The Mount Baker Ski Area opened Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, for the season. A beautiful early open. With sunny skies. And they opened with almost record amounts of snow on the trails. As I write this late Sunday night, there is 70 inches of snow at Heather Meadows and the temperature is in the 20s. They are open this morning at 9 am for skiing. They will be open every day until closing sometime in April.

For any reader new to Bellingham or not from our area, we in Whatcom County are very proud of our ski area. It is owned by local families. It gets the most snowfall of any ski resort in the world and has the longest ski season of any ski area in America. It was one of the very first major ski areas to welcome snowboarders back in the early 1980s, when snowboarding started. The Howat family, who have run the ski area for over 40 years, have kept out the blatant advertising and commercialization from the area, thus keeping the skiing experience real.

I just wanted to make sure readers knew that Baker was open. The snow has really piled up this past week.

I was involved in a small act to support the ski area. In 2002, I registered the domain name of mtbaker.us on the first day allowed to register .us names - and then gave it to the ski area. They have used it since as it was an improvement on their prior name. As thanks, they gave me some ski tickets which I gave to my son David and he enjoyed trips up there.

Addendum: Cliff Mass has an informative article he posted this morning on why Mount Baker gets so much snow - even more than other Washington State ski areas.