Barb Haley, Watershed Watch Chair

My Observations 

Date: January 28, 2024, 1400

Area: Fir Lane, 3 km loop. Usually I end up back on the road and slide back to the vehicle, but today since I could easily glide over top of all the garden features in the cut-block, we stayed off the road

Temperature: +2C

Weather: Bright fog, overcast, no precip

Wind: Calm

Visibility: Good

Conditions: No new snow, Highly saturated, very dense snow. Might have been fooled into thinking that it’s Spring (fake Spring), but it’s still January. 

Observations: Very moist out today. At least it’s not sticky, I actually got some glide today! Watch out though, if you plan on travelling up Brenda Mines Road, it was quite a fun, spicey drive in the 4 inches or so of wheel rutted slush!

With the current warm cycle we are in, I wouldn’t recommend hanging out under the trees, unless you like outdoor showers. That said, it’s probably safer under a tree than to be next to one with all the “tree-bombs” dropping, so typical in warming trends when trees are trying to hang onto their winter coats.

Rating: EXCELLENT

Bunch of tracks today, pretty fresh these ones here, maybe earlier this morning.

Reasonably confident that these are Bobcat tracks (a bit melted) and that they (I think a baby bobcat was here too) had gotten to where they were heading too, 

I hope my track reading skills aren’t leading me astray. 

Pretty sure we were going against bobcat traffic.

Also saw the usual bunny tracks and some smaller rodent-y ones as well. 

The cut-block I was circling seems to be favoured by a moose. 

Crossed several Moose tracks and even found some “nests” where they took a break!

Fir Lane is pretty much across the road from Wilson Lake XC area. Today I headed counter-clock wise following the trail which is just in the tree line along an old cut-block on the west-ish and east-ish edges before cutting through the block at the bottom south-ish edge.

The 2 pictures above are taken at the point you can see on the map below. I am looking into the cut block.

The picture below is back on the trail, just in the trees but now travelling north-ish on the east side of the cut block.  I’ll cut through the block again as I head back to the road.

North-west end of the cut-block, heading back to the road, last leg!