I'm not a skier, but I play one on TV

North Dakota has officially broken a standing record for most snowfall in one month. We're currently working to tame roughly 30 inches of snow on roads and in yards, and that kind of accumulation means one thing: powder day on the prairie. It doesn't happen often (I haven't skied powder in North Dakota since middle school), but here it is.

For anyone not subjected in person to my endless childhood ski stories, Huff Hills Ski Resort is a modest mom-and-pop joint nestled in the Missouri River bluffs south of Bismarck/Mandan. The Beck family opened Huff 15 years ago this year, an anniversary they'll celebrate with a torchlight ceremony this Wednesday night. The resort, consisting of two double chairlifts and a three-story chalet, was built on the site of the former Twilight Hills. Several decades before, a group of doctors and other well-to-do folk in Bismarck opened Twilight Hills to feed their need for skiing. Unfortunately, their concept of mountain management was to ski often and work seldom. The place folded as the ski boom of the '60s subsided.

Conditions have varied drastically over the years. Jim, the grizzled Beck paterfamilias, has perfected the art of snowmaking out of desperation, using an armada of second-hand snow guns and groomers from Red Lodge, Montana. The teen snowboarding craze that swept the rural west in the late '90s kept Huff from going under, though a fair few skiers of talent have crept out of the rafters lately. Die-hards like Dad, my sister Em and me established a friendly repoire with the mountain management, eventually joining the National Ski Patrol to volunteer our services a few days a season. Giving lessons, putting up tower pads, patching up the occasional tweaked wrist or broken collarbone. Another of Dad's former students, my friend David, fell short of joining the NSP but has followed the skiing bug to Colorado College. I won't rail on him too hard here for dipping his toe in the telemark pool.

With low annual snowfall the past seven years or so, business at Huff has been in decline. But this season has breathed new life into the place. I trucked out to patrol a third day today before heading back to Missoula, and the place was packed. Over 500 day-pass holders alone, not to mention the scores of high school snowboarders with season passes. Surprisingly, there wasn't a single injury on the hill. Just kids, parents and grandparents out for a good time in the snow. Temps stayed around 30, with sunshine and low winds. For the first time since I was 13, I stood in a North Dakota lift line for more than five minutes. Jim summed up his opinion of the day by smiling past his tobacco pipe and telling me, "I'm tired."