Snowshoeing With Dhali

Dhali went on his first snowshoe hike.  When I first put the snowshoes on he looked at me like, "What do you have on?!?  Well, just make sure people know you dressed yourself!"

I was a little rusty and I fell down once.  You can't walk backwards, oh yeah, now I remember!  It has been a long time since I snowshoe-ed (showshoed? snowshoeed? spellcheck doesn't like any of them).  We didn't have any snow last year, so the last time I went snowshoeing was the winter of 2010/2011 and Tibby was the same age as Dhali is now.  And she wore the same coat!  Here she is Winter Water.  You will notice that she has about 200% more (fur) coat than Dhali does.  She had/has the thickest coat ever.  Dhali is sparse by comparison. 

It was about 7 F degrees (according to my car), not too bad.  The breeze off of the lake was cool, but when we got away from there it was a lot warmer.

    

We went about 2 miles farther than I wanted to.  The map made it look like the trail was a 2.5 mile loop.  Oh, yeah it's a loop.  You walk out to the end of the trail and then turn around and walk back.  It was a very nice trail though.  No one yelled at us and it was nice to be on a trail where we were allowed. 

 Back story:  One time we were snowshoeing and some skiers yelled/swore at us, because we were on the wrong trail.  It scared me for life.  Now I hate skiers!   

We met some skiers today on OUR clearly marked snowshoe trail and I was very polite.  They were complaining that there weren't any groomed tracks for their skis.  Yes, that's because the 8 MILES of skiing trails are over there.  But I didn't say that!  I just said "Hello."

I have a bunch of cute pictures from today's hike.  Dhali is so cute!  He's a good hiker too.  He stays on the trail and pulls me along!  He sniffed off the trail about 10% of the time.  That means I have to either stop and wait for him or try to get him back on to the trail.  So when he was going full steam straight ahead it was nice!  Tibby is about 90% of the time off the trail.  I like Dhali's percentages better - easier on my shoulders.  

We met 2 other people snowshoeing and Dhali was a good boy.  He passed them very politely.  

He started chewing out ice balls out of his feet about 20 mins. from the car.  We were hiking for 1 1/2 hours, so that's not too bad.  At that point I was wishing someone would come and pick us up!  I think he could use some shoes on his front feet.  The back ones didn't seem to get any snow at all stuck in them.  Although it was pretty cold, so the snow wasn't sticking to anything.