IT WAS RAINING WHEN WE LEFT NELSON, BRITISH COLUMBIA, and it was raining when we parked in the mud on the west side of Kootenay Lake. It was raining when we unloaded the snowmobiles and it was raining when we gunned our way up the slushy, sloppy logging track. It was raining, raining like it would never stop. But then, suddenly, it wasn’t raining any more. The drops splattering my goggles had turned to flakes. Climbing higher, we’d crossed the magical temperature barrier, from 33 to 32 degrees, and the dark evergreens, which had dripped at lake level, were frozen and heavy with snow, flocked like a fantasyland. Now it was snowing, snowing like it would never stop.

The track ended ten miles later in a huge, gorgeous amphitheater of cliffs and peaks and trees, and we killed the engines, stepped up to our hips in soft snow, and unloaded skis and snowboard. With climbing skins and adaptors stuck in our bindings, we pushed higher still, breaking trail through the new snow under our own power, zigzagging upward for another two hours, until at last we reached a ridge and declared ourselves high enough. A form of snow called graupel fell on our shoulders–round, BB-size pellets–but it was an uncommon graupel, light and dry instead of wet and icy, and when it landed the wind pushed it around in little piles, like shavings of Styrofoam. Below us was a perfect powder pitch–nearly 40 degrees–studded with massive Douglas firs. Their trunks were fat and dark, the corridors between them white and inviting. Sweet turns were at hand, but, as always with deep-powder tree skiing, there was a sense of something more significant than just skiing: Done right, we could lace lines of perfect rhythm through the woods, tracing a route that was swift, joyful, and sublimely aesthetic, where you didn’t just ski the snowy woods but you did right by them, too. I felt like saying grace.

Deep-powder skiing is an almost spiritual pursuit to some, a simple physical enjoyment to others, but regardless of whether it holds deeper meaning it has a funny way of getting under your skin and driving you farther and farther afield in search of untracked slopes and bottomless snow. It is an experience all the more rare at U.S. resorts, where heavy traffic and relatively light snowfall conspire to reframe a dusting as a dump, but in the southeastern corner of British Columbia, where powerful Gulf of Alaska storms shed the lion‚Äôs share of their fury, you can find helicopter-skiing conditions for the cost of a lift ticket–and a cheap lift ticket at that. Average snowfall in this wedge of the province is more than 50 feet, logging trucks are more common than SUVs, and a ski area might see just 2,000 visitors on a busy weekend. In the subculture of deep-snow aficionados, it’s known simply as the Powder Triangle, and it is, in fact, hallowed ground.

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