The most fun you can have with your ski clothes on.

Somewhere, at some point, the 2010-2011 ski season went from being good to great to awesome to epic to historic.

March: Mill Point, Bitterroot Mountains.



But because there was no one defining blizzard, or record setting cold spell, when those transitions occured was not always obvious. For me, earlier in the winter I felt like we were just getting lucky, and it was not until much later in the season, when snow did not melt that should have melted, that the true grand sweep of the season began to come into focus.

April: Lolo Pass.



April: University Mountain.



It's cliche and boring to brag about powder mornings and face shots. What you might not really appreciate about such a winter, in fact, is how much just plain old bad weather you wind up with on the road to history. Everything that happened the past 10 months happened in grand proportions, whether it was bouts of cold weather, unexpected periods of rain, or a streak of cloudy days that began sometime in April and did not let up almost until the first of July.

May: Rattlesnake Mountains.





My ski season ran through the middle of July; actually, the last two days I skied in July -- July 18 and 19 -- I was able to drive to snowline and start skiing literally from the car's front bumper. That often does not even happen in January.

June: Lolo Peak.



June: Glacier National Park.




And ending the season in July was by no means an easy choice. Just yesterday I was half-arguing with Laura that I ought to get at least one more day in during August, to stetch the ski season to 10 months.

July: snow-stuck in the Clearwater Mountains.



July: Mission Mountains





There's fun things to do in the summer, she said. Summer things. Fine: next week we're biking the Oregon coast. But I'll still be wondering if I shouldn't have squeezed just one more day in.

July: Glacier National Park.