After a very disappointing start to this ski season, Old Man Winter finally made up for himself and decided to bring solid winter conditions to Idaho. This past weekend I met some buddies up on Banner Summit outside of Stanley, ID. Last winter we all read a bunch about the great skiing right off Copper Mountain, so we decided to give it a whirl. I drove in from Ketchum and when I dropped into the Salmon River headwaters, the temperature dropped to -20° F and it made for a bitterly cold start to the day. I stopped to snap some photos on the way.

A car drove by as I was doing a 13 second exposure. Turned out kind of cool:

Once we got under way, we all warmed up and enjoyed the mid-winter Sun. It took about two hours to make it to the summit and then we looked for some places to ski. All of the southern aspects were pretty sun baked so we hit a western aspect tree run that was surprisingly good (tree run center-right on the photo below). About 12 inches of fresh snow on a supportable base. Here are some photos from the rest of the day.

And finally, here is a topo of where went on the tour. This is only a rough track: