MONARCH MOUNTAIN, Colorado — Over the last few years I developed my own religion based around good karma.

In my world there are a few types of karma. Of course there is there is the plane old just being nice to the other inhabitants of this earth karma. But, the one type of karma that we have all been cashing in on lately, and I highly believe in, is our powder karma.

With the heavy snow cycles we have been in, a lot of us in the skiing and snowboarding community must have been doing our part to make the world a cooler place to live.

As a ski instructor I guess I have earned a lot of good powder karma by being patient, picking students up, teaching beginners on big snow days, and all those other things that go along with the job.

In early January of this season I hit the powder karma jackpot on a snow cat trip to Monarch, which is about 115 miles due south of Vail. If you don’t want to hear how good it was, then just stop reading here, but if you want to hear how killer Monarch can be on big powder days, then read on.

Cathedrals of snow
My partner in crime, Elna Persson ,and I loaded up Larry, our truck, and headed down to Monarch. We had heard reports that the Continental Divide, on which the ski area sits, had been the epicenter of snowfall over the past few weeks.

As we headed up the pass from the Arkansas Valley floor, which only had a speckle of snow, the walls of snow on the side of the road just got higher and higher. I would have missed the parking lot, if for not noticing the Monarch sign hiding behind two big piles of snow. Read More