I first knew it as “Secrets,” and we chuckled about its air of mystery in the office. Skiing holds plenty of stashes, but runs like Secrets could never truly be one.

It left from a cul-de-sac where snow slowly crept up the hunched shoulders of dark old A-frame ski cabins, and the hardest part of finding it was just having the imagination to picture how my tracks might wind down the gully.

The ridgeline that offered six pristine turns was visible from the road, but somehow I’d searched for it all fall. It was one of a million runs I eyed when the air got that first soggy chill and heavy, wet flakes started to fall from the sky. Not the impassable alpine chutes or gleaming granite peaks, but the day-to-day taunts just beyond town, behind the office, off the side of the road. I traced them out the window at my desk. I saw them from the car, my eyes searching ridges, straining to pick up the right undulation of terrain.

It had no defined summit, just a ridgeline that sparkled in fresh snow. Maybe 800 feet in all, its turns came in spurts down an awkwardly-treed fall line. With just enough low snow to cement over the rocks and weigh down spongy shrubbery, the zig-zag through the gully might go to completion. It would take a couple more storms before I could leave my skis on while crossing the railroad tracks.

I first skied it with my boss and his dog when we needed a break from the office. The dog’s tracks meandered around this tree and that on the climb, and in time our skintrack took up the same wandering appearance, our stress fading with each frosty breath. Ultimately we gave up on the humor of calling it Secrets, and it became Pepper’s Run for the dog that paced it so well.

Its visibility was part of its beauty, always offering satisfaction regardless of the conditions. For me, etching tracks down that abbreviated canvas became about leaving inspiration for anyone who happened to glance over from the highway.

It didn’t fit the normal ski town prestige. It wasn’t that rare line sitting dormant for a 10- or 25-year storm cycle, nor was it the regularly-scheduled dawn patrol or first chair line-up. I just like to think that it brought me and a few others – participants and onlookers – an extra smile here and there.

Several years later, calling a new state home, it’s the reason you’ll find me looking intently out the window in at early snow. Looking for someone else’s obvious secret. Looking for a new backyard gem to call my own.

[Visible Secrets was originally published in Powder Magazine, and is republished here by the author, with permission.]