Work has been pretty busy lately, so unfortunately I haven't been able to get out much the past few weeks. Finally this past week I got out and had some much needed fun! On Thursday I got off of work a little early and decided to do a little hiking up one of the local canyons. It was a wonderful day for hiking. It was a little warmer due to the cloud cover, except for in the mouth of the canyon where it was a little more windy. I hiked for a few miles and saw some beautiful scenery along the way. As I've previously mentioned I'm always on the lookout for wildlife and different varieties of useful plants. On this hike I found a wild rose bush with some rose hips from last season. Rose hips are a good source of vitamin C and are actually quite tasty, they almost taste like strawberry fruit leather... Of course I stopped and had a few...When eating rose hips you want to remember to cut them open and take out the seeds and small inner hairs. The seeds can be toxic and the hairs can irritate the skin. I'm glad I haven't experienced this, but I've heard if the hairs are eaten, then in the next day or two you get something called "itchy bum."
After work on Friday I went up another of the nearby canyons and did some night snow-shoeing. I shoed in about 2 miles and set up camp via headlamp, camp is easy to set up when it consists of only a bivy sack and sleeping bag. Snow-shoeing at night is quite fun, the moon was out and the snow glowing around me, I barely needed my headlamp. I shoed to an area that was pretty exposed, with not a lot of trees. So I picked out one of the bigger trees to act as a wind-break and set up camp underneath. It's a good thing I did because the wind picked up quite a bit during the night. Saturday morning I woke to a wonderful sunrise, gathered what little dry fuel I could and got a fire going with flint and steel. Later I snow-shoed for a few more miles and then headed back home. Overall it was a great weekend full of fun and a lot of snow!
*When you go out, make sure somebody always knows where you are going and when you will be back*
This sounds totally fun...and cold! I'm not sure I'd be up for camping in the snow so much but the hiking and snowshoeing part sounds like a blast! Darryl wants to go with you sometime! Take him! He has a pair of snowshoes that he got two Christmases ago and has yet to break them in (however, this weekend is the Klondike and hopefully he'll have the chance to break them out for a bit) and he'd love any excuse to try out his new tent and down blanket, flint and steel, all that jazz... ;)
ReplyDeleteIt really wasn't that cold, with my thermal underwear and llama hair hat I was nearly sweating! Ill be going quite a few times as long as there is snow so Ill definitely let Darryl know when Ill be going again, then maybe sometime we'll get you and the kids to come along!
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