The February morning dawns cold and overcast as I drive into the town of Adams, set picturesquely in the Hoosic River valley in the heart of the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts. A squall that blew through overnight dropped six inches of wet, heavy snow. Just to the west, the steep east face of Mount Greylock looms over the valley. The mountain’s 3,491-foot summit — the tallest in the state — remains hidden from view, however, shrouded in clouds and fog.

I've come to ski the Thunderbolt, an historic ski route that dates back to the mid-1930s and which this winter celebrates its 75th anniversary. The run begins near Greylock's summit, just 300 feet or so from the Massachusetts Veterans War Memorial Tower. From there it's roughly 2,000 thrilling vertical feet of skiing down the eastern slopes of the mountain.

At the Greylock Glen trailhead on Gould Road — one of two standard trailheads for accessing the Thunderbolt — I fortuitously meet up with Chris Nelson-Unczur, a 36-year-old music teacher and backcountry snowboarder from nearby Pittsfield. He has a thick beard, an easy smile, and frameless eyeglasses that continue to fog up on this wintry New England morning. Nelson-Unczur first snowboarded the Thunderbolt in early January 2009, about a month and a half before my arrival. He's been coming back roughly once a week ever since. "I was hooked," he explains to me as we begin our 2.5-mile ascent of the mountain. "Going up, you're smiling, but you're also working hard, so you’re tired. Going down, though, it's nothing but a perma-grin." I like the sound of that.

As we ascend along the side of the trail, Nelson-Unczur points to different areas of the mountain with which he's become familiar. One snow-choked stream drainage is the stomping ground for a resident fox. We pass near the remnants of a would-be lift-served ski area, partially built in the 1970s but abandoned when the developer ran out of money. Soon our conversation tapers — the pitch of the Thunderbolt rises steeply, and we both break a sweat making earnest uphill progress.

Although it's only about 9:00am, there are already ski tracks in the fresh snow. What's more, at the base of the Thunderbolt those ski tracks turned around and started back uphill as a skin track. Somewhere on the mountain above us, at least two other skiers are already on their second lap. "You've gotta get up pretty early to earn first tracks here," Nelson-Unczur explains. "I even know of a guy who slept on the summit to guarantee fresh turns first thing the next morning."

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Nearing the summit of the mountain, the angle of the Thunderbolt relents. It makes a hard turn to climber's left and follows the ridge toward the true summit in a mellow, angling traverse. Here, the Thunderbolt and the Appalachian Trail are concurrent for roughly half a mile, though in mid-winter, there are no thru-hikers to be seen. What I do see is a forest decimated by the ice storm that hammered parts of New England in December 2008. Here in the Berkshires, any mountains above 2,500 feet were hard hit, perhaps none more so than Greylock. Enormous branches, and even whole trees — some with trunks two feet in diameter or more — are toppled everywhere, creating a maze of debris. Thankfully, the diligent volunteer work of members of AMC's Berkshire Chapter and local backcountry skiers with chain saws reopened the trail.

As we continue hiking, Nelson-Unczur on snowshoes and me on skins and alpine touring skis, a building begins to appear out of the uniform gray of cloud and fog that surrounds us: the Thunderbolt Ski Shelter, a warming hut that dates to 1934, complete with wood-burning stoves and stocked with firewood. We step inside to rest, have a snack, and prepare for the descent. It's time for the fun part, time to wear Nelson-Unczur's perma-grin.

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