My timing was lucky this season. Mustang had 5 feet of snow in the previous week and the weather cleared during my tour. The 5 feet came after an extended dry spell, so Mustang warned us that snow stability was poor and that we would be uncharacteristically confined to about ¼ of their tenure. That would still be as much as all of Island Lake’s though, so it would be quite awhile before they would run out of fresh snow to ski.

Day 1 was especially high quality powder, which would spray on your jacket and occasionally your face with even a modest amount of pitch and speed.


Skiing was all in at least scattered trees, with occasional open areas in clear cuts lower down. With the snow stability situation, all 3 days there were “repeat runs,” this day on Flying Squirrel and Mad Hatter. Repeat runs just mean you drop off at the same point and move over 50 feet or so to put down a new set of fresh tracks. This is common procedure at most cat ski operations, but with 30,000 acres and better snow stability Mustang will often cover a lot of ground in a day with little concern about “farming” the snow. We skied 10 runs and it still added up to 15,600 vertical despite morning beacon training, a couple of lost ski incidents and some difficulty getting the 3 snowboarders in our group through traverses in the deep snow.

A few pics in the trees.








In the last picture you can see tail guide Owen’s red airbag deployed when he stomped a landing.

Day 2 the snow settled a bit but was still consistent high quality dry powder. Getting ready to depart from the lodge about 8:20AM.


Resident Pyrenee Stella had some company this morning.

The 2 standard poodles belong to the owners Nick and Ali, whose daughters were visiting for the weekend.

Here’s a fracture line on Showtime.


Showtime was one of the favored runs in 2012 and 2013 but off limits this year.

We moved into the alpine this year on intermediate pitched Cloud 9.

We did 5 runs up here. The skiing rolls over into steeper tree lines similar to what we skied the day before. In one case 6 of us gathered overlooking a steep drop in the trees our guide had squeezed through. We heard a distinct “whumpf”in the snow and 2 of the skiers felt a vibration from the settling snowpack. We quickly traversed out of there to easier lines through the trees.

The Cloud 9 runs were 2,000 vertical with efficient road access, so we ended up with 14 runs and 21,900 vertical for the day. That is a personal record for my 63 days of cat skiing, and 2 of the 18K days I’ve had before were also at Mustang.

The clearing weather resulted in overnight temperatures plunging to -22C, so I started Day 3 with an extra layer, mittens and boot gloves. The latter are particularly helpful on cold days when your feet are under the snow surface while you’re skiing.

We moved into slightly steeper open terrain.


Including some pillow landings.


Here our guide sets the boundary line in Centurion Bowl.


This was very sheltered with snow as deep as the first day.


The morning stayed cold but midday it suddenly warmed up quite a bit. They took us to Stage Right, which you can see from the top gets very direct sun.

This seemed to be case of “get it now while it’s still good.” Some sectors you could feel the powder getting heavier, but it was still ego skiing being untracked. It probably wouldn’t be after an overnight freeze though.

Midway down we regroup above a cat road.

There are tracks from the day before in the clear cut across the valley.

Here’s the bottom of Stage Right.

We did 3 runs here, then a long 2,400 vert run that ended in a forest of newly planted trees. This put us on a path to head back toward the lodge for our last 2 runs. On departure day we ski until 3:45, about an hour earlier than other days. Total today was 17,200.

They load our luggage in these boxes which are carried down the hill by the snowcats.

Mustang has a new cat this year, named after Putin’s favorite punk band.

3 people did not renew, but their spots were grabbed the next day by someone else in our group.