I spent a chunk of my afternoon up on a mountain today and thoroughly enjoyed myself. 🙂 This may not seem odd but anyone who knows me knows I don’t like being outside during the winter, it’s cold, and there is snow and ice, and it’s cold! Yes, I know, I am a failure as a Canadian *rolls eyes* 😛
I decided to go snowshoeing today, yay! It was zero degrees Celsius, which is, um…gimme a sec, I gotta google…it’s 32F…so nice n warm and perfect for spending outside. 😀
We haven’t had a lot of snow this winter (yes, I’m in that part of Canada lol) so I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for the trails to get snowy enough to make it worth my while and decided today was a good day to try em out.
There was snow, and a decent amount of it, but none of it fresh and none of it even remotely powdery, which, if you snowshoe you know is the most fun type of snow to trek through. Todays snow was all packed down, partially icy because the snow keeps melting during the day then freezing overnight – vicious loop that.
For part of the trail my snowshoes looked liked this…
yup, that’s right, they were being carried not worn cause the snow was just that packed down that there was no point putting them on my feet, sigh. I felt like an idiot carrying them and was really wishing I’d left them in my suv but obviously I wasn’t going to go all the way back to my suv to put them in the trunk so in my hands they stayed.
Until…
I finally got to put them on! Yay! 😀
And hey, don’t judge the pants! They are super warm, fit well and my friend sold them to me for a measly $60, I heart those pants!…even if in this pic they do make my legs look huuuuuge lol
snow…
Me…the most unattractive cold person ever, sigh.
more snow…
omg, me without makeup, on the internet, ack!
Do you see the damage to my toque? The loose threads that make it look old and worn? Well, lemme tell ya the story of that damage. This toque is brand new, this is only the third time I have gotten to wear it and I take good care of my stuff. So how did it get to look like this? The cat. *glares at the fur ball* I came home from work and discovered my toque at the base of his scratching post, it normally hangs on a hook on the wall by my front door. So he got it off the hook, brought it through the kitchen, in to the living room, killed it, then dumped the carcass somewhere I was sure to find it. The sadist. I’m trying to figure out how to fix or hide the damage but don’t know how…so right now, if you are keeping score, it is Cat-1, Human-0.
I didn’t get to go all the way to the top of the mountain due to timing issues. I got up there a bit later then planned which would’ve been alright except I was going on a trail I haven’t gone on before and accidentally went on the wrong trail to start with, oops! In my defence, there are two trail entrances, fairly close to each other, the first trail entrance turned out to be the wrong trail but the other trail entrance is hidden from site when at the first trail entrance so I thought there was only one trail…does that make sense? lol
Anyways! I went on the first, incorrect trail, and fairly quickly thought I was gonna die. It was super icy, lots of rocks, not a lot of snow, steep decline the entire way and of course the rocks were covered in ice so every part that had some serious decline trekking to do left me feeling I was facing certain doom. I don’t do awesome on ice, thanks to my stupid knee, and I didn’t even have my hands free thanks to having to carry my snowshoes. The trail was seeming like one super bad idea. I didn’t get all that far in to it when I decided screw it and I turned back. I felt like a bit of a failure but figured better safe than sorry. Since I thought that was the path I was supposed to be using I was deciding how I was going to get my exercise for the day since snowshoeing obviously wasn’t going to work out but when I got back to the start of the trail I noticed some people seemingly pop out of nowhere on my left side who had snowshoes. Being the nosy person I am I went to investigate and found the real trail, yay! and phew! lol
The second, and correct trail was way better because (1) it had snow (2) it was meant for snowshoeing (3) it was uphill and (4) way less icy patches.
Oh, and can I say people who take part in outdoor winter sports, super friendly! Every person I passed on the trail (by passed I mean they were going the opposite direction as I not I was faster than them and scooting around them) said hi, or asked how I was doing, a couple people stopped and we chatted a bit. Messed up my timing (I was tracking my distance and speed) and also shortened the length of time I was active but I don’t mind. People look out for each other, and that’s nice. This one lady checked to see if I was going up the mountain alone, I said yes so she gave me a recap of what I was in for (she was on her way down), reassured me about how many other people she had seen, where there were some rough patches, stuff like that. Nice lady. 🙂 I notice the same thing when I am hiking in the summer, people say hi as you pass on the trail, sometimes stop and chat, things like that. Maybe it’s all that sunshine people are getting, makes them friendlier lol
The Amazing Shrinking Woman 