Muleshoe, BC · guide-owned since 1978
40 cm new · the morning report2,610 m · 05:45 · the meeting
Every ski day at Powderhorn Basin starts at 5:45 with the same meeting: the snow report, the wind, the plan, and who rides where. Three guides run it, the snowpack gets read out loud, and nobody leaves the room unsure of the day. Here is who they are and how the morning works.
The guides
Second-generation owner, lead guide
Ren grew up in the lodge and took the operation over from her father, Gus, the founder. She has guided the Powderhorn tenure for more than twenty winters and still calls the first run of every storm cycle herself.
Snow safety lead
Dev runs the 5:45 meeting and owns the snow study: the pits, the wind record, the daily read. He came up ski patrolling and treats the snowpack like a logbook he has been keeping for fifteen years.
Pilot, A-Star
Marta flies the A-Star for the high work. She has flown mountain contracts across two continents and reads weather windows the way the guides read snow: patiently, and never a minute early.
The artifact · screenshot or print it
Morning Meeting
Powderhorn Basin Cat + Heli · the board
Thursday, February 12
05:45 · clear, minus 12
Cat One
Guide: Ren Marchant
Bowl to glades, first light
Cat Two
Guide: Dev Tarrant
Ridgeline, then the trees
Heli
Pilot: Marta Eriksen
High work if the window holds
05:45 Radio check, all groups, channel one. Transceivers on, receive checked at the door. First cat rolls 06:15.
A sample sheet, drawn for a good February day. On a live site this is the real board, posted each morning.
The snowpack · a cross-section
Scroll the probe down through the pack. Each layer is one thing the morning meeting talks through: what fell, what the wind did, what the old snow is doing, and how deep the base runs. This is the whole point of a small operation: the same people read the same mountain every day, and they tell you what they see.
Snowpack · 05:45 read
Thursday's forty came in light and cold on a northwest flow; it bonds to itself and rides fast, so it is the first thing we talk about at 5:45.
Tuesday's snow stiffened under ridgetop wind; we read every wind-loaded roll before we open it, and we pick our first laps where the wind never reached.
A thin crust from the late-January warm spell; three cold weeks have worked it, so we track it by hand and let it steer which aspects we ski first.
A settled base stacked up since November; it is the floor everything sits on, and right now it is deep and stout across the whole basin.
2,610 m · the whole tenure, read daily
We ski what the morning approves.
The day, in order
What you carry
Transceiver, probe, shovel, and an airbag pack are supplied with every seat, no rental line. Day one starts with a practice session on the beacon field by the lodge: how it works, how to search, how fast. You do not need to own any of it, and you do not need to have done it before.
Certification
Every guide on the tenure holds current professional guide certification, re-examined every fall before the season opens. Avalanche education is a lifelong habit here, not a plaque: the guides keep reading, keep training, and keep the snow study going all winter. If you want to learn more before you come, we point guests to the public avalanche education resources for your region.
