men anymore; because they are the worst offenders in the world of snowsports one-upmanship. Somehow your brother-in-law thinks he skis more bluebird powder days than the current Freeride World Tour champion. Mind you, this is the guy who makes the transit lounge at Changi Airport sound like the chase scene in Mad Max.

Social media supremo Mark Zuckerberg has a famous dictum, “Done is better than perfect.” Remember that the next time your Facebook page takes several minutes to download. My best ski days have never, quite, been perfect. Maybe that was the time I was sampling the blower powder below the main lodge at Mt Olympus; the snow a pagan fantasy of lightness, consistency and depth. My only problem? It was a total white out. Each turn was a guestimate based on reflex and hope: navigating by the occasional schist outcrop, a tuft of tussock, and the barely remembered tracks of my last run.

One thing is for sure – you can’t rely on the weather forecast. Modern humans will never accept that some things lie beyond our power to know. Like how to find something to watch on Netflix. Or explaining what the heck an NFT is to someone over 40. In our secular age, the weather has replaced God: a fickle, terrible and unknowable power that mocks our carefully laid plans. Most painfully when we are trying to choose which day to activate the powder clause in an employment contract. 

Our lives are awash with forecasts, and always have been. In the course of our long history, we have never left the most important facets of our lives – money, love, war and freshies – to mere chance. Throughout the ages people have filled the void with forecasts by reading tea leaves, a crystal ball, the entrails of a goose, or a Mean Sea Level Pressure map. 

An entire weather-forecast industry has sprung up to feed the insecurities of the powder warrior chasing their best-ever day. It’s a battle royale between all the important things your mum thinks you should be doing with your life - and the extreme FOMO of missing a powder day.

If you want a best-ever ski day in Canterbury then you’ll need some appetite for the contest because only very rarely are the goods served up on a silver platter. Straight-down, windless, deep powder days are celebrated with an abandon that usually involves cross-dressing and spilling more amber fluid than you drink. 

More frequent is your typical ‘mixed bag’ Kiwi powder day. The mountain looks like a plasterer’s radio, and it somehow appears to have snowed uphill. The fine ripples of untracked snow could be blower, wind-pressed, 3-inch-thick crust, or ice shark fins… and you won’t know until deep into that first turn…

The person who predicts the most powder days gets the most powder days. Not because they’re more accurate but because they will ski more often. If you’re Joanne (or Jonny) on the spot you tend to get the powdies. That’s the real secret of weather – and scoring your best day: just to get amongst it and deal with whatever shows up.