I toss everything - a jumble of extra jackets and equipment - into the rear of the truck with the two antsy hounds, Idamae and Skyler. Before we depart town, we swing by J.P.'s house, since he, not shockingly, forgot something essential, and hit Durango Joe's for fuel on our way north. Judging by that I don't care that it's past eight when we finally leave, S.A.D.S. may be contagious. Then again, what's the rush?

Among those of us who work for ourselves or are employed at haphazard times by mud-logging companies, like Andrew and J.P., Thursday is a perfectly reasonable day to head off into the backcountry. But something about the cloudless sky and balmy breezes makes reaching the slopes feel less urgent. This is the beauty of spring skiing. We are already satiated - if that is possible - by a winter's worth of turns, and logging vertical takes second stage to hedonistically taking as much joy as possible in today's blue skies, sunshine and snow.

Still, we do have a goal: Bag Sultan, a 13,368-foot peak that looms southwest over Silverton. By the time we reach Molas Pass, it's 9 o'clock. We slap on our skins and start moving. J.P., sporting the stylish cut-off sleeveless t-shirt look, suddenly switches to turbo mode and all we see is his backside until he disappears into the trees.
Meanwhile, Andrew and I take a far more pleasant (read: lazy) approach, excusing ourselves from any notion of challenge with yesterday's respective activities. His legs are singed from hours of mountain biking and mine are woozy from what I call Olympic Yoga, Durango's hour-and-a-half heated class taught by a terrifyingly fit instructor with little sympathy for sweaty dips like myself. One could call our approach to skiing Euro-style. While alpine skiers in the Dolomites tend to stop for espresso and pastries at shacks mid-hill, oh, several times between meals, Andrew and I assume the equivalent pace with Luna bars and water. We chatter idly. We stop to ogle the view - and catch our breath. We stop for a snack. We take artistic photographs of Skyler, his large, white wolf-shepherd mix. We contemplate the clouds.

When we get to the ridge, I wimpily find the steep, icy slopes unnerving and subject Andrew to my bad jokes to distract myself. "Ever heard the one about the pirate who walked into the bar?" I ask. "Nope," Andrew says, obligingly, perhaps with a slight roll of his eyes. Andrew may potentially be the most patient person I've met. He has all the good aspects of someone perpetually stoned (patience, laid-back attitude, propensity to laugh a lot) without the bad (a slow wit and an outsized appetite for Chex Mix). Today I discover that this makes him an ideal backcountry companion.

By the time we reach the summit, J.P. has already downed his two sandwiches and taken an hour-long snooze. He seems remarkably unfazed by our slowness. "Oh, hi," he says casually, as if he was pleasantly surprised to find other humans up here in this high corner of the San Juans.

After taking off my skis and fashioning a butt-shaped chair in the snow, I ponder the view, which indeed deserves reverence. From the summit, perhaps the size of a small deck, we can see Anvil to the north and Grand Turk to the south. Despite the fact that we are within an hour's drive of Durango, I see nary a sign of man or manipulation beyond our own tracks up the ridges.

We finally cease sunbathing and slap on our skis again. Sultan is not a small mountain, and descending is more of a process than a run. We first slide off the summit block and traverse past a series of chutes. J.P. and Andrew stop at the top of one, which has to be more than 45 degrees in pitch and features unfriendly-looking rocks and a drop-off beyond which we can't see much.

"We're going to ski this one," they tell me. I have visions of myself taking mandatory air and a 500-vertical-foot tumble. "You are definitely joking," I say, raising an eyebrow and grinning, nervously. "Yup!" they say. Phew.

We pick our way past pinnacles and through rocks, meeting hard powder, variable crust and corn along the way. Soon we make it to a couple of sweeping bowls that funnel into a drainage. By the time we make it to the bottom of the bowls we're tearing off layers. Despite all of my hopes, Andrew, the lone telemark skier amongst us, miraculously doesn't faceplant, even though the snow is variable and slow. We cruise through trees, along the creek, and down bumpy banks, as we make our way around the base of the mountain.
We finally reach the end of the snow, sling our skis over our backs, and bushwhack in our ski boots through alders and brush. Mineral Creek is running briskly, and we have no choice but to wade knee-deep through the icy water, which, surprisingly, feels great, even if I almost take several diggers. We convene at a flat spot next to Highway 550 and drop our gear. It takes a while for J.P. to hitch a ride back up to the top of Molas, where we left his truck, so Andrew and I give him armchair hitchhiking pointers from our nap positions next to the creek.

"Lose the sunglasses, dude!" I say. "You'll look more wholesome and less scary hitchhiker-like. Maybe you'll get a cute girl to pick you up." J.P. keeps them on, and a crusty bearded guy in a pick-up stops. We shrug and resume our positions, eyes cloud-ward, feet splayed, brains floating in and out of consciousness and conversation. This is likely our last day skiing in the San Juans this spring and we soak up the still-brisk air and bouts of sunshine.
Eventually, J.P. reappears with the truck, we take off our ski boots, dump out the water, and clamber into the cab: Andrew gets shotgun, I'm in the middle, dogs in the back. The rest, like any other day skiing in the San Juan backcountry, washes away with the snowmelt.