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| The Solstice sunrises are among the best of the year |
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| The Folsom Lake, CA recreation area I hiked daily during our Christmas visit |
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| We welcomed in the new year with a loop hike at First Peoples Buffalo Jump State Park |
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| We were amazed to find good snow to ski in the Little Belts |
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| Gordon Whirry and I enjoy a lunch while skiing |
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| The Weatherwax Bowl |
We brought in the New Year with a loop hike at the First Peoples Buffalo Jump State Park (formerly the Ulm Pishkun) and followed the next day with a back country ski to the base of Grendah Mountain in the Little Belts.
I have some catching up to do here first: we spent 11 days at Christmas with Katie's folks in Loomis, CA about a five minute walk from Folsom Lake Recreation Area and a national scenic trail. I used that trail daily while there.
I love this shortest-day-of-the-year time because I see amazing sunrises and sunsets on my neighborhood walks.
The weather here and in California was unseasonably warm and dry, which made hiking still possible.
That's why I was so surprised when we found pretty good skiing snow just off Kings Hill Pass in Little Belts. There were some icy and bare spots on the 6.2 miles trip to the base of Grendah Mountain. Many Montana ski areas haven't opened yet because of lack of snow.
Jasmine Krotkov, who lives in Neihart, showed me a trail off the pass I didn't know existed. It's the Snowmobile Trail "G" just north of the big powerline. It is a direct 1-mile, 525 feet trip to the main north-south road across the Little Belts Ridgeline --- FS Road 251.
It is a short jaunt south along that road to the connector to the road to Grendah along the north lip of the Weatherwax basin.
Although just 15 degrees when we started, the sunlight was radiant and the breezes gentle, and we warmed up quickly and even had a nice lunch at the foot Grendah, which was unskiable because it lacks snow.
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