Every year we wait for it with an odd mixture of anticipation: the way drought-stricken land pines for rain, and how children await Christmas. When it does come, unpredictable but unfailing, it refreshes both outer and inner worlds, repainting the mountain landscapes pure and new, sparking excitement and joy in the hearts of many, and not just humans.

Fresh snow! One of nature’s greatest miracles. Zillions of tiny falling white stars, each a crystalline gem when examined under a magnifying glass, interlacing together, settling silently, promising – and delivering – the ecstasy of powder skiing. 'Powder' snow is soft like eiderdown and, ideally, at least knee-deep. It is as elusive and ephemeral as good surf. You have to catch it on just the right day and this often entails a lot of winter driving, much of it with snow chains on. Winter road closures are one sure sign that the powder is up.

Four years ago, and a year into her puppyhood, my Airedale Maya showed an unusual trait: a mere glimpse of skis and the clang of the planks snapping together brought out in her the same reaction the sight of a hunting rifle stirs up in a gun dog. Uncontainable excitement and readiness. I could wholeheartedly relate and, so, we’ve become best ski buddies, together seeking the freshest and deepest snow, like proverbial powder hounds.

There is style and aesthetics to skiing fresh snow – how big the turns, how round and frequent, what path you choose down the untracked mountain slope – and so the ski lines are as individual as signatures. While I aspire to make my ski lines a calligraphy in motion, Maya picks the most direct, and thus often the steepest, path like a stone rolling down the mountain. In snow lingo this is called “skiing the fall-line,” the hallmark of an expert.