Every year, Powder Magazine graces hungry skiers and snowboarders with the annual Buyer's Guide, which highlights the best and brightest in hard and soft good advancements within the winter sports industry. Jackson-ites know this issue well, mainly because the testing has been done on our very own slopes for the past eight years. And when we logged onto www.PowderMag.com to check out this year's picks and praises, we were met with some kind words about our beloved Jackson Hole Mountain Resort from Matt Hansen over at Powder:

"Each of the last eight winters, the Powder staff has brought the ski industry together for one week of skiing at the end of February. Aside from being an opportunity to ski with our industry partners for a week and call it “work,” the event has this primary goal: to allow the magazine’s staff and contributors to demo the new crop of skis. To be sure, it is not a ski test. Powder magazine does not—and never will—test skis because we believe that trying to grade 140 skis, any of which might be perfect for one person and just-not-so for the next, would be dishonest and, quite frankly, impossible. We simply try to gain an impression of how the ski works and its intended use by doing what all our readers do: ski as hard as possible on the best terrain we can find.

"Which is why we’ve taken Powder Week to Jackson Hole for six of the last eight years. It is not because they buy tons of advertising from us. It is not because they give us free lodging or airfare; we pay for all of that. They do hook the entire group—which this year was nearly 80 people, up from a few dozen at the first Powder Week—with lift tickets, hospitality, and some excellent meals. But what really keeps us coming back is the terrain, the kind that is so hard to find anywhere else. Most of Powder Week is spent in the steep and deep beyond the ropes, getting a taste of what makes being a Jackson skier so incredible, and in many cases, life-changing."