I took advantage of the holiday to go skiing with Kevin M. at Crystal Mountain. The recent snow meant the slopes were covered with seven inches of fresh powder, and the flakes kept falling all day.

This was the strongest season opener I can remember – I felt good and skied fast all day. Despite the holiday weekend, there were no significant crowds – we skied almost straight on to the lifts, waiting one or two chairs at most.

We struck a compromise between Kevin’s interest in deep powder and my preference for steep, smooth, fast runs, and both had a good day. I got to try out some of the new terrain Crystal opened up when they built the Northway chair a couple of years ago; we skipped the new gondola, though.

I wore my new ski pants and they performed well. I did find one change I need to make – I neglected the fly topstitching, and it makes the whole thing gape a bit. That’ll be easy enough to fix. Aside from that I have no complaints: the pants are comfortable and useful, and they kept me warm all day.

I was disappointed to learn that the traditional wire hangers for lift tickets are obsolete – I was careful to include a D-ring in the waistband of my new pants so that I’d have somewhere to clip the ticket! Oh, well, apparently all the ski resorts have gone RFID now, so you just brush your pocket against a sensor when you get on the base lift, and that’s that.