REAL winter finally arrives

Katie on her way up to top of the North Peak in Scratchgravel Hills

On top North Peak with the timbered high point of the range in background

We enjoyed great views on way down from the peak

North Peak from below

It's been expected.  It's been predicted. Now we're in its grips.

REAL winter arrived this week and we're looking forward to at least a week where temperatures will drop as low as minus 20, and some two feet of snow is expected to fall in the Little Belts.

But spring-like weather Monday through Wednesday, with temperatures as high as 60 degrees, opened the door for a last ditch hike.

Katie and I headed to the Scratchgravel Hills in the Helena valley on Tuesday and climbed the grassy, treeless North Peak at just over 5,000 feet.  On Thursday I fought near-blizzard conditions in the Little Belts at Kings Hill.

The Scratchgravels are a heavily used, dry and low-slung range with a history of mining.  The northern and western peaks tend to be barren, the south and east heavy timbered with Ponderosas and junipers.

The north peaks offer stunning 360 views of the valley and the Continental Divide country, the Elkhorns, Big Belts and off to the Bridgers, and Helena below.

Wherever there was shade there was snow, which wasn't deep and easy to walk through.  We enjoyed the unshaded and steep hills on our walk, enjoying the spring-like weather.

On Thursday, knowing that intensely cold weather was on its way, I decided to take advantage of relatively warm (19 degrees) weather to get in a quick ski on Kings Hill, roughly the same as Sunday, without going out on the Deadman Ridge/bowls.

I hadn't anticipated that I'd encounter fierce ground blizzard conditions on the perimeter of Kings Hill and was forced to follow the powerlines until I could drop west over the ridgeline and back down to the cabin at the pass.

The snow was better than Sunday, and I enjoyed some really good turns

My track on the way down from the Kings Hill high point