First Ski!

We skied on the Gold Mint trail at Hatcher's Pass today, the first ski of the season - November 7th - this might be one long season!  We took our back-country skis, but it ended up that there was actually plenty of snow and it had been rolled and tracked further up at Independence Mine and another trail we stopped and checked out.  We chose to check out a lesser-used trail that also used to lead to a gold mine, now just an up and down, mostly up going out, scenic trail into the mountains.  It's always a thrill to be out the first time on a beautiful day!  We ran into a snowstorm on the way back..  Hatcher's Pass is said to have the first snow for skiing close to Anchorage and may have been good even last weekend.  It is just outside of Wasilla (yes, Sarah Palin's Wasilla) about 45 miles north of Anchorage.  Last night on a walk from our apartment back to Westchester Lagoon, we started up a path back to our neighborhood and saw a moose on our right on the path up ahead.  We decided she was far enough to the side and not terribly interested in us, so we continued on.  It was just getting dark and fortunately Brian all of a sudden saw two more on our left and much closer!  So . . . we decided to take a longer walk than planned and let them have the use of the trail.  One of the ones on the left looked much smaller, as much as we could see in the dusk, and that's a definite rule of thumb not to get between mother and calf!