Hiking On the Snow Trail

We ventured back out to the trail on Tuesday. It was very cold, but we really didn’t feel it through our jackets, hats, gloves and boots. And Laura wore her Baffins with the studs. She had to pull me up the hill at the end of the hike. I was slipping all over the place. Her studs held well and brought us home.

Since this is the same trail we walked last week and since I already gave you the rundown on what it’s all about, we’ll keep this to another walking tour, chock full of pictures. We’ll keep things easy.

Laura took some of these and I took some others. She used the standard 18-135mm lens and I used the extra wide-angle 10-20mm. You’ll probably be able to figure out who took what by using that bit of information.

This is the first small bridge I was talking about the other day. The stream leads about a mile down through our back yard. It then turns to swamp and eventually finds its way into another stream and then the larger river.

This is what I suspect is a moose rub. The tree damage is about 8 feet high. We can’t seem to think of any other animal that could do that besides a bear scratching. But after doing a few quick searches, I do think it was a moose. And there are quite a few of them (moose rubs, that is).

If you don’t know what a moose looks like, here’s a video for you.

Bull Moose Rubs His Antlers

This is the main snowmobile trail that leads to the larger bridge.

Remember I mentioned there was an old foundation that was made of stone back there in the woods? Well, here it is. I couldn’t really get any great shots because of the snow, but you can bet I’ll get inside that thing once Spring rolls around.

Ah, the bridge I’ve been talking about. It looks as though someone or someones recently did some work to this bridge as shown in later photos. You can still see the tags on the ends of the lumber.

For some reason, we’ve got a whole lot of wild berries that aren’t eaten by the birds around here. In this case, we have wild raspberries.

After you cross the bridge, you come out there where the snowmobile trails open up. These are two pictures of the trails heading North and East. My friend at the end of the road owns the land we were on. He owns over 380 acres up here – a mile this way and a mile that. What a huge amount of land for us to play on.

These are rabbit tracks through the snow. Laura seems to think these are snowshoe hare tracks. I took a look at comparable pictures and agree.

Some of the river was frozen while other parts were not. In this case, the water was flowing enough to give Laura and chance to take a picture of it. And just to let you know, the cloudiness in the water from all that rain has disappeared. The clarity is back, as I’ll show you in just a bit.

Obviously, the river water was much deeper last week when it froze. Now that the level has dropped, all the ice cracked and sits in chunks. It sort of looks like Krypton from Superman.

There were areas of ice that had some interesting texture in it. All I can think of is that the ice melted some and then re-froze, creating this.

The area under the bridge is made of stones. Water came through those stones and created icicles.

Here’s another example of something interesting that happens when water freezes. It’s a chunk of ice at the side of the river. This time, there are veins running through the ice.

This is the other side of the bridge. Like I mentioned before, you can still see the tags on the edge of each piece of lumber.

Yes, the clear water came back and here’s the ice to prove it. Can you believe it? The river is about a foot deep here and I was looking straight through the ice as small bits of wood and leaves tumbled by.

I’m not sure if these can be classified as snowflakes, but they were snow something. Strange things too. They were large and somewhat bulky looking.

Say goodbye to the snowmobile bridge because in just a few short months, this will become the ATV and hiking bridge. Miles and miles of riding and hiking.