Ski season begins!

The snow was surprisingly good for early season

Mark Hertenstein gets the first turns of the season

We got our first ski trip in of the season, some two weeks later than last year, but entirely satisfying.
It almost didn't happen because I was skeptical about the conditions.  It was 48 degrees in town and the wind was howling and I just couldn't picture good conditions in the mountains.
How wrong I was!
There was six inches to a foot of new powder on Porphyry at Kings Hill in the Little Belts.  While there wasn't much of a base, the snow packed down well.  Yes, we did need our rock skis and we banged them up.
It was about 20 degrees on the hill and the winds were supposed to be gusting to 50 mph.
We needed very steep slopes to plow through the powder, so we stayed on Quicksilver and the adjacent run to the north.
There was considerable snow blowing around as we cut our way down through the runs.
We did the summit "cap" some five times before calling it a day.