Are you a sole skier, or do you hang with the pack?

Trying to meet up with friends on the ski hill can be a pain in the proverbial. When your timings off, it’s off. What do you prefer on a powder day, to ski alone, with one friend or to attach to a posse?

It’s been snowing in Telluride Colorado this weekend. A lot.

Saturday’s first light revealed downtown streets covered in 7 inches of fresh, dry, blower powder snow with surely more up top. In a word I was ‘excited’. So was a town full of locals frothing at the mouth to get their tips into the steep and deep that the newly opened for the season Chair 9 would reveal that morning.

Timing is everything on a powder day. Get to the wrong side of the mountain and you could be fighting the masses for your tracks. As a one-week-so-far local it was pure fluke that I ended up on the ‘right’ side of the mountain far from Chair 9, riding the first chairlifts to chair 4 to access chair 5 and then lap Henry’s and surrounding runs in knee deep powder six times before I crossed another person’s track.

I did this all on my own. Though not by choice.

My skiing pals were either die hard locals who were taking their time getting out the front door knowing there would always be another powder day or went skiing with little phone battery. A single text from one informed me what part of the mountain they were heading to (not the part I was currently enjoying fresh tracks on) before radio silence kicked in.

I wasn’t prepared to wait for my friends taking too long to get out the front door. There was powder to be had.

The decision had to be made. Do I make my way from chair to chair to chair to get to the other side and meet my friend with no guarantee I would find him or do I stay where I am on this side of the mountain with the best powder I have skied so far this season?

No friends on a powder day, right.

Trouble is, I don’t like skiing alone. I also don’t like skiing in a pack. I’m a one on one, at max two on one, if I am feeling really generous then three on one, kind of skier. Any more and I start to feel claustrophobic.

A few days earlier I had storm skied with a friend and had the best day ever. Powder should, in my opinion, always be shared. I feel like a fool high-fiving thin air.

Yet here I was laying down fresh tracks, making squealing noises no one could hear and riding the chairlift alone back up to do it again. Clearly I had made the right decision. This lasted all of 90 minutes before the masses showed up, by which time I made my way to the other side in search of my friend only to discover tracked out fields of chopped up powder and no familiar faces.

So I left. Why? There were no fresh tracks left and no new friends arriving for another hour. Some would call me a skiing diva. Others would say, fair call. Hanging around after you’ve scored the best of the best only feels like trying to drag the remnants out of a party that peaked hours ago when you really should have gone home.

Come Sunday and I was spoilt for bluebird day skiing choice and thought I had timed my skiing perfectly. Some runs with a girlfriend and her partner followed by more skiing with another friend straight after.

But the best laid plans always go astray when trying to connect with people on a mountain. Phone reception, wifi reception, missed calls, languid texts and always feeling five beats behind means you can spend more of your time chasing your tail lapping runs in the hope of finding each other than you can just simply skiing and having a good time.

I hate chasing anyone, I mean, who doesn’t prefer to be chased? Which is why I hate skiing in packs. No one waits and the pace is usually set by the alpha male or female and everyone else must follow.

I do, however, love skiing with a small group of good ripping skiers and boarders who help me raise my own skiing game.

I know people who love to sole or as they call it soul ski.

They live for the peace of making turns alone in the mountain and set the day to their own pace. I have had those moments and enjoyed them but they were never my first choice – unless a helicopter is involved (privileged, much) when there’s nothing like that moment of silence on your own on the run down, but even then you’re sharing the joy with a small group once you finish that run.

This skiing diva is a strictly boutique skier, small groups and one on one. I like to meet a friend at the chairlift and get on together to start our ski day. Then pick up other people along the way who ski for a run or two and then disappear, replaced by others who appear to take their place.

It is fluid and flexible but secure in knowing that I will always have that one constant companion, ski buddy and snow pal to share the whooping and hollering with and hit the bar for an apres drink well earned.

But ski days, like life, don’t always work out the way you plan. What did we do before the age of smart phones? We organised a time and a place to meet and had a twenty minute window in which you or the other person had to be there. But knowing me I wouldn’t show up in time, diverted and distracted by new friends found on the chairlift.

Seriously, though, if the biggest problem you have is whether you ride the chairlift alone or with hoards of friends then you really don’t have a problem at all. Besides you can always reconnect at après.

How do you like to ski or snowboard, in big groups, small groups, alone, with your spouse?