Lead guide Billy Rankin gets to know his zone. Photo courtesy of Irwin LodgeHow does a cat skiing operation fail in a ski town that gets 600 inches of snow a year? Too much riff raff. Crested Butte, Colorado's Irwin Lodge closed in 2002 because the 30 guests a day they ran on their 1,000-acre plot tracked it out too quickly, and because their barroom's rowdy scene drove away the high-end clients a cat ski operation needs. Irwin Cat Skiing has risen from the dilapidated hulk of Irwin Lodge (nine miles west of town in the Elk Mountains) with a new plan: fewer guests.

"We shut it down in style," says Irwin's director of operations Alan Bernholtz, leading a dozen of us downslope through sparkling fields of powder past the abandoned wooden barn of a building. "My wife and I were married here on the Lodge's last day. We ended the ceremony by launching hand-in-hand off a kicker we built right there."

Bernholtz, 43, is a notorious joker, as well as the former mayor of Crested Butte (his campaign slogan for his second, un-opposed term: "Just shut up"), but he's a serious and well-respected guide with 10 years of experience for Crested Butte Mountain Guides and Valdez Heli Ski Guides. Last week he led our group safely down Irwin's stash of glades, steeps, and couloirs through knee-deep powder—the fruits of a storm that dropped 43 inches in four days.

"We're going for quality, not quantity," he says as we ride upslope a few minutes later in the tricked-out Bison snow cat, one of the fastest on the market. It's outfitted with plush leather seats, satellite radio, and wood trim that echoes the operation's opulent day lodge, a 200-square foot mountain cabin as imagined by the editors of Architectural Digest. All the luxury (après refreshments included chocolate-dipped pears), and a cap of 12 riders a day justifies the $500 per person per day price tag that should keep Irwin Cat Skiing solvent this time around. That and the 600 inches of powder.   —Frederick Reimers

Find out more at irwincolorado.com.