This TR started drew me to Inland PNW.
https://snowbrains.com/northern-idahos-unmarked-powder-highway/
My first ever cat day was 2 yrs in the making. Last years reservation (made April 2021) was cancelled because everything off-piste was completly unskiable ice due to hot weather then hard freeze and no new snow in preceeding weeks.
On 2/4 @9am we took the lift to top of Schweitzer and divided into 2 groups of 10 with partners. Short safety and transceiver lecture. Then skied down a bit to the resort backside, to the backcountry. We skied 8 runs of about 1000 ft vertical each and took last cat ride ending at top of mtn about 3:30pm.
Prior to day there was no recent heavy snowfall, just light refreshes. But the conditions were surprisingly Powder! Most of the runs had been skied prior but you could fairly easily pick a line of untracked.
I consider myself a competent powder skier with many days of good snow in my travels, esp storm days in Utah. I kinda expected there to be one or two guys always "falling", not getting it and group waiting up, just like in my group resort pow days elsewhere. But in our 10x cat, everyone was an expert pow skiers. in fact, Ha!, I was the weakest link. Although I only had a handfall of falls and didn't hold the group gathering up.
It was way more tree skiing than I expected, interspersed with 100-200ft open meadow pitches. No wide open bowls. And some of the tree skiing was quite dense. There was talk of watch out for tree wells, but at times it was impossible not to ski close to the trunks, and one of our group got caught in a small one and needed help getting out.
The group was fast!, it was kinda crazy because I had no idea what was up beyond the next group of trees. My partner and I had a good laugh on the cat rides up, because we were supposed to stay in touch together, but that was completely impossible, because we all were skiing fast and got instantly separated in the trees. All runs were fall line and we met up 2-3x down each pitch with the leader guide yelling "here". No way could the sweep guide really know that she was actually behind the last skier because of the trees. One the next to last run, i was blasting down, hit a lip with short unexpected drop, tumbled over, and somehow ended up on my back with skis vertically planted upward into a couple feet of pow. I could only see the top of my boots I yelled help, cause i couldn't get out of my skis, but of course no one heard me. Luckily with my pole I was able to dig down to my binding release and pop both skis off and get back in.
At about 1pm I texted my wife, "hope I survive the next 2 hours". Ha Ha. I took it all with a grin and was thankful to the many years of getting into and out of "difficult situations" so far unscathed!
I'm not writing this as a criticism of Selkirk Powder, because it was a memorable day and I had better skiing than expected considering recent snowfall. The guides and logistics were flawless. I got my moneys worth. But I strongly suggest this cat isn't for the weak and unexperienced powder skier. Don't learn your powder turns here!! Thankfully we didn't have anyone "out of their league" in our cat or we would have had interminable waits to ruin our day. The powder novice would have had to give it up after 1 or 2 runs.
I've skied lots of trees and will again, but I try to limit my time in dangerous situations, and trees is a dangerous situation. I won't ski SP again. I hope to do more cat or maybe even heli skiing, but will try to make sure it's more wide open skiing that I can enjoy w/o playing constant obstacle course bingo.