“You don’t have to see it to ski it” Forrest exclaimed as he surveyed the nondescript white-everything that was the world around us. “True story!” I replied with a laugh, pausing to look around and seeing nothing other than white in every direction. On a bluebird day, we would be standing on the top of a ridge at just shy of 13,000 feet above sea level in the San Juan Mountains. To the West, we would be able to see the La Sal Mountains outside of Moab, UT. And from the Northwest, circling around the compass in a clockwise orbit all the way to the Southwest, we should have stunning views of the Colorado Rockies. Yet today, we were standing in a ground blizzard with visibility at no more than 25 feet and the wind was actively trying to un-shoulder our skis. Our objective was a narrow chute carved into the Northwest ridge of Palmyra peak – and if my hunch was correct, it was going to be chock-full of fluffy new snow...
