I'm dreaming of a white Christmas...

... just like the ones I used to -- see in pictures of Montana!!
This is a glorious winter photo of Gordon Reese Cabin, located near Chief Joseph Pass
on the Montana-Idaho border (photo, http://bitterrootxcskiclub.net/).

And we get to stay there!!!!! 

Not for Christmas. But we'll ski in for a January overnight as new members of the Bitterroot Cross Country Ski Club.  The cabin was built in 2001 on some 17 miles of cross-country ski trails, south of Hamilton and high up in the national forest (elevation 7,264 feet).  It actually is a U.S. Forest Service property -- a hike-in cabin in summer and a winter warming hut "hosted" by ski-club volunteers who also help maintain it.

Winter-phobic friends here in the Midwest ask the following very first question about living in Montana: "Have you spent a winter there?!"

Snow high up in the Montana mountains (this and all photos, below,
generously lent to me for this post by Corvallis, MT, photographer Mel Holloway.
Mel also does volunteer grooming of ski trails around Gordon Reese Cabin.)

"No," I say, "but we love cold weather."  That doesn't seem to satisfy the questioners. So, I go to the stats!

Down in Hamilton (elevation 3,563 feet), the average temperatures in January, I read, are a high of 34.4 and a low of 16.8 degrees -- not outrageously cold and certainly not like in the wide open Montana prairie towns with winds bearing down on them from Canada: minus 70 is a record low I've read about there. We're on the western side of the Continental Divide.  That, apparently, helps.

And snow in town? There's usually very little (although there's an inch or so right now, leftover from flurries last week). I read that the average precipitation in Hamilton in January is just 1.11 inches. We're not even guaranteed a white Christmas, unless we look out our back windows to mountain tops that tend to get most of the precip moving in from the west. Pretty moderate, if you ask me.

Actually, this shelter of the Bitterroot Mountains (to the west) and the Sapphire Mountains (to the east) also helps give the valley its nickname -- “Banana Belt of Montana.”  Just ask any gardener.

Heavier snow on mountain tops, lighter in the valley.

They look for perennials, trees and shrubs that bear the cold-hardy designation of USDA Zone 5a -- for plants weathering winter lows of from -15 to -20F (the same USDA winter category as for DesMoines, Iowa, or for much of northern Illinois, for that matter).  St. Louis, by way of comparison, is in USDA Zone 6a (for perennials that withstand lows of from -5 to -10). Of course, any single out-sized cold-weather event can eclipse those averages.

What is undeniable is the beauty of these winters.

Hawk in a Bitterroot snow...

...icy stems in the valley.

Western log fence...

...sunset and snow.

Happy holidays to all! (and thanks so much, Mel!!)