Outdoor Adventures with Gary Lee - Vol 287
Winter came overnight this week with fourteen inches of snow in my driveway, coating the trees making it a winter wonderland outside, just in time for Christmas on Main Street in Inlet and Old Forge. The Inlet Doggie Parade and Old Forges Christmas Parade drew lots of dogs and lots of watchers in both towns. The snow just added to the fun, and I got out of town just before they closed the road for the parade.
The snow just kept coming off both Lake Ontario and Lake Erie in bands and much of that reached here. There was some on Thanksgiving Day but much more came over night and into the next morning. My son who lives just east of Rochester said he still had green grass but the folks up in Barns Corners had a high total of five and a half feet of the white stuff. That will start off your winter for sure. Looking at the Buffalo Bill’s football game on Sunday night they were still getting lake effect snow there all during the game. The snow that came on Thanksgiving Day was some wet stuff, over eight inches in Warrensburg and only four over this way, not fun to shovel or snow blow that white stuff. The lake effect snow is much lighter, but most got lots more than they needed.
The hunters had tracking snow if they could get to where they wanted to hunt. The rains which came first and then the snow sure helped with the fires in the southern part of the state and New Jersey.
Talking about that, the Forest Ranger class of nine were appointed to the state force of 156 after six months of training by DEC Interim Commissioner Sean Mahar on December 2nd. He celebrated graduates from the 29th Basic School for NYS Forest Rangers from across the state, who followed extensive law enforcement and natural resources training in the classroom and in the field.
DEC Division of Forest Protection Acting Director Drew Cavanagh said, Forest Rangers are dedicated to ensuring public safety while patrolling more than five million acres of land across the state. They often go above and beyond the call of duty assisting others states and Canada when fires or natural disasters occur. I am thrilled to add these nine Rangers to our ranks. DEC press release.
Some folks went out to enjoy the snow cross country skiing on the Inlet trails and other trails in the area. Kristen Haynes and her husband Sam were out on the Inlet and came upon a beautiful Barred Owl who let them get a neat photo. With the snow as deep as it is breaking, the trail takes longer than skiing on a groomed or broken trail and it sure takes more energy so be prepared with some extra energy food and water and a head lamp for sure. If you do not have time to make a loop, you can always turn around and use your broken trail to go back. Getting caught in the dark is not fun.
One party years ago went out from Inlet doing the outer loop in two feet of new snow on the trail system which came within a quarter mile from the Limekiln Road before turning back. One person broke a harness at that point and the rest of the party of four headed for Inlet. Did I say it was twenty below zero at the time? The person they left could almost see and certainly hear cars going up the Limekiln Road. He sat on a log at -20 and waited for help. The others made it back to Inlet and reported where they had left him. They thought they were going to die in the woods but made it out. I walked in on snowshoes carrying another pair and found him sitting on the log. It was now -27. We stuck his broken skies in the snow and got the snowshoes on his boots. FR Doug Riedman tried to come in with a snowmobile but did not make the first hill. We made it out to the road, and you could see the streetlights on the road about twenty feet from where he was sitting on the log. He said he was not cold; well at -27 sitting on a log, it was not warm. I took him to his waiting party in town where he got warm. I retrieved his skies the next morning and he never called to get them back. Sometimes you can get out to the road rather than skiing another two miles through the woods, get a map and use it as sometimes a cold cell phone doesn’t work.
My brother-in-law Ed Conroy went for his morning run and found thousands of Snow Geese in a farm field near Point Au Roche, and he got a nice shot of a near white field of just geese, no snow.
Snow pushed some new birds to the feeders but that’s another story. See ya.
Photo above: Snow Geese by Ed Conroy
