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HomeAlgonquin Winter Tracking

Algonquin Winter Tracking Expedition 2005

Wednesday (Day 4)

This day was sunny and clear. It had snowed a bunch the day before, providing us with ideal conditions for tracking!!
 
Today we spent the day ion the area near Hermit Lake, off Opeongo Road.

The early morning scouting crew had picked up the signal of a collared wolf in this area, so we set out to track it.

Along the way we came upon this bear scratch on a balsam fir tree.

We followed the wolf tracks through the thick forest for some distance. Here's part of the trail.

We were backtracking this wolf - that means we were following its tracks back towards where it came from.

Here's a nice photo of a single wolf track.
A wolf lay. This is a place where a wolf has lain for a period of time, perhaps sleeping.
We backtracked the wolves out through the forest and out onto a large bog. The first part of the bog was a spruce bog.
The bog opened up into a wide open bog.

Here, in the middle, we came upon a place where two trails converged.

We ultimately found that both trails came from the same place, which was the area in the distance on the right side of this photo.

We stopped for lunch at the edge of this bog. A grey jay joined us.
After lunch we hiked to the west end of the bog to where the wolf trails came together. We followed them up and over a forested area to Hermit Lake.

At Hermit Lake the group split up temporarily, with each person doing their own exploring out on the lake and along the shores. Someone found this clump of moose hair with a tick clinging to the hairs.

As the afternoon was getting on, we left Hermit Lake to hike back, eventually, to the vehicles.

Along the way we came upon an otter peeking out of its plunge hole. And we found its trail along the shore, shown here.

Otters like to slide more than they like to walk. Perhaps because it's easier, or simply because it's more fun! Who knows? Ask the otters.

Here's a good view of it's sliding trail, along with paw prints.

The end of an excellent tracking day, with lots of discoveries!
 
This evening we had an informal presentation given to us by a marten ecologist who was working on his thesis here in Algonquin Park.
 

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