Part I, Nearly Identical

Tuesday’s loop was the same as Monday’s, down to the same exact mileage; 6.09, and my time was within two minutes of Monday’s, including pauses for attempts at crap photos and a stop for bladder emptying.

I did start earlier, so that meant nearly two full miles done in darkness with a headlamp before the real balls of the dark grey day appeared, keeping ISO readings above 5000 and shutter speeds too low for quality photos even after the sun rose at 8:06 AM.

While I got next to no shots, I saw some geese in the river, an eagle flying in the distance, and a pileated woodpecker pecking high in a dark canopy of leafless trees. I did manage another deer shot (seen above), but that was about it over the 6+ miles.

Part II, Wednesday

After two days and 12.18 miles of snowshoeing, my legs and I were pretty set on keeping the miles under six on Wednesday. Especially since the temperature was 38˚ when I left the house at 6:45. That is 40˚ warmer than it was just over a week ago when I started down the trail in -2˚F temps.

While warmer temps are nice and it was great to lumber without gloves and a bobble hat, the softer snow is not so nice. Knowing that things were going to be a bit soft and slow, I figured anything over four would be fine with me, especially since I had shit to do at home followed by my bi-weekly appointment with the OG Mindbender in the early afternoon.

I was 100% right on the snow being softer and more work to get through, but I was hopeful that warmer temps would mean more critters. Um, no.

The extent of my critter sightings on the day was two deer deep in the woods, a couple of crows flying overhead, a few squirrels, and some snow fleas (Hypogastrura nivicola), but I don’t know if they count as critters or not. So, that was a bit disappointing.

Even more disappointing is the knowledge that the high temperature on Thursday is going to be 50˚ with a 1/4 inch of rainfall in the forecast, on top of 10 inches of melting snow. Then on Friday, the high temp is only going to be 28˚. Ug!! Things are going to get REAL messy, REAL fast.

With that said, I have already mentally prepared myself to skip my morning lumber on Thursday, and hope that everything freezes overnight. We shall see.

My apologies for the lack of photos and for spending nearly an entire post talking about the weather. I’m a real piece of shit for that. There’s a reason that this unnecessary, mundane shit show of a blog is unread by millions and free!

Later.