- Gliding gracefully and carving fresh lines, Hall of Fame ski instructor, Junior Bounous, is a living legend.

He was an extreme skier before the term was even invented.

Today, Junior still shreds the slopes, sharing his secrets to enjoying every twist and turn along the way.

- [Junior] I'm like hundreds of other people looking for the first snow, and going and feeling it again.

Every time I drive up Little Cottonwood Canyon, it's a pleasure.

Every time I ride a lift to the top of the mountain, it's the same to me today as it did 60 years ago.

Marching the senior skiers, they quit skiing because they've lost their ski buddies.

- Yesterday, you got what, six or eight untracked powder runs in?

- I know.

I know.

- [Steve] You were back to giggling like a little kid.

(both chuckling) - You know, it made me feel like I was 80 again.

- Yeah.

(laughing) (bright speedy music) (bright speedy music continues) (bright speedy music continues) (bright speedy music continues) ♪ Ba dum, ba dum, ba dum, ba dum ♪ - So when you and all these other Alta instructors finally developed, you know, a powder skiing technique for yourselves, then you had to teach it to your students.

And one of the ways that I learned how to ski powder from you, was being taught how to sing a song.

- The singing distracts mentally, as well.

And then, but it aids rhythm.

Counting works like a cadence.

Right, left, right, left, right.

- And so, if you're feeling a rhythm and a bounce, then you're being aware of what the snow is doing.

If it's really, really ice, that's a very different piece of music.

- Fear, stiffness, are enemies of good skiing.

Alf Engen was probably the most influential person on my skiing and philosophy, and being able to communicate and ski with people.

- Well, and that was also a pretty important standard that you, I believe, learned from Alf Engen, of hiring people who were ski instructors, who were overall nice people and who you knew would be kind to clients, more so than their actual ski level.

- I can train an instructor how to ski and how to teach, but he's always said, "I can't make up for what their mother didn't teach them in manners."

- Yeah.

- Junior Bounous was the original ski school director for Snowbird when it opened in 1971, which is the year the team started as well.

The Snowbird ski team and the Bounous family are pretty much inseparable in terms of the memories that I know I have of the different decades up there.

Junior was always kind of this larger than life figure that we all knew when we were kids.

Steve, of course, was the head coach then, but Junior was always around, always skiing.

Literally, skiing every day.

- I grew up in his ski school, and there were a lot of people who just wanted to talk about form and technique.

Junior's mentality is, let's go have fun.

And he'll give you a pointer or two along the way, but at the end of the day, he's about enjoying being in the mountains with friends.

And that's why so many people gather and are gravitating to Junior wherever he goes.

- [Skier In Striped Hat] 95 years yesterday.

- [Junior] Do you get it?

(mellow music) Skiing gives you a feeling between earth and air that gives you a floating sensation.

I don't know how to describe that flotation.

- Back before you had created a powder skiing technique and figured out all of the gear and the skis and stuff, you said we were fighting powder.

Learning how to ski powder, it can sometimes feel like you're fighting the powder.

- [Junior] Yeah.

Yes.

- [Ayja] And then you were able to transition into floating through powder.

- You know, the biggest help in powder skiing was the development of skis that will float.

Jim Shane was the one that came up with ideas.

He discovered that instead of sanding the tips, you had to sand the tail, and that's when the tail was soft and it would let the tips float.

He said, we gotta move the bindings back and shorten the tail, not just soften it.

And that combination, we had powder skis.

- [Dave Fields] Junior Bounous was jumping off cliffs long before it was cool.

He could catch a lot of air and land it smoothly and make it look easy.

(bright music) (bright music continues) - The pipeline goes to the Twin Peaks, but it's this angle.

I was the first one to ski it ever.

It's 45, 50 degrees.

First time was in '71 when we opened.

Then I skied it for my 80th birthday.

(bright music) - So Junior knew what could be where Snowbird is today.

'Cause I used to come over from Alta and ski Peruvian Gulch or even sometimes Gad Valley.

As the plan started to come together, Junior was instrumental in figuring out the right place to put the lifts and the runs, and how you could make a ski resort work on what is really steep fall line terrain from top to bottom.

- I had skied this area and knew the terrain from working at Alta, and so I recognized the challenge immediately.

Ted Johnson, when he hired me to do it, he said, "You go to work, you have the resort open to ski by the middle of December."

And I never received another instruction after that.

- He walks in my office at Snowbird and I'll have a map out on the table and we'll start talking about lift placement and snowmaking and things we're doing on the map.

And he remembers every detail of when that run or that area was first developed.

- And so I spent my first two or three weeks in an architect's office, looking at topog maps, knowing where cliffs were.

Fun days.

Challenging days, yes.

And this is a white lupine.

And I've only seen two or three plants.

One of Maxine's favorite summer hikes, of course, was always wildflowers in Little Cottonwood Canyon up here in Mineral Basin.

And she liked to take a book and try to identify all these flowers.

Since her passing, Snowbird and Bounous's have combined together to build a ski bench with Maxine's name on it.

We had 70 years together.

She skied into her 90s.

I've been very thankful that it lasted that long.

Southern Utah.

It doesn't matter.

Colorado, Utah mountain, alpine terrain, Red Rock desert.

It's so beautiful.

It is all enhancing my life.

And I will continue it as long as I can.

(chuckling) Wow, so many vibrant colors and characters who warm my hearts simply by sharing their story.

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Until next time, I'm Liz Adeola and this is Utah.