After the rain

So we’ve had lots of nice powder snow, deep but lovely. Then the rain came. This is what I found. Tracked trails were now hardened and bumpy even if it was a nice snowshoe track. Where water ran down or across the trail there was…water…some bare areas, some slushy areas and water. Lots of crossings have no ice…so there is water. Untracked snow now has a crust, some areas thicker than others but enough that the fun snowshoe slide downhill isn’t fun as the snowshoe is now stuck under the crust…not the hard stuff that hurts the chins on impact...but crust nonetheless. Sometimes the crust is hard enough to walk on and sometimes not but no warning is given when you are moving along nicely and then drop into a hole, after which each step has to be plucked out because now you can’t just plow through the nice powder. Sigh…But it still was a lovely day.

The foothills of Freedom and E. Madison aren't far from you, but I encountered much better conditions today, maybe because I was following trails almost entirely untracked, with a little bushwhacking through open glades. No crust at all - it hasn't been below freezing here since it stopped raining. Just 6-8 inches of wet, dense snow. (The crust will come, though, so I'm lucky Christmas Eve gave me a couple of hours off).

Merry Christmas!

I'm a short crow flight east of carole. I am very glad I got out for some excellent skiing on Sunday morning -- much better snow conditions than I expected.

From this point forward, looks like it will be snowshoes only for a while down here in the lowlands (maybe degrading to Stabilicers only by the end of the week. ) And I won't even think of going out on the lakes before the first of the new year.

Sure hope we don't have a repeat of that recent winter with a month of ice in the woods hereabouts. Precip forecast is iffy for this week.