Skiing at Copper Mountain - expert - In a dozen visits to Crested Butte, I have only caught it with deep powder three times or so. There is nothing scarier than skiing this mountain's extreme terrain in its normal conditions, which are (for lack of a better expression) extreme: windblown, icy, rocky, dangerously steep. But, with two feet of deep fresh powder on top of fresh soft snow from the days before, as I caught the place last season, THERE IS NO PLACE I WOULD RATHER SKI. The cold temperatures will ensure dry smoky snow on all of the beginner terrain and you can be sure that very little of the fallen snow will melt off during the season, which makes this place a rather sure bet for good conditions, even in low snow years. Year in and year out, they build a really scary terrain park that is NOT to be missed. After way more than a hundred ski days last season, not one even came close to the day before the US Extreme Skiing Championships during which I skied with the champ, Jesse Hall, flying all day long through ridiculously long, steep and soft runs. Crested Butte is one of the finest ski areas in the country, planet, and most likely, the universe. Words cannot do justice to this geological anomaly in the wildly remote Elk Mountains. Joey Smallwood