Today we headed east along Highway 60 (the main highway through Algonquin Park) and found a nice otter trail heading across the road into the bush. This being the only trail we spotted in 25 km of driving, we decided to follow it.

This required that we stash the vehicles somewhere down the road. Due to the heavy snow, there were no shoulders along the highway on which to park.

First two of the group scouted the trail to see if it was worth following. Without snowshoes, this is the only way to travel in 4-foot deep snow! They put snowshoes on once we decided to follow this trail.

This is the otter's trail as it came down to the road on the other side. Otters, as well as mink, like to slide a lot in the winter.

In fact, in winter a good part of an otter's trail is sliding, and actual tracks are sometimes very hard to locate.

The trail led us through an alder swamp, which was very challenging for those wearing the modern smaller snowshoes, as they don't stay on top of the snow as well as the older style wooden snowshoes. The alders were all bent over with heavy snow, and at times we were walking five feet or more above the actual ground surface!

We ended up at this frozen bog, where the otter went through a hole in the ice into the creek.

After a break for lunch we headed back to the research station and went off exploring on our own for the rest of the afternoon. I headed to nearby Bat Lake, shown here.

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