It was a beautiful day and the visibility was good. Stuart Lake still appears to be completely frozen over, although there was a little surface water along the mainland shore near Battleship Island.

Five of six of us wore our snowshoes right from the parking lot. The sixth wore ice cleats. There was a bit of ice on the trail, but not much. By the two-km mark, we were all wearing snowshoes.

There was a warm breeze at the first lookout, about 1.5 km up the trail, but after that, things got more wintry. It didn’t look like many people had been up there too recently, but we were only breaking through maybe four inches of snow at least to the second viewpoint at the five-km mark. It was windy and definitely colder there and there was more snow. From there up to the gazebo there was absolutely no evidence of spring and there was lots of snow even high up in the trees.

It was a little breezy up top, so we didn’t stay there long. We took a couple of photos and Melanie wrote something in the logbook. She noted that at least two other people had signed small group entries during the month of February, so I guess a few people climbed to the top during the cold snap. There was little evidence that anybody had been up the trail recently from the five-km mark on.

There was no blowdown along the trail until after the four-kilometre mark. There were maybe six to eight trees down over the trail after that, but they weren't huge and we were able to easily walk around the worst ones. There was evidence that someone had recently cut blowdown along the trail further down. And when we reached the junction with the Climbing Rock trail, at the 4-km mark, there was no evidence that anyone had been along it lately. We stuck to the main trail all the way up and down. We also met an older couple in the parking lot, but we never saw them on the trail and didn’t meet anyone else. It took us about 3 1/2 hours to go up and about 2 1/2 hours to go down.

Photos submitted by Melanie Karjala.