salmonoid
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2007
- Messages
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Once upon a time, about two years ago, I wrote a story about a frosty outing in a snowy world. I've wanted to reprise that outing when I had another chance and the Half Serious thread provided the inspiration to try it again. Seeing as I live a number of miles from a trout stream, getting to a stream to fish during the storm was impossible and dangerous. The day after was devoted to cleaning off the driveway and walks and consuming some playoff football. But before halftime of the first game, the phone buzzed with an alert that campus was closed on Monday, and with a free day, a plan for Monday afternoon began to take shape.
My wife would have preferred that I stay home to do some sort of inside the house cleanup. But with the temperature moving above freezing and an overall beautiful day shaping up, I took my leave of the homefront after lunch. I managed to avoid getting run over by a van that a neighbor at the corner of our road had just managed to free from his snowed in yard. I never can tell what the roads in the rest of the world outside the road I live on are like, because our road is plowed by a chicken farmer who contracts with the township and unlike the state or township plow trucks, he makes a pass every few hours with his big old tractor. I've made it out to the next road already after a storm, only to find the state road had not even been plowed yet, but Monday afternoon, the road was entirely passable, but with a number of places that were only a lane and a half wide, and a few dicey intersections.
What did stand out, though, was the small stream I drove over on the way to the snowpile by the stop sign. Somewhere in the past few weeks I neglected to realize that streams had frozen over. Sure, we had just received 2-3 feet of snow, but lots of snow doesn't always coincide with frigid weather. But the temperature apparently had been cold enough to rearrange the majority of the water molecules into their more immobile structure of ice. My heart sank a bit, because I had taken my daughter on a hike last winter (which was much colder). On that hike, a fishing rod had somehow found it's way into my pack, but we found the creek completely frozen over. I debated about just giving up right away and turning around and driving the mile back home. I didn't even know if there would be a place to park. But I assuaged my concerns by telling myself I was on recon to see what condition the roads were in for the next day's drive to work. And so I continued on.
A township worker flagged me around a big front-end loader who was doubling the width of a road, by opening the second lane. I encountered a Peterbilt truck coming down one stretch of road and pulled tight against a snow drift to let him pass. Eventually, I arrived at my destination. I was pleasantly surprised to find a small area had been plowed out, and even more surprised to find another vehicle parked there. I continued on to check out the other lot, but it had not been touched, so I went up the road a bit and turned around. The other vehicle had backed into the parking area, so I wisely took their cue and backed my vehicle in. Before I shut it off, I made sure that with a little run, I could get over the snow hump at the edge of the lot and make it back to the road.
The fate of the creek I was at was no different than the small creek near my home. Oh, there were small patches of water open here and there, but for the most part, the whole stream was frozen over. I again debated whether I should just call it a day, but the trail that led away from the small plowed lot beckoned. It beckoned even louder because at least two other people had already gone before me, presumably the occupants of the vehicle. At least one of them was wearing snowshoes and the other only boots. Since someone had already broken trail, I decided I might as well get some exercise.
Let me state that while the storm we had over the weekend was quite impressive by the vast area impacted by it and the depths of snow dumped over a wide area, I was more impressed by the twin storms we received in February 2010. The drifting in my area was fierce and the cumulative effect of two storms that dumped more than 20" each in less than 10 days was greater than this storm. But, I also had not taken to the woods immediately after those storms went through. So, even though I was walking on a trail that someone else had broken, I was confronted with an almost endless expanse of pure white unbroken snow. And I was extremely grateful that someone had already gone on before me.
My next decision point was when I reached a fork in the trail. The snowshoer had headed up hill, in a direction I had never hiked. I usually follow the creek, but since the already broken trail went in the general direction I wanted to go, I opted to take advantage of it. I walked on, hoping to catch a glimpse of open water, but through the trees, all I saw was snow and an ice covered creek.
I had walked about two-thirds of the way to my intended destination when I heard voices and down the hill, in the distance, I saw a few people hiking. The trail I was on eventually connected to another trail I had hiked on previously and I ended up practically jogging down the trail. I met the trail breakers near the mouth of the stream - two had snowshoes on and two had boots. One joked about me waiting until I saw someone break trail before following, but we made small talk about where we were from and what we were doing out in the snow. They intimated that while it would be interesting to hike back up the stream, they were inclined to return the same way they came in. After observing the tracks of a cross country skier taking advantage of the railroad grade, I took my leave and headed upstream.
I naively held onto the hope that I would find a pool or two of open water, but as the afternoon wore on, that notion quickly disappeared.
That's not to say that there weren't a few patches with open water, but these weren't the places that a trout would be hanging out.
I still had my snowshoes on and a standard warning is in order. Snowshoes help you walk in deeper snow. They do not keep you from sinking into deeper snow. They just keep you from sinking all the way into the bottom. They can also help to distribute your weight over a larger area, say when walking on ice. But because of the inherent dangers of walking on ice when it's cold out, I do not recommend wearing them while on a stream.
Ignoring my own advice, I walked to the edge of the ice in the photo above. The ice gave way. It wasn't like I broke through the ice. It just cracked, and a whole big sheet just slowly tilted into the water. I overcompensated and sat down on my haunches for a bit. It wasn't deep where I was hunkering down, but I also did not want to get into a situation of trying to stand up, breaking off more ice, and having the whole process repeat. So I slowly raised myself and retreated off the ice.
The little fingers of ice at the edge of the open water oscillated in a rhythm, as the water flowed. They went from light to dark and back again, as the stream flowed underneath them.
I decided to continue on the upstream journey, rather than bailing and taking the easy trek out. I still had my snowshoes on and opted to keep mostly out of the stream. But the going got tricky. The snow could be anywhere from two to four feet deep and I found out the hard way in the first hundred yards, when I misjudged a step and sank in deep beside a boulder. Again, righting myself proved to be a bit of a challenge but I got up. I did find one little pocket of water that inspired me to break out my rod and line up. But nothing was hitting out of the little pool.
One of the other obstacles that presented itself was that there was a large amount of snow bowing down the rhododendrons and small trees. This made the trail impassable in some places and in others, I took the bait and tried to squeeze underneath them. Inevitably, my pack or an arm would bump a branch, and my pack and body would be covered with cold snow. The realities of "To Build a Fire" became very apparent. In a particularly overgrown section of trail, I opted to follow the stream for a stretch. My plan was to cross the stream here, duck under the log, and head upstream, bypassing the thicket and catching the trail upstream.
I ventured out on the ice, trying hard to place my weight on the rocks I could see underneath. But what looked like rocks weren't always rocks and in the middle of the stream a big 3 foot by 3 foot of ice broke off. The stream swirled around and I wondered what kind of shear factor the water was putting on that little piece of ice and what additional surface area my snowshoes gave the water to push against as well. And while the water again wasn't deep, I didn't feel like getting my leg trapped between ice chunks and breaking it somehow, or twisting it and hurting something else. So it became time for a rest.
I dapped the bugger in this little stretch a few times, but ended up with no takers.
I decided some liquid nourishment was in order too, so I had a refreshing stout while sitting in a snowbank in the middle of the stream.
The second piece of ice breaking helped me make the decision to abandon the snowshoes. This proved to be a good decision, at least while I remained in a travel mode on and around the stream. There were areas of beautiful little ice sculptures, the kind that you miss if you're slogging through a rhododendron thicket somewhere.
There were areas that are a little dicey to navigate in warm weather, because of the slippery rocks. The snow actually covers the algae and the ice bridges some of the gaps and I actually made it through this section easier than I do in the summertime.
When the stream came in close proximity to the trail again, I used the snow to climb up what is probably a ten foot vertical cliff. I knew that my walking would be easier if I put my snowshoes back on, but I just did not feel like removing them from my pack, knocking the frozen snow and ice out of them and sitting down to put them back on. So I plodded on in my wading boots. Holes that often skunk me in the summertime presented completely different challenges this outing. For hopefully obvious reasons, I opted to not fish it.
Although the probability was virtually zero, I still hoped that at least one hole would hold enough open water that I could entice a fish. But the olfactory nerve in the back of my mind was already smelling a skunk. It wouldn't be here.
And it wouldn't be here, although I managed to cross the stream here.
And I managed to cross here, too, despite the patch of open water. The ice held. At a number of places, I observed the tracks of deer through the snow and they often headed down to the stream to a patch of open water. I guess they know that it is not efficient to use their energy to melt snow for liquid when water in liquid form is readily available. In any case, I followed the tracks of a deer across here and climbed up the bank where the deer had.
There wouldn't be any fishing here either.
And by this point, I removed the label of the trip as a fishing trip and it became simply an exploration of a frozen winter wonderland. There is truly something wonderful about pushing on into the woods, with nothing but unbroken snow ahead of you.
And a single track of prints behind you.
There's also something extremely tiring about breaking trail in fresh 2-3 feet deep snow in the cold. I was a tad bit overdressed for the temperature and while I had brought enough food and drink for a two mile trip, I also am not accustomed making said trip in deep snow. As you may be able to tell by the last few photos, it was starting to be closer to late afternoon than before and the sun had gone down behind the edge of the little valley. I would walk a few tens of yards, then stop to catch my breath. I was on open trail at this point and the rhododendron thickets were a thing of earlier afternoon. But walking a few tens of yards at a time wasn't exactly burning up the last third of a mile. I was relieved to reach a spot where the trail climbed from the stream valley over a small height of land and then dropped back down the stream again. I was coming down off the height of land when I spotted a guy in a blue coat standing by a tree. We exchanged hellos and I continued upstream and he continued over the height of land. I wondered where he was going and he probably wondered where I had come from. But by now, I could hear traffic on the road. And after a few more stops, I came out at the edge of the stream by the parking area.
When I had abandoned hope of finding much fishable water, I knew that I would potentially one more chance, and hoped that ironically, I would have walked all that distance, only to catch a fish right by where I parked. A culvert hole by the parking area had some open water and I tossed my bugger into it for good measure. On the second cast, the water carried the bugger in underneath an ice shelf that had formed around a tree branch and as I lifted the bugger to retrieve it, I saw the swirl of a fish break the surface as it chased the bugger. Of course I missed it and a few repeated attempts to entice the fish yielded me catching the iceberg the fish was under. I hauled it in and released it downstream, and with that my measly fishing and mostly trekking winter trip ended.
I slept well Monday night.
My wife would have preferred that I stay home to do some sort of inside the house cleanup. But with the temperature moving above freezing and an overall beautiful day shaping up, I took my leave of the homefront after lunch. I managed to avoid getting run over by a van that a neighbor at the corner of our road had just managed to free from his snowed in yard. I never can tell what the roads in the rest of the world outside the road I live on are like, because our road is plowed by a chicken farmer who contracts with the township and unlike the state or township plow trucks, he makes a pass every few hours with his big old tractor. I've made it out to the next road already after a storm, only to find the state road had not even been plowed yet, but Monday afternoon, the road was entirely passable, but with a number of places that were only a lane and a half wide, and a few dicey intersections.
What did stand out, though, was the small stream I drove over on the way to the snowpile by the stop sign. Somewhere in the past few weeks I neglected to realize that streams had frozen over. Sure, we had just received 2-3 feet of snow, but lots of snow doesn't always coincide with frigid weather. But the temperature apparently had been cold enough to rearrange the majority of the water molecules into their more immobile structure of ice. My heart sank a bit, because I had taken my daughter on a hike last winter (which was much colder). On that hike, a fishing rod had somehow found it's way into my pack, but we found the creek completely frozen over. I debated about just giving up right away and turning around and driving the mile back home. I didn't even know if there would be a place to park. But I assuaged my concerns by telling myself I was on recon to see what condition the roads were in for the next day's drive to work. And so I continued on.
A township worker flagged me around a big front-end loader who was doubling the width of a road, by opening the second lane. I encountered a Peterbilt truck coming down one stretch of road and pulled tight against a snow drift to let him pass. Eventually, I arrived at my destination. I was pleasantly surprised to find a small area had been plowed out, and even more surprised to find another vehicle parked there. I continued on to check out the other lot, but it had not been touched, so I went up the road a bit and turned around. The other vehicle had backed into the parking area, so I wisely took their cue and backed my vehicle in. Before I shut it off, I made sure that with a little run, I could get over the snow hump at the edge of the lot and make it back to the road.
The fate of the creek I was at was no different than the small creek near my home. Oh, there were small patches of water open here and there, but for the most part, the whole stream was frozen over. I again debated whether I should just call it a day, but the trail that led away from the small plowed lot beckoned. It beckoned even louder because at least two other people had already gone before me, presumably the occupants of the vehicle. At least one of them was wearing snowshoes and the other only boots. Since someone had already broken trail, I decided I might as well get some exercise.
Let me state that while the storm we had over the weekend was quite impressive by the vast area impacted by it and the depths of snow dumped over a wide area, I was more impressed by the twin storms we received in February 2010. The drifting in my area was fierce and the cumulative effect of two storms that dumped more than 20" each in less than 10 days was greater than this storm. But, I also had not taken to the woods immediately after those storms went through. So, even though I was walking on a trail that someone else had broken, I was confronted with an almost endless expanse of pure white unbroken snow. And I was extremely grateful that someone had already gone on before me.
My next decision point was when I reached a fork in the trail. The snowshoer had headed up hill, in a direction I had never hiked. I usually follow the creek, but since the already broken trail went in the general direction I wanted to go, I opted to take advantage of it. I walked on, hoping to catch a glimpse of open water, but through the trees, all I saw was snow and an ice covered creek.
I had walked about two-thirds of the way to my intended destination when I heard voices and down the hill, in the distance, I saw a few people hiking. The trail I was on eventually connected to another trail I had hiked on previously and I ended up practically jogging down the trail. I met the trail breakers near the mouth of the stream - two had snowshoes on and two had boots. One joked about me waiting until I saw someone break trail before following, but we made small talk about where we were from and what we were doing out in the snow. They intimated that while it would be interesting to hike back up the stream, they were inclined to return the same way they came in. After observing the tracks of a cross country skier taking advantage of the railroad grade, I took my leave and headed upstream.
I naively held onto the hope that I would find a pool or two of open water, but as the afternoon wore on, that notion quickly disappeared.
That's not to say that there weren't a few patches with open water, but these weren't the places that a trout would be hanging out.
I still had my snowshoes on and a standard warning is in order. Snowshoes help you walk in deeper snow. They do not keep you from sinking into deeper snow. They just keep you from sinking all the way into the bottom. They can also help to distribute your weight over a larger area, say when walking on ice. But because of the inherent dangers of walking on ice when it's cold out, I do not recommend wearing them while on a stream.
Ignoring my own advice, I walked to the edge of the ice in the photo above. The ice gave way. It wasn't like I broke through the ice. It just cracked, and a whole big sheet just slowly tilted into the water. I overcompensated and sat down on my haunches for a bit. It wasn't deep where I was hunkering down, but I also did not want to get into a situation of trying to stand up, breaking off more ice, and having the whole process repeat. So I slowly raised myself and retreated off the ice.
The little fingers of ice at the edge of the open water oscillated in a rhythm, as the water flowed. They went from light to dark and back again, as the stream flowed underneath them.
I decided to continue on the upstream journey, rather than bailing and taking the easy trek out. I still had my snowshoes on and opted to keep mostly out of the stream. But the going got tricky. The snow could be anywhere from two to four feet deep and I found out the hard way in the first hundred yards, when I misjudged a step and sank in deep beside a boulder. Again, righting myself proved to be a bit of a challenge but I got up. I did find one little pocket of water that inspired me to break out my rod and line up. But nothing was hitting out of the little pool.
One of the other obstacles that presented itself was that there was a large amount of snow bowing down the rhododendrons and small trees. This made the trail impassable in some places and in others, I took the bait and tried to squeeze underneath them. Inevitably, my pack or an arm would bump a branch, and my pack and body would be covered with cold snow. The realities of "To Build a Fire" became very apparent. In a particularly overgrown section of trail, I opted to follow the stream for a stretch. My plan was to cross the stream here, duck under the log, and head upstream, bypassing the thicket and catching the trail upstream.
I ventured out on the ice, trying hard to place my weight on the rocks I could see underneath. But what looked like rocks weren't always rocks and in the middle of the stream a big 3 foot by 3 foot of ice broke off. The stream swirled around and I wondered what kind of shear factor the water was putting on that little piece of ice and what additional surface area my snowshoes gave the water to push against as well. And while the water again wasn't deep, I didn't feel like getting my leg trapped between ice chunks and breaking it somehow, or twisting it and hurting something else. So it became time for a rest.
I dapped the bugger in this little stretch a few times, but ended up with no takers.
I decided some liquid nourishment was in order too, so I had a refreshing stout while sitting in a snowbank in the middle of the stream.
The second piece of ice breaking helped me make the decision to abandon the snowshoes. This proved to be a good decision, at least while I remained in a travel mode on and around the stream. There were areas of beautiful little ice sculptures, the kind that you miss if you're slogging through a rhododendron thicket somewhere.
There were areas that are a little dicey to navigate in warm weather, because of the slippery rocks. The snow actually covers the algae and the ice bridges some of the gaps and I actually made it through this section easier than I do in the summertime.
When the stream came in close proximity to the trail again, I used the snow to climb up what is probably a ten foot vertical cliff. I knew that my walking would be easier if I put my snowshoes back on, but I just did not feel like removing them from my pack, knocking the frozen snow and ice out of them and sitting down to put them back on. So I plodded on in my wading boots. Holes that often skunk me in the summertime presented completely different challenges this outing. For hopefully obvious reasons, I opted to not fish it.
Although the probability was virtually zero, I still hoped that at least one hole would hold enough open water that I could entice a fish. But the olfactory nerve in the back of my mind was already smelling a skunk. It wouldn't be here.
And it wouldn't be here, although I managed to cross the stream here.
And I managed to cross here, too, despite the patch of open water. The ice held. At a number of places, I observed the tracks of deer through the snow and they often headed down to the stream to a patch of open water. I guess they know that it is not efficient to use their energy to melt snow for liquid when water in liquid form is readily available. In any case, I followed the tracks of a deer across here and climbed up the bank where the deer had.
There wouldn't be any fishing here either.
And by this point, I removed the label of the trip as a fishing trip and it became simply an exploration of a frozen winter wonderland. There is truly something wonderful about pushing on into the woods, with nothing but unbroken snow ahead of you.
And a single track of prints behind you.
There's also something extremely tiring about breaking trail in fresh 2-3 feet deep snow in the cold. I was a tad bit overdressed for the temperature and while I had brought enough food and drink for a two mile trip, I also am not accustomed making said trip in deep snow. As you may be able to tell by the last few photos, it was starting to be closer to late afternoon than before and the sun had gone down behind the edge of the little valley. I would walk a few tens of yards, then stop to catch my breath. I was on open trail at this point and the rhododendron thickets were a thing of earlier afternoon. But walking a few tens of yards at a time wasn't exactly burning up the last third of a mile. I was relieved to reach a spot where the trail climbed from the stream valley over a small height of land and then dropped back down the stream again. I was coming down off the height of land when I spotted a guy in a blue coat standing by a tree. We exchanged hellos and I continued upstream and he continued over the height of land. I wondered where he was going and he probably wondered where I had come from. But by now, I could hear traffic on the road. And after a few more stops, I came out at the edge of the stream by the parking area.
When I had abandoned hope of finding much fishable water, I knew that I would potentially one more chance, and hoped that ironically, I would have walked all that distance, only to catch a fish right by where I parked. A culvert hole by the parking area had some open water and I tossed my bugger into it for good measure. On the second cast, the water carried the bugger in underneath an ice shelf that had formed around a tree branch and as I lifted the bugger to retrieve it, I saw the swirl of a fish break the surface as it chased the bugger. Of course I missed it and a few repeated attempts to entice the fish yielded me catching the iceberg the fish was under. I hauled it in and released it downstream, and with that my measly fishing and mostly trekking winter trip ended.
I slept well Monday night.
