I love that first day of skiing for the season: the anticipation, getting up early, loading the skis into the car, and checking to make sure that all of the gear is ready. I bought new boots at the end of last season and I was eager to try them out.

Thus, on a cold January weekday after Washington, D.C. had received eight inches of snow over the last couple of days, I drove up to Whitetail Resort in Merecersburg, Pennsylvania. It’s about a 90-minute drive from the city and I arrived there at 8:45 a.m. My friend Ben was supposed to meet me there. However he was running late. Whitetail had not received as much snow as D.C. However, the frigid temperatures over the last week had allowed them to make snow every night. All but one of the trails was open. Whitetail has a total of 25 trails.

I geared up in the parking lot and made it to the first lift at 9:05 a.m. On my first day of each season, I always warm up on an easy trail. I also wanted to make sure my new Nordica boots worked well with my skis. I glided straight onto the EZ Rider quad lift that services two green slopes, a small terrain park and a short intermediate run. (Whitetail has a separate learn to ski “bunny hill” with a magic carpet, a double chairlift and another quad lift.)

View from the top of Whitetail. Photo by Matthew Graham.

When I reached the top of the lift, I turned right to steer towards one of my favorite green trails in the Mid-Atlantic — Sidewinder. Unlike too many green trails that are either way too narrow or are straight down short hops, Sidewinder arcs through the forest and is super wide. The trail also features a constant pitch making it easy for new skiers to control their speed. And the other great thing is that for some reason most everyone exits the lift to the trails on the left. Consequently Sidewinder is often empty. I floated down the trail on freshly groomed corduroy, enjoying the scenery while feeling the pressure of my shins in the new boots. The left boot felt a little too tight. I adjusted the boot at the bottom of the slope and moved over to the high speed quad.

It’s hard to believe that the Whitetail Express quad is over 30 years old. I remember when Whitetail first opened in 1991, watching how the lift worked with the chairs detaching and re-attaching to the cable. I was genuinely concerned about the safety of this design. But after 30 years it’s still running strong and detachable quads are so commonplace that no one gives them a second thought.

The Express quad zooms up 935 feet of elevation on the center section of the mountain, which has four long intermediate runs and a terrain park. Of these trails, Snow Dancer was closed. I tried Fanciful first. The snow was fantastic. It brushed off my skis in tufts of light powder. I made a few loops on the Express quad, skiing down Limelight and Homerun and then Fanciful again. I received a text from my friend Ben that he’d be arriving at 10:20. It wasn’t yet 10 o’clock and I had already done 5 runs — gotta love weekday skiing and no lift lines.

I decided to complete the mountain before Ben arrived and used the slope Drop In to access the expert trails that are serviced by the separate Experts Choice Quad lift. It’s not a high speed lift. However, it’s still relatively fast when compared to other fixed lifts.

There are two single black diamond trails at Whitetail — Exhibition and Far Side — and one double black diamond trail, Bold Decision. Or as I sometimes call it Bad Decision when it’s all moguled up. Bold Decision is steeper than the other two. However, it was groomed and I gave it a go. Sometimes this slope is a sheet of ice. Today it was perfect. Like the other slopes, there was a “just-right” layer of groomed powder.

I skied right onto the lift and gave Far Side a try. It too was groomed. However, it was a bit chunky in spots. But because it’s not as steep as Bold Decision, it was still a lot of fun. I rode up the lift again and returned to the blue slopes via the Ridge Runner trail, which connects to Angel Drop. It was 10:20 and still no texts from Ben. I hopped back onto the Whitetail Express and halfway up I received a text from my friend. He was getting his skis ready at the base of the mountain. I skied down Fanciful to find him near the lift line.

I quickly realized why he had arrived late: It was because he had come all the way from the year 1978. He was wearing this orange and blue puffy down coat with a gigantic hood. I hadn’t seen anything like it in decades and decades. It almost looked like a spacesuit from a bad 70’s sci-fi show. I started to laugh out loud. Ben said he had bought it on sale at the end of last season. Well, I thought, there’s no way I’m going to lose him in a crowd.

Matthew had no trouble identifying his friend Ben on the slopes. Photo by Matthew Graham.

We took the lift up and went down Fanciful. We did all the blues and then the expert slopes. We gave the moguls on Exhibition a try. I’m always wary about getting stuck in the icy troughs between the moguls. But not too icy! Ben and I ski the same speed and we cranked out 16 runs in no time at all. I was already up to 26 runs for the day. And Ben kept saying how this was the best day skiing at Whitetail that he’d ever had.

We stopped in at the cafeteria for a quick bite. Ben had pizza and I had a bowl of broccoli cheddar soup. A young woman had left her boot bag on one of the chairs at our table and she joined us for lunch. She had a metal container of spaghetti that she pulled from her bag. I asked her if it was cold, and she replied that the container was heated. She had plugged it into an outlet on the wall next to the table. I had no idea that you could do something like that. A big container of home cooked spaghetti sure beats soup or pizza!

Ben and I returned to the slopes and traversed the mountain, hitting all of all of the blue and black trails. At around 4 p.m. the light started to dim and the snow began to look flat. We were also now hitting occasional patches of ice and scraped off snow. It had become difficult to make out the terrain even though the lights along the trail had started to turn on. The entire mountain is lit for night skiing.

Looking up Limelight and Homerun. Photo by Matthew Graham.

I mentioned to Ben how much fun Sidewinder was, so we hopped onto the EZ Rider quad. Partway down Sidewinder Ben stopped. I asked him if he was ok. He told me that he couldn’t believe how nice the trail was. The snow was still perfect on this part of the mountain. On our next ride up the easy lift we saw kids doing something neither of us had ever seen. One kid on a snowboard would lay down on his belly face forward. He’d bend his knees to make the snowboard into a bench. Another kid on skis would straddle the snowboarder and then sit on the snowboard and the two of them would go down the slope as a pair. The kid on the skis definitely got the better deal. There were bunches of kids doing this. It was wild.

Ben and I made a final fun down the easy terrain and called it quits at 4:30. I had lost count of how many runs we had made. After we took off our skis, Ben said his skiing app showed that he had done 29 runs for the day, which meant I had done 39. Crud! I was one short of 40. It took all of my willpower to not put my skis back on and do one more run to make 40. It was the hardest part of a great day of skiing.