It was cold this morning. Thermometer in the rig said 25^o, but the hard northeast wind made it feel much worse. Heeler sisters were eager to get into the warm truck.

We were not the first ones up for once. Youngest son was off to a band competition, and the wife actually had to set her alarm earlier than mine. And I got to lay in bed while she went around getting ready.

For a few minutes, anyway.

This morning was supposed to be a run of the Ferris route of lek counts. We hit the first flakes of white just a couple miles north of town. And they just kept getting thicker. I amused myself on the drive by trying to get a picture of the snow sweeping through the headlights, on this, the last morning with the borrowed digital camera.

Didn't work.

But we continued on. Just because it is snowing up here on the uplift doesn't mean it's snowing down there in the lowlands.

But it was.

Until we hit milepost 24 (not literally). Then the clouds parted, the snow stopped, and through the dim of dawn I could see Lost Soldier Divide, eight miles to the west. The temp dropped down to 18^o.

And more cold arctic air was still trying to move in. You could see the wall of clouds pressed against the top of the Ferrises, and every so often the wall would breach, the mists flow over and down the south side, and then melt away:

But the grouse were out strutting, at least on the first lek in the foothills. And on the second lek, a couple miles farther into the dunes. Less than a dozen grouse on the fourth lek, and most of those were sheltered behind a clump of sage.

Too cold to be out ruffling one's feathers, I suppose. The wind was really whipping out here away from the mountains.

Only one cock on the fifth lek, and he soon left. All we saw at the last strutting ground of the route was a single grouse, flying away.

And the mists were still trying to conquer our side of the mountains:

We circled back to the first lek, just because there was no time or point in going anyplace else. Still no wind here, and 35 cocks still strutting. The sun broke through while we were there, but the mists continued to flow down the south slopes:

I've seen this quite a few times before. The massive air masses pressing against this hogback mountain range, struggling to overwhelm the other side.

On the way out of the dunes, we disturbed a pair of golden eagles, snuggled closely together on a powerpole. Whether for warmth or companionship, I do not know, but each was watching the other's back: