The day smells clean and sharp; snow dusts your face and massages the senses with sensual fingers.

Plummeting down Palisades Tahoe’s KT-22, you carve back and forth through lightly tufted snow that curls mid-calf. Clumps explode off skis down wild shots and sweat-induced plunges. All your attention is focused on sustaining the pulse, sustaining the rhythm, the motion, and flow until the waltz down carpeted slopes become all a blur.

Overnight Palisades Tahoe had received a foot to two feet of dreamy dry snow, the type that blows off the windshield and floats in the air like Michael Jordan.

Even with clear skies and rocketing sunlight, new-fallen snow stays windswept and clean. Slopes looked like football fields of sparkling diamonds. Riding KT-22 you watch enthusiasts arc turns down Ladies’GS, The Nose, and into the Fingers with smiles as fixed and large as if they were on acid.

I didn’t really blame them.

It was a pretty good day. Okay, it actually was really good. Early morning, untracked lines welcomed people in Haiku simplicity from within the timber of Red Dog Ridge, Olympic Lady, and all the way across the ridgeline to Skunk Rock and the secrecy of pine stashes in The Enchanted Forest.

On a great powder day at Palisades Tahoe, you fall almost perfectly in sync with the snow and the world around. It’s as if nature lets you in come inside via some secret seam as you slip through wind drift, between padded trees, over rocks and drops, and through a mix of air and snow and timber that is all a part of you. And the better it gets the more you simply cease to exist, until finally there is only the mountain and the snow and a soul and spirit.

“We'll line up on top of the West Face, maybe seven or eight of us, and start reeling off into fighter pilot formation," says Larry Blue, a long time local known as one of the ‘West Face Boys.’ He gets in 120 days a season at Squaw. "Powder skiing at Squaw raises the vibe, it's a feeling beyond belief. We define it as a freeing of the heart's soul."

Because of a single cosmic quirk, the tilting of the earth on its axis, we are blessed with powder snow. It is loose, ice-like flakes that form a frothy lip of complex, crystallized and suspended water. Carving over powder snow changes your relationship with mountains forever; it changes your picture of what is possible on boards. Simply speaking, powder snow, especially with modern-day equipment, makes ordinary skiers and snowboarders into gods.

In fact, even the gods agree.

“What I love about Palisades Tahoe that it is radical as it gets, but within relative safety. The Patrol is so good that they take a lot of guesswork out of trouble spots. Squaw’s a great playground where the steeps and the drops are all good clean fun,” says JT Holmes, a member of Palisades Tahoe’s Freeride Team.

Palisades Tahoe’s professional ski patrol opens up the mountain piece by piece. The Mountain Run, a top to bottom, three and one-half mile intermediate run is priority. As a result patrol initiates avalanche control first on KT-22 and Red Dog;  then it works its way up the mountain towards The Headwall, Siberia Ridge, Tower 16, Broken Arrow, and eventually into the narrow romps and playful pitches of Granite Chief and Silverado.

As a result, devoted powder hounds start lining up for a pole position at KT-22 sometimes three hours before the lift begins spinning.

“Powder mornings at Squaw contain a tension and frenzy unlike anywhere else,” explains Keoki Flagg, a notable photographer and mountain adventurer. “Where else do you see people getting out early enough to get a certain chair in order to get a certain line? You realize how much attitude and desire and how much passion Palisades Tahoe skiers have.”

First chair powder worshipers typically head directly into the Fingers, a series of steep chutes directly under the chair, or over to Moseley’s. A temple to monster bumps and jelly legs, the smoking mogul run, known originally as the West Face, was renamed in honor of the Palisades Tahoe skier who captured the gold medal in freestyle skiing at the Winter Olympics in Nagano. The bumps on the steep slope stay cold, hard, and gullied into massive mounds storm to storm.

“At times it does get ridiculous,” Holmes says. “I’ll show up around 7 am and there are already people in line. The level of skiing at Squaw is so high that you’ll have sometimes 30-40 people wanting to do the same line, whether it’s burly or a big air. As a result some guys head to KT’s bottom terminal at daybreak to insure they get their line. To them it’s worth it.”

“I’ll return to Squaw in between races on the World Cup,” adds Olympic Gold Medallist Julia Mancuso. “People could care less if I just won a race. What’s more important is who got first chair that morning on KT.”

Waiting in line for hours is sometimes numbing and the conditions can be as savory as a dog’s breakfast. It is not for the meek. Not unlike those who wait in line overnight for Rolling Stone concert tickets, people have been known to set up camp stoves and make breakfast while hanging out at the bottom of KT-22. Etiquette is key.

“There’s few unwritten rules,” says Holmes. “People can leave their skis in line and go off for a cup of coffee, but basically you need to be booted up and spend the majority of the wait in line. No poaching is allowed.”

Holmes has seen the bad vibes when early morning chargers play chess for their spot in line.

“We had a guy show up at 7:15 am wearing Sorrels,” explains Holmes. “He places two pairs of skis into the line that’s forming and takes off. He came back around 9 am with his girlfriend. That just wasn’t cool. Someone had already put her skis in a nearby tree well. There was a bit of a confrontation, but it got sorted out.”

What makes Squaw such uber-bliss over other resorts around the country? Possibly it’s just the amount of snowfall alone. Few areas in North America average more snowfall than Palisades Tahoe. In the foothills to the west, the canyons carved by the forks of the American River funnel storm fronts into the heart of the Sierra Nevada. At the Pacific Crest, they turn northwest and aim directly at Palisades Tahoe. The resort averages twenty-five feet annually.

“We send out 16 teams over 26 routes to protect the mountain on a big day,” explains Will Paden, Squaw’s Avalanche Forecaster and route leader. “We want to get the mountain open as quick and as safe as possible. We’re powder skiers at heart so we get a charge from everybody hustling for turns. The energy is insane. Best of all, people can keep skiing untracked as the day unfolds and we are able to get more terrain open.”

Terrain is another reason. Site of the 1960 Winter Olympics, the resort’s gargantuan geography makes first-time visitors feel as though they're looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Carved from six peaks spread over 4,000 acres and served by 30 lifts, the resort has always sung hosannas for the wild at heart. Its slopes remain a monument to free skiing adrenaline junkies attracted to the area's hair raising chutes, intense steeps, and gnarly rock faces, some the size of small office buildings.

“Squaw’s terrain is steep but it holds snow nicely,” says Tom Day, a thirty-year veteran of Palisades Tahoe winters. “Because of its lift system there’s not a lot of traversing. Right away you’re on top of these great slopes. Squaw has such a mix of terrain; the snow seems to have a lot of different textures. Change your line a few degrees and you hit wind blown. Ski slightly to the right and you get fluff.”

Squaw powder days are a swooping signature of skiers and boarders presence and egos. Most of us like to see our tracks in virgin snow. But, as purists would agree, the best powder run are the ones that never leave a mark--where your line seeks abstraction, fills in and marries with the mountain. It may be that sense of purity, as much as anything, that brings us, called and crazy, to a powder day at one of North America’s greatest mountains.

Warren Miller always said that the reason people like to be in or ride on water is that it replicates the sense of being in the womb in the original waters of life. Then he took it a step further to explain snow as only being frozen water, the implication being that powder skiing is a return to the womb.

“I lack the skills to remember being in the womb, but if it's half as much fun as powder skiing, then no wonder new born babies cry so hard when they arrive here!” says Dick Dorworth, a former Palisades Tahoe skier and US Ski Team race coach. “I had many fine days at Squaw in the powder, in hip-deep fairy dust. I remember one day on The Nose of KT when I had to wear a scarf over my nose and mouth in order to breath. We skied until our legs were wobbling and we quit in the interests of survival, and the powder was still not skied out.

“Powder skiing is one of the great experiences in this wonderful ride between womb and tomb, and Squaw gave me some of the best I've known.”