It was January, and a proper Japow day. We're hitting 30cm of fresh powder. Sugi is my go to resort if it's a big powder day. My rule about powder days is longest, fastest, widest. The best place to go is where there are the (1) longest runs, (2) fastest lift and (3) widest area. Longest runs is that you want the runs to be long so you ride the powder as long as possible, fastest lifts so you can fit more runs in and widest area so it doesn't get tracked out so quickly.

Sugi hits all three in my book. The Panorama and Dynamic courses both end up on the High Speed Quad. Panorama is a super wide run, you can see the run from miles away. It's so wide that it's what I used to recognize as Sugi when I'm spotting ski resorts around Nagano.

It was snowing all day, and every run there were fresh lines to be had, the groomed run was being buried under the snow. So much snow was coming down during the day that we broke for lunch and came back out to nearly fresh lines, even better conditions then at the start of the day. Even though the top lifts were not open, it didn't matter at all.