Brrr...........There's Snow in them there hills!

On Monday, we woke to our first snow on the ground. Sure, it's been up on the mountains and hills for a bit now, but this was the first we could actually touch without a major hike. We got about an inch, maybe a little less, and it was cold.

It didn't last too long, as it turned to a 37-degree rainy day, but it was cool while it lasted.

We went on our first cold winter hike today. We did the West Glacier trail about 5 miles. We must really love each other when we both look like a bunch of dorks.

Of course it was extremely cold, I think about 27 degrees. We each had on about 4 layers of clothes on. About an hour into it we starting taking off the hats and balaclava. The sky was real blue and the air real crisp. It was a perfect day for a hike. On the way to the trailhead we stopped at Skaters Cabin on Mendenhall Lake. It is all frozen and there were about 50 folks ice skating. I was so excited to see the lake frozen. I haven't skated on a lake since I lived back in Minnesota and that was a long long time ago. On Saturday we bought ourselves some cheap ice skates and plan on going skating this next weekend. Ken has only skated twice in his life so I'm sure it will be a sight to see. (I'll take pictures if I'm not laughing to hard)

This is an iceberg frozen in the lake. If we'd had our crampons we would have walked out to it.

We ended up looking over the top of the Mendenhall Glacier, it was kind of weird being above it. You could see the blue in the ice. You can't see it in these pictures but trust me it was there.

We started back down about 3:30pm so we could beat the dark. We didn't make it, about a 1/2 hour later it was already getting dark enough that it was hard to see where we were walking. We ran and speed walked the whole way down, a great work-out but tiring. We are hoping the next time we go up which won't be until December that the snow will be plentiful for some snowshoeing.

Jess, get ready to do some ice-skating and snowshoeing when you are here for Christmas. YEAH !!

Julie