We meet at the Ballpark in Gillies Bay at 10:00am
Last Saturday was quite a decent day for hiking weather and I figured it would be a good idea to do some hiking in a part of the island where we might find the rare Red-legged Frog. Last year on a hike not far from Angel Lake we had seen and photographed a specimen of this species and as they are active and spawning in March or earlier it seemed we had a good chance of seeing evidence of spawning in the wetlands up on the higher parts of the island around Angel Lake. However, we ran into snow on the road not far past the Vancouver Island Hydro lines and decided to park and hike south from there. The snow was mainly concentrated on the roads, and the forest was mainly bare of snow, but our route for the hike was on road or gasline and it was only when we used a trail through the forest that we were walking on the ground.
The lunch stop was at the Bobs Lake campsite beside a totally frozen lake where any sensible frog would still be hibernating in the mud at the bottom. Continuing our circular hike route around the lake we found we had the deepest snow to tackle, including some places where the snow had a tough crust that sometimes supported us, and sometimes gave way suddenly and stopped all forward motion. But it was fun, unexpected and really good exercise that helped to keep us warm on a pretty cool day!
JD.
Snow on the road at Bobs Lake made walking quite difficult at times.
No comments:
Post a Comment