Park Inspections

On Friday we drove out to Owen Conservation Park to walk. Trail onditions were about as perfect as possible for yaktrax on packed snow! First we walked up around the hill where the professor's house used to be, which is still heavily terraced with stone walls. Then we made a big loop around the restored prairie, following the outside loop of ski trail which is a good ten feet wide. Along the edges of the park you can see the outside neighborhoods and Old Sauk Road, now that the leaves are down, but throughout most of it you would hardly know you were still in town. We had the place mostly to ourselves too, although the packed snow seemed to indicate it's heavily used. Very hilly, too. We didn't go all around the new storm water retention basins, but our circuit of the park took forty minutes. I was feeling pretty good, and took these photos of stone wall on the hill, and the prairie restoration.



Saturday I walked around the neighborhood for 45 minutes. It started out as just a little walk, down to the bay and back, but then I followed Rowell along the railroad track south and across Franklin Field to the bikepath, and home again from there. Took another photo of the Wonderful O, which is still standing, although heavily melted. It was beginning to mist when I got back, and we didn't get much of the rain forecast. I have been feeling surprisingly well considering the major weather front coming through. Lay down after that one for some yoga stretching.



Today we went out to Governor Nelson State Park, to see how the trails there are in the snow. It turns out unfortunately that most of them are dedicated to skitrails and hikers are not allowed! It's up in the thirties today, a big thaw, and snow conditions were, shall we say, not so good. It's a big disappointment that we're not going to be able to hike the hilly forest trails to the Indian mounds until spring though. We didn't see much tree damage from the recent big snow, only a couple of branches, and one dead oak tree that took the opportunity to fall entirely over.

We took the "Morningside" trail which is the one that circles the prairie, along the entrance road, and then comes along the northwest shore of Lake Mendota through some wetlands. This trail tends to be wet anyhow, and today parts were turning to slush. Fortunately, I suppose, the snow is deep enough that we didn't get into any actual mud, and the yaktrax served us well. Walking in this stuff was quite a workout, and warmed up both of us (I took off my coat for a bit). The packed snow was giving way underfoot with every step, and only one pair of runners had preceded us on the back side of this trail, we could see plainly from their footprints. It was kind of like walking in dry beach sand, and the advice Matt has given about walking technique was really helpful: if you landed on your heel you tended to sink even further into the wet snow, but if you landed more on the whole foot you could stay more on top of the snow pack. Mostly. After a while I even realized that the more you can propel yourself forward, under such conditions, through arm motion or whatever, the less impact you make on the surface -- the trail teaching us how to walk it.

When we arrived at the place where a stream runs in a culvert under the trail through the red osier dogwood (above), it started looking familiar from last fall. Only without the leaves... and covered with snow... The whole way around only took forty minutes, but it was an unusually energetic forty minutes, and we used a lot of muscles that don't usually get so much of a workout.