February 2012 Archives
Seven people decided to explore the Ancient Forest Trail and beyond. It was a nice crisp day, and the sun was out. It was perfect for snowshoeing! When we arrived, there was a well used snowshoe trail ready for us to use. After digging the outhouse out a bit, we started up the trail. The trees were loaded with snow. As we entered the forest snow was falling off of the branches, which meant that it was warming up.
Ten people joined us on snowshoe to Pidherny. It was a nice day to snowshoe and there was even some fresh snow. With the help of Brendon and Melanie, we bushwhacked part of our way to reach the first waypoint on our GPS. At one point Brendon told us that we needed to go in this direction, but I decided to go down the road in the hopes that it curved around back into the correct direction. Well it eventually stopped and we had to bushwhack, but not before we got a special treat. There was a moose just off the trail staring at us! I took some good photos of it.
Nineteen people came out to snowshoe with us to Livingston Springs in the Crooked River Provincial Park. The sun may not have been out, but it was a nice warm day. When we arrived at a junction, we had to decide which direction to take. Some thought ahead, some thought to the left. We looked at the map and the gps and they were saying turn left. That was a good decision as soon after we spotted a Livingston Springs sign along the way!
We went a little north of the moon to enter the forest where the route we needed to reach our destination began. Although we had no trail to follow, we simply followed the arrow on our GPS that would lead us to where we wanted to go, taking detours along the way to avoid blowdowns and other obstacles sticking out of the snow. The moon kept her eye on us as we wove are way through the shadowy winter forest, at times appearing to be winking at us through the forest canopy. You can view photos from the trip by visiting the gallery.
The Katimavik volunteers were unable to join us on our scheduled snowshoe trip to Willow River on Sunday, so instead, on Saturday I took them on an unofficial hike on some of the informal trails off the Greenway and Blue Spruce Trails.We were out for close to two hours and, as always, had a lot of fun with the highlight being sliding down the hill screaming, shouting, laughing and crashing into each other. You can view photos of the trip by visiting the Gallery.
Seventeen of us snowshoed the Willow River Interpretive Trail, then through the forest to the Wildlife Lookout area a few kilometres west. There was plenty of evidence of rabbit activities in the forest, which would explain the wolf-prints we saw along the way. In fact the highlight of out trip was in coming across one rabbit who had decided that we were not wolves nor any kind of threat. Consequently, he sat not 10 feet away from us for several minutes allowing us to admire him, and sensed that we were some kind of strange two-legged creatures placed there to admire him, take pictures, and to listen to Carolyn whispering sweet nothing into his beautiful long ears. It was a perfect day for snowshoeing – cool and dry but not too cold, with clear skies and sunshine – we soaked up plenty of this sunshine while having lunch beside a lake where again we saw tracks of wolves which had crossed the frozen lake – probably looking for that rabbit that had posed and strutted his stuff for us.
The trip took 5 hours and we covered about 8 kilometers. |
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