Beautiful Day in the Valley

One of those rare sunny winter days with fresh snow, and the temperature not too cold - though it was well below zero.  Got out to take a few pictures of the valley in the winter sun.  Below is the view from the top of the abandondoned ski club at Talisman - the local community is hoping it will soon be sold to someone who will at least do something useful with it, if not revive it.  This view looks straight east across the 7th Sideroad.

A close look at the east side of the valley, below, shows the perfectly flat Manitoulin formation, a layer of limestone in the middle of the escarpment slope - the huge cliffs of Old Baldy are off to the right of this picture, and above the Manitoulin rock layer.  It's about 1/3 of the way down the picture, with several chalets sitting along the brim of the short cliff.

Later got out for a great ski on some trails up near Meaford.  A perfect winter day that just couldn't be spent inside!

The Ephemeral Lower Wodehouse Creek Waterfalls!

The ephemeral Lower Wodehouse Creek Waterfalls was flowing the other day during the 2nd January thaw!      I've only seen it once or twice before, because it only flows when the Wodehouse Karst is full and overflowing into the lower creek valley.  So it only flows for perhaps 2-3 days during winter thaws or the spring melt in March.

This picture is taken from above, looking straight down.  The falls is found at the Beaver Valley Ski Club, where the creek, almost always just a dry creek bed, flows under the road leading into the upper parking lot.  And I've never found a safe way to get to the bottom of the cliff, 2/3 of the way up the Avalanche ski slope, in the winter, so this is the only picture I could get.

Wodehouse Creek arises in a huge spring a few miles to the northwest, and flows south rather than out to the edge of the escarpment, because it's in the valley created by the Gibraltar Moraine.  It enters a large sinkhole just off the 7th Line south of the hamlet of Wodehouse, where it disappears underground - almost all the time.  But only so much water can get down the sinkhole so when the flow is high, it backs up and starts forming a lake.  And if the lake gets high enough, it overflows the higher land and flows south into the lower creek valley, otherwise only occupied by a small stream the rest of the year.

There are several sinkholes, including one just upstream of the waterfalls, and there are also several springs spread out along several miles of the cliff, where the water finds a way out horizontally from the sinkholes.  Most of the year there is only a dry creek bed at the bottom end of this creek.  But in those rare times of winter thaws and high flows, suddenly, for a few days, there's a raging creek, and a thundering waterfalls.

Someday I'll tell you the whole complicated story.

Another Recent Sunrise

You realize of course that the only reason I can post sunrise pictures is because the sun doesn't rise very early, but never-the-less, when you get an interesting morning of clouds, the sunrise can be pretty spectacular out our windows.  This was a week ago or so.

Meanwhile of course we've had this crazy second January thaw.  In 48 hours it removed virtually all the foot of snow we had, again eliminating cross-country skiing and snowshoeing until it accumulates again.  Yesterday our lawn was brown again.  You have to get out and enjoy it when you can!  But this morning an arctic blast moved back int, and the streamers are gusting straight east from Lake Huron.  It looks too much like a blizzard outside to even enjoy going for a walk, but I'll bundle up and try it - the dog loves winter.

I keep trying to learn different settings on my camera to get the best pictures, and the two pictures below are taken of the same view, but in slightly different settings.  The first picture below was taken on Aperture setting at a speed of 1/100;  the second on Auto setting, at 1/30th.  Frankly, though I like the first, I think the second give a more realistic view of what I was actually seeing. Funny what the camera can do to the light. 

The Old Woods Road

The trail into the nearby woods where I walk with the dog nearly every day starts with the old woods road, a tractor trail in beside a fencerow and then passing through another fencerow, heading west into the woods itself.  The old field now full of thousands of tall maple saplings was obviously open hayfield at some point in the past, but these big old trees have provided seeds for very rapid regeneration of new young trees.  It's a beautiful spot when the fall colours are at their best, but looks great in white too.

The slight curve in the tractor trail is lined with the dense maple saplings on each side, curving gently until you reach the woods.  Only a few of these young maples will ever reach maturity, as the winners in the race for sunlight win out, and the others gradually die away, but meanwhile it's a beautiful young forest covered in white.

It's been a serious cold snap this week, -30 on one morning, with lots of fresh snow, and very little wind.  The trees are all covered in white on the west side, giving a white clean look to the entire forest.  You really need to dress warmly to enjoy a walk these days - and give yourself a kick just to get out the door into the frosty cold!

Skiing Kolapore

Winter was back with a vengeance yesterday, with snow streamers off Lake Huron bringing snow squalls on and off all day, but the result was enough snow for cross-country skiing again.  So I joined a Bruce Trail ski in the Kolapore Forest.  One corner of the Country Forest area is being logged, so we walked up the road a short distance and headed in on a trail down this old farm lane.  Fresh powder snow on the surface, and on all the branches - it was great skiing.

The volunteers who maintain the trails here face lots of challenges, including beaver populations that come and go, flooding low-lying areas.  In turn, bridges need to be expanded, or boardwalks built - or in worse cases, trails closed.  Below is one of the beaver ponds we encountered, this one now abandoned.

Because the temperature was just above zero when the snow started 36 hours ago, it initially stuck to the trees, and that snow caught more, so the fresh powder snow this morning was plastered to the north side of all the trees and branches.  A few places were pretty well white, like below - all young maple saplings, filling in the corner of an old field.

And this is an old apple tree, now overgrown by surrounding forest, and dying, but today looking great with a fresh coat of white.

Tracks in the Woods

Walking in the woods nearly every day this winter, though I made an exception for those two days of the January thaw!  Thank goodness, the snow is back now, a blizzard today in fact.  Usually I walk nearby, but sometimes further away; these are from the snowshoe walk a couple of weeks ago when we saw the bald eagle - still can't get over that!

By the size and pattern of tracks when we found this one, we think this is a coyote.  We hear them far more often than seeing their tracks.

Fairly close, noticeably smaller, and following a long straight line as they do, was this fox track. Several times we've seen fox tracks right outside the windows of our house, and once or twice, in other seasons, seen the fox trot along up the fencerow.

And deer tracks were everywhere, rarely forming any kind of a trail, though often there were nearby tracks indicating that a small group had gone by.  Here though, the deer did actually create a 'deer trail', as they headed out of the hardwoods and down into the swamp.

Bald Eagle!

Snowshoeing with some friends the other day, on a beautiful sunny day in the woods along their trails.  We were watching a woodpecker up in a nearby tree when overhead a large bird flew past - a Bald Eagle!  It was high in the air, but we could clearly see its white head and tail, and the huge wings, wing tips very obvious against the sky.

The closest I got to a picture is a picture of the trees against the blue sky after the eagle had flown past, but here it is anyway, just to prove I was there!