Snowshoeing

On Thursday I went snowshoeing with a group of ladies from the Windham Newcomers Club. We went to the Musquash Conservation Area in Londonderry. I've been there before in the fall when Harper was a young dog. I went for a hike with another woman. She had a terrier too and our dogs had a fine time, but our map wasn't very good and the trails weren't marked very well.

Since then they have improved the trail markings, and the maps. Besides, in the snow a trail is easy to find, if someone has been on it before you! There had been one or two people on the trail before us. On Tuesday we got around ten inches of light fluffy snow, so it was perfect for snow shoes. Its a lot more work if the snow is heavy and wet.

When we moved to New England we bought snowshoes and cross country skies. I've only gone snowshoeing on our lake, however, and I have stumbled around in the back yard a bit, just to see what it is like.

The first time I tried them I was surprised to discover that I sank in the snow. I thought maybe I was doing something wrong. I actually googled snowshoeing and discovered that the amount of sinking is measured as something called "flotation" and is affected by the size of the snowshoe. Larger shoes are for mountaineering and backcountry use, and smaller snowshoes are prefered by runners. Yes people actually run in the snow using snowshoes! There are even snowshoe races.

Well, we weren't racing, we were just hiking. I thought I would be klutzy, but I actually did just fine. Its more exercise than just walking, but not as much as cross country skiing.

Porcupine Rock

The woods are so beautiful following a new-fallen snow. It was quiet, the wind was calm, and it wasn't too cold either, all they way up into the teens!

We were two thirds of the way around the loop we were hiking when Sharon suddenly exclaimed, "I can't find my phone!" We had all had our phones out at some point to take pictures, and the last time she remembered having it was quite awhile ago. She checked her pockets and we looked all around where we were standing, but no phone.

One lady tried calling it. The first time she tried it rang, but we couldn't hear it. The second time it went straight to voicemail. It was an iphone, so she had the "find my phone" app installed on it, but it couldn't locate it either. So we decided to backtrack and hope that we could see it sticking up somewhere in the snow. After all it was in a purple case!

We slowly and carefully made our way back along the trail. We never saw it, and we had five pairs of eyes looking. Later we figured that because the snow was so light and fluffy it must have fallen down into it and gotten covered. It was far enough down in the snow that it lost service.

Poor Sharon! We all felt bad for her. She said she had over 800 pictures on her phone, and she hadn't backed it up in a long time.

When we got back to our cars I was tired, and hungry too. Snowshoeing uses up a lot of calories. After I got home I made sure I had a current backup of my phone, and I checked to make sure I had the "Find My Phone" App installed too. I'd hate to lose my phone!