Next Hike

The next hike will be on Saturday 4th of January.

We meet at the Ballpark in Gillies Bay at 10:00am.

Last week we had a rather dull day again, but at least it was not raining as it had been doing from time to time during the week.  It seemed to be getting brighter in the west so we decided to head up quite high and see if there was much snow still on the ground around on the higher parts of Bell Rd.  When we got there we found very little sign of snow and set off from the Hydro East turnoff on the route that we take for Mount Manzanita.  We were slowed down at first not by snow, but by quite a few windfalls in the forest.  Once on the old logging roads we made good progress and were intrigued as we went along to find the fresh footprints in the thin snow of someone with very large boots.  As we got to the foot of the last steep section of trail to the top of Manzanita we wondered if we would find snow on the top, but there was none.  On the other hand at the lunch spot we found we had got up into some low cloud and this persisted until eventually a breeze came up and we had mice views to the coastline and beyond. 

JD   

Some puffballs almost ready to start releasing their spores.  These would have been edible a week or two earlier, but too late now.