Algonquin Winter Tracking 2014

Snow fleas will come out on warm winter days. These are tiny insects in the Springtail family.

On one day of this visit it poured rain. Quite a contrast to the deep cold that followed, with daytime highs of -15C!

Although a warm day is usually welcome in the winter, it has its downside. When snowshoeing the warm and wet snow sticks to your snowshoes, greatly increasing their weight and therefore the effort required to walk. Cross country skis probably don't have that problem.

This year in Algonquin there was a deep fluffy upper layer to the snow, which created additional challenges for snowshoeing. With every step I often sank down a foot or more. It was like stair-stepping in snowshoes! Because of this, I spent most of my time this year on trails of one sort or another, where the snow had been firmly packed down and/or frozen into a firm base to walk on without snowshoes.

Be very careful in bogs and muskeg in the winter, particularly the more open areas. Bogs contain decaying plant material, which generates some heat. A surface that appears completely safe could be underlain with mushy ice. Step on that area and down you go into the ice cold water! And you are surrounded by deep snow, so there's nothing to push on in order pull yourself out. This happened to me here in 2012.