The Sun Sure DO Shine...Sometimes

The hiking group has morphed into a snowshoeing club for the winter & that's how we've been motoring through the wilderness for the past 3 weeks.

Last week, which was also my first real snowshoe trip, we up then down Fire Mountain completing a round trip of 6 kilometers and crossing 18 small streams each way.  I could barely lift my feet by the time we returned to our vehicles.

Today we ventured off trail and into the woods, over uneven crunchy snow.  We covered 4 to 5 kilometers in a 2 & 3/4 hour period.  One person didn't even wear snowshoes due to how hard the snow is today.  We can get snow (white concrete) conditions so hard that one can walk across it in high heels - the heel digs in but that just gives us more traction.  How do I know we can traverse our snow in high heels?  Probably from having to check on my backyard weather station all dressed up to go somewhere.
The big issue today though was ... noise.  We made such a racket crunching over the snow that we all had to stop if anyone wanted to speak and that probably added the 45 minutes to today's adventure.