Long Lake Snowshoe
We hike from the Lac du Bois Road across the open grasslands hills to Long Lake in the spring when waterfowl is on the lake. We sometimes hike around the lake in a loop just to enjoy the quiet grasslands and riparian activity. We often explore the glaciated features of the area – eskers, kames, potholes, moraine ridges, striated outcrops, erratics, and erosion features. We can make our own route through the area, but a favorite route is to enter by the designated parking area off the Lac du Bois route and then follow single track trails over to Island Lake. From the end of the pond/wetlands chain, we climb the grasslands esker for the view. The 1 km long winding esker stands above the sloped lands so we followed the esker downstream toward the lake. Before going all the way to the bottom, we can either contour our way over the hills overlooking Long Lake or we can go right down to the bottom of the valley at the lakeshore On this snowy, grey, warm day, we went right down to the snow-covered lake.
This was the first mild day for weeks so the snow was heavy and a bit of sleet fell from the sky as we approached the monochrome-mantled bottomland lake.
We snowshoed on the lake surface, but smelly pond water started to push up through the snow so we sometimes had to veer off and proceed along the shoreline. The sun started to poke through the low-lying greyness as we worked our way south along the lake.
As the end of the lake came into sight, patches of blue sky began to show, bringing light to the somber snowy hills.
Dark skies surrounded us to the north and east where snow was still falling at higher elevations. There were no other snowshoe tracks on the lake, but we spotted a couple in the hills above.
The single track trail along the west side of the lake follows the fenceline exclosure so we also followed it up the hill before striking off on our own route, contouring around the ridges to close the loop.
Our route was 6.25 km with lots of slow-going stomping as we broke trail through the wet snow over the hills. In these types of conditions, snowshoeing is a strength and endurance activity, but the sun on the snowy hills always rewards us for our efforts.
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