Seven feet of fresh snow, as soft as down, now pads the slopes that only a week ago had been a sheet of ice, making landings softer, and hearts braver. At the top of the chute is an outcrop of granite, which means that one has to drop about five feet and land pointing straight downhill in a space only a little wider than an average man is tall. Sara has worked at Kirkwood, operating lifts and teaching children's snowboarding, for three seasons and knows most of the other twenty-somethings who work around the mountain. On days like this, when the road has been closed, there aren't many customers. Employees, who either live on the mountain or who have, like Sara, been crashing with friends in anticipation of the powder day that they knew would come after the storm, take over the mountain.
Employees recognize one another's clothing.
Sara always wears a pale green jacket with white stripes on the sides and baggy red pants with pockets on the sides that swish when she walks. Looking up at the cornice, Sara can see the first of many little spots of color fly off of the crest of the wave, spinning wildly around before landing smoothly in a spray of snow that must have reached ten feet high. The whole resort seems to burst with excitement. The cables that hold up the chairs shakes with all of the shouts and screams that come from the passengers. As more and more people launch off the cornice, Sara gets close enough to recognize them as her friends.