Point.Get to the hill before it opens and get first tracks. Even if you ski in the Midwest at a 400' vert hill. I spend a good hour every day ripping Groomers and hitting jumps without waiting for gapers. There are usually just some older locals that I don't mind.
Everything is so perfect in the morning and it's really laid back. Or you could just wait until 1-2pm when the snow is chopped to shit, that sounds more appealing to people at my hill.
At Turoa people were coming down from Auckland and so excited to ski they'd be lined up for the lift over an hour before it opened. We had a small park on the magic carpet going down from the chairlift so we'd work on that first and sometimes people were lined up before we even got there. And we were going to finish, that go up the lift, and it was still a while before the public got to go up.
That's not that ridiculous but plenty of times the conditions weren't even good. It would be a sheet of ice, and half fogged in, and people were lining up like it was 4 feet of light fluffy pow.
Unbelievable.
I remember a friend who was a lifty telling me she had a kid bragging to her that he got 7th chair. She asked '"did you have a good run?" "No. But I got 7th chair!"
Like wtf is that logic.
That said people were dropping 20'+ cliffs when we got 2 inches of snow. and it was a sheet of ice underneath. Some wild motherfuckers.
/cool story.
I like pow in the morning but park laps in the afternoon.