There’s no other way to put it: My skier friends and I are hedonists. We chase the pleasures of a 100-day ski season, cold snow splashing in our faces as we make turns in deep powder. We stay up late dancing, eat fondue and sip a cold beer on a sundeck under an azure sky. We minimize discomfort by shelling out beaucoup bucks for absurdly expensive outerwear and spend hours in a ski shop tweaking our plastic foot-coffins.

　　Despite this dogged commitment to skiing, Ive recently made a compromise, to preserve my sanity while chasing snow 12 months a year, to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, I will no longer wake up at the crack of dawn on powder days to chase bottomless turns alongside the early-risers.

　　I know. I know. That’s what it’s all about—there’s an early morning ritual that skiers hold sacred. Rise early, brew coffee or grab a cup and a breakfast burrito at the local cafe, boot up in the lot well before the bullwheel spins, and snag first chair and an untracked run.

　　For dedicated skiers, that experience is universal. But I’m over it. My old early morning routine will give you a clue as to why.

　　It went something like this: Id wake up bleary-eyed (I have never been a morning person) at 6 A.M. Fumble upstairs and realize the temperature of my living room has dropped to 48 degrees Fahrenheit. 

　　After an arduous experience shoveling and loading the car, I would drive to the mountain. Rubbing a slim circle in the fog on my windshield so I could see if I was still on the road, I would hit traffic. Some crossover driver who thought all-wheel drive is the same thing as having snow tires spun off the road and stalled the creeping line of also ill-equipped cars to a standstill.

　　By the time I make it to the resort, boot up, and get in the lift line, I can see nothing but ski tracks on every bit of choice terrain on the hill.

　　Its just not worth it. I’m done waking up early for pow days.

　　If you’ve read this far, you’re probably thinking, “Does this guy even like skiing?” No. To be clear: I love skiing. I eat, sleep, and breathe skiing. Ive built my life around it to the point where I live 20 minutes from the resort, an incredible privilege that has ravaged my savings account to its core. In fact, Im so obsessed with the sport that I couldn’t care less what kind of snow conditions I ski. Skied up chop is just as fun to me as deep powder, so I’ll be as happy showing up at noon on a powder day, just as the early birds are starting to leave from their primo parking spots.

　　I’ll spend the afternoon hours popping off soft moguls, finding air anywhere and everywhere. I’ll hunt for stashes of snow that the wind has picked up and recirculated. I’ll lap the chair that crowds have abandoned, thinking it’s all been skied out and laugh as I find pockets of pow and ski right back onto an empty chair lift.

　　I’m a backcountry skier too, and I live among a range that is more than 200 miles long and populated by fewer than 15,000 people. So don’t worry. I still ski powder. But to me, that’s no longer what resort skiing is for. It’s for hot laps with your friends and not stressing over morning lines, car accidents, traffic, or powder panic.

　　This weekend it’s going to snow another foot and a half, and you can find me lapping Mammoth Mountain’s Chair 22, the best chairlift on earth, from 2-4 P.M. Because I’m a hedonist, and I’ll be having more fun than anyone else on the mountain.

　　Jake Stern is a digital editor at Outside. He spends the winter months skiing as much as humanly possible. He just needs his beauty rest.