Hi Miranda & Madscot!

Sorry - tied up with house guests for a couple of days.

Sorry to hear about the wool issues Miranda (is it all wool? Smartwool is nice and non-itchy, but I suppose an allergy is an allergy). Polypro works fine. I forgot to mention to be careful with Sporthill if you have pets - it is really nice stuff, but the 3SP material loves pet hair! I have a newer shirt that only requires about one strip off the lint roller before I can wear it, but it just has a couple of panels of that fabric - I could never buy the 3SP pants or full shirts. I have an older shirt made of that stuff, and it takes me ages to de-fur it, and then I still have a layer left .

Madscot - we don't really have what you would call resorts around here, but we have great places to ski, and usually great snow by late November (last year not included ). We typically have 24-36 (a couple of years ago it was more like 48") inches on the ground from Christmas through mid-March.

The Michigan Tech Trails are probably about 25k total, with some really challenging terrain, plus some easier, flatter stuff, and are in Houghton - pretty professionally groomed. Swedetown, in Calumet (about 20 miles from Houghton), is about 30k, with nice, rolling terrain - beautiful & Pisten Bully groomed. Maasto Hiito, in Hancock, combined with Churning Rapids is, hmm, not sure how much - striding only. Chassell Trails are about 10k, striding only. You can check out keweenawtrails.com for info. Since we're in the UP, we get tons of people from Madison, Milwaukee, the Twin Cities, etc here over Christmas. Fewer from Michigan, actually, as downstate is pretty far away. Ironwood gets great snow, too. The only problem is that the holidays bring lots of snowmobilers, too, so the motels fill up early. The bigger towns around here (Houghton & Hancock) are each about 7000 people, and the others are, well, smaller, so so don't expect St Paul-like nightlife or anything .

Oh, and at least one ski shop does rent skis.