Hitting the trails after a few days of Snow - Everything covered in White!!

Snow Day of sorts

Today was the second day that our schools were running 2 hours late. I had already taken today is the day vacation simply because I have a few more days to take before the end of the year or I will lose them. I initially planned on doing just a normal chores I'm getting a haircut, grocery shopping, finalizing all the Christmas presents etc.

But my kids are lucky and this was the second day in a row that school started 2 hours late because of the slippery and icy conditions outside. I've had two days of rain and then snow followed by a slight melt. The next day and then decided to snow on top of the melt and get slippery and slick again. I do live in a small world town so while the city streets were more or less navigable it was the things that happened out in the country and on top of the riches that are of a real concern. We get our school canceled and delayed more than neighboring towns who have the same weather but are mostly City kids.

My wife had a few activities this morning took the kids to school, and had a friend for breakfast but afterwards we decided to go out and go for a hike. Well not enough snow to go snowshoeing, there wasn't so much that we couldn't just go walking in our winter muck boots. So we headed off to at least two parks to check them out and go for a walk.

The temperature outside was 23° f with some pretty good winds. But or we go hiking as soon as you get into the tree line and up on the bluffs you don't really feel any of the wind, and since you're walking uphill you tend to get quite warm and don't need to be wearing very much. In fact outside of my boots I was wearing blue jeans and just a zip-up regular hooded sweatshirt. I did have a hat and gloves on but that was it and it was plenty warm for me.

Hike #1

The first hike was at the closest park, and a more open park with very wide paths. There is a section of the park that gets to be more technical hiking with narrow pads and Rocky outcroppings but due to a trail issue crossing private property that section is currently closed until they get to rework the trail in the spring. We just went out and walked the wide paths and up and down a few hills to explore.

I will say this is some of the prettiest I have seen the snowfall. Not to mention that it is stayed on a trees for much longer than it normally does. Normally when we see snow like this it is on the trees first thing in the morning but melt off usually by noon and isn't nearly as pretty. We are lucky that this stay around for most of the day, but it did cause a fair number of tree limbs to be down across the trails, trees bent over, another obstacles that will need to be cleared when the weather improves.

Hike #2

After such a nice first hike we went off and do our second hike. This trail we really like but it is a much more narrow trail with switchbacks. Well I like the trail it's much harder than snowshoe due to oh near the trail is and how many rocks and small put placings there are. I was glad to be just wearing boots although there were some sections where the pitch in the ice made it very treacherous. I wished I had some hiking traction on the bottom of my boots but I didn't pack any. We made it all the way to the top, hiked The overlook loop, it went back down the same way. All in all I think we went hiking for about an hour and a half and had a wonderful time.

it seems hard to take a photo when everything is so white with this little bit of brown / black

I feel like the photos don't quite do it justice, these photos aren't in black and white but they sure feel like it. I feel like things are much more vivid in person but the camera has a hard time when it is so white with all the snow. I'm just using my Google pixel 5 so it might just be a problem there. I'm sure someone who actually understood photography could take better pictures but I guess I'm still overall happy with how they turned out.

After hike late lunch and then picking up kids

On the way back to the house we ordered some burger and cheese curds to split for a late lunch. Went home and ate and then pick the kids up from school. It's really nice day for us to get out and about in the nice weather. Super lucky to get a chance to go out and see some of that beauty that winter can actually bring. A lot of times I miss getting out in winter due to the very limited hours of daylight and the number of hours I usually end up working.

I'm hoping we get some colder weather soon so I can get out ice fishing with the kids again. Right now there isn't enough ice to go out to safely and I'm getting a bit anxious. I'm hoping after Christmas we get a couple of weeks of cold weather or the ice will get to be six to eight inches deep and we can go out. I know there are some guys going out now, but there's no fish out there with me walking on ice that is most likely too thin for to support my weight. I've already got all the ice fishing gear, house, heater, auger, everything I need in the garage and ready to go. I could probably spend a little bit of time packing up The tackle box but maybe I'll get a chance to do that over the weekend.