This has been a brutal winter. We've had more snow than ever and also very low temperatures. The trails have become packed snow paths surrounded by deep snow that is impossible to walk through. And now we've had some warmer precipitation which has frozen on top of the snow so snowshoeing won't work either.
On Saturday, February 5th, I managed to get up to the trail from the house following my own frozen footsteps with the aid of grips attached to the bottom of my boots. It was very still and quiet up there except for the sound of ice breaking off of the trees as the sun melted it. Farther up the sounds got louder as the ice fell all around us, sometimes very close to where we were walking. It would crash to the icy surface of the snow and then slide down the frozen hillside with a roaring noise.
We made it up to the Yellow lookout but there was a light rain so we couldn't see far from up there before the trees and houses below were erased by the fog and low clouds. I thought about hiking from there out to Chestnut but was dissuaded from doing so by a phone call home.
So we worked our way back down, possibly for the last time in days. Today when I attempted our simple morning walk, the warmer weather had melted the icy footprints enough that sometimes you would crash through into the deeper snow below and sometimes you would be unable to make a dent of any kind, leaving you no traction at all. By the time I made it to the main path, I could see that it would be no use to try to go farther. Sadie has her claws to grip the path and was up ahead, wondering why I wasn't following her. I looked at the frozen path and could see that the more consistently packed trail had been frozen solid. Without some kind of serious crampons or something more substantial than what I had on my boots, I was not going anywhere.
So I may be signing off for awhile. Spring can't come soon enough - although I'm a little concerned about where all this frozen water is going to go.
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