Up in the mountains

On Saturday, James tested out his downhill legs this weekend at Bridger Bowl with some friends. On the midwife's (and common sense) orders, I sat out and Matthew and I hung out around the house. Today however, we took to the snow and headed up to the falls. We rented snowshoes, but it turned out we probably didn't need them. The trail we headed down was popular enough that ice climbers, skiiers, snowshoers and other hikers had packed down the trail pretty well. However, we did some off trail hiking and took the steeper route up and they at least made decent crampons. As always we needed to take an obligatory pic of Sky enjoying the snow:

We passed some smaller falls and ice climbers along the way. These are pretty accessible and seemingly popular. I'd guess there were 20-30 climbers throughout the canyon while we were there, though we only saw maybe 6-7. However, ice climbers tend to start their day a little later (and from the parking lots stories a little more hungover) than those of us with toddler alarm clocks.

Another set:

It was cloudy when we started but I was able to get a decent B&W pic of the mountains from the trail.

And here were Grotto Falls. Unfortunately they don't get enough exposure to melt the snow so we couldn't see the falls themselves, but we had the trail mostly to ourselves and it was a gorgeous day.

They look a little different than last summer when we visited with Uncle Ed:

But the ice flows to the right of the falls were certainly pretty.

Unfortunately, because we had all kinds of peace and solace, there was no one around to help us get an attempt at an updated family picture so we went the self-portrait route.

We just couldn't squeeze Sky in this time so he and Matthew tried to pose. Too bad Sky was too distracted by the snow accumulation on his paws to pose for the picture. We still haven't figured out which is more likely, us getting Sky to wear booties or us getting Sky to allow us to trim the hair between his pads but one of those solutions will hopefully be underway next time we take him to the mountains. He really slows us down when he's stopping every 5 minutes to mope. We'd feel really bad for him but as soon as we let him off-leash the snow doesn't seem to bother him at all :)

Of course, Matthew's favorite part of the day is always a warm beverage when we get back. He's totally chill in the backpack during our hikes but doesn't care for wandering around the car in his snowsuit. Daycare says he does the same thing during recess and he and his friend V. just kinda stand on the porch awkwardly and stare.

And here's a snugglebear waking up after a good nap.

And making dinosaur noises with daddy: