My own experience suggests that tree skiers are a tiny cult that varies with the resident culture of each mountain. In Park City, Utah, a few years ago, some 10 days after the most recent snowfall, I led some friends into one of my favorite steep glades. I feared the powder had long ago been discovered and slashed away. But to my pleasant surprise we found the 15 inches that the last squall had dropped totally intact, ignored by perhaps thousands of other skiers who'd passed nearby every day. They tend to exhaust the groomed runs after just a few weeks, and often head to the trees.
Some resorts have a handful of tree skiing bums, some dozens.
Muldoon, like all who have spent time exploring the mountain hardwood, has seen his share of close calls. She was semiconscious, upside down in the upper branches of this tree, hanging from her skis and powerless to undo her bindings. Another acquaintance, Craig, who lost four friends to skiing accidents during four years in Vail, has a far more gruesome tale. No one knows what, but he skidded off the trail, flew into the woods and ended up impaled on a 15-inch branch sticking out of a pine tree . . . It's the utter peace and quiet of gliding through winter's most exquisite portrait, with mounds of glistening snow atop and around pines, guarded from the wind, deaf to the shrill atmosphere of a packed slope and oblivious to almost everything else around you.