My first order of business the morning after the big snow was to pile up enough snow to make a snow tunnel. That was just a throwback to my childhood. I’ve tried to describe my childhood adventures in snow tunneling to people who have never seen that much snow, but it’s difficult to imagine. I don’t have any really good photos from back then, so I decided to take advantage of this recent snow to dig a tunnel, get some good photos of it, and spend a night in it, for old time’s sake.
It was a lot of shoveling (the tunneling is the easy part), and it’s already melting, but sleeping in it was an adventure of sorts. The snow is a great insulator, so I had a very quiet night.
I’ve been out on the trail a couple of times. I took a short hike, late in the afternoon on the 25th. Much of the snow had already melted, but there was still lots of snow on north facing slopes and shady spots.
The snow was wet when I started my hike, but it was refreezing by the time I emerged back on Hillfield Road. That was a nice hike, albeit a short one. I did a little exploring, but mostly I took photos and enjoyed the winter sun, shining through the trees and glistening on the remaining snow.
My hike on Sunday, Jan 26 was on the east side of HW 58. There was still a good deal of snow where the sun hadn’t been able to reach it. That hike took us through a mostly dried up creek bed, along some fire breaks, down a stream to Holsten Creek, and then back out through the woods to a field road in the forest. That was mostly off trail, so there were places where we had an easy walk and other places where we struggled a bit, but nothing too difficult. The best part was that we had a friendly hound dog to keep us on track.
