the Way of the Turtle

SNOWSHOES WOULD HAVE BEEN A BETTER PLAN...
7.5 Mile Run at Thacher Park
Saturday, January 28, 2012

You'd think I'd have learned by now, given all the times I've gone up to Thacher in the last couple of winters and found significantly more snow there than we had down in Albany. Actually, I have learned - I brought my snowshoes with me instead of leaving them at home. But when I was gearing up in the Ryan Road parking area and saw mainly ice on the trail, I decided to go with screw shoes, and I should have known better... any trails that hadn't been snowmobiled were ankle-deep in snow and ice, which made for difficult, slow going - it would have been much easier to be on snowshoes.

Despite that, it was a good day to be out - it was grey and cloudy when I left Albany, but then the Sun mixed in with the clouds for much of my run and treated me to some glimpses of a very nice sunset. The only area that was totally clear of snow was the farm fields near the Long Path parking lot, and that was filled with dozens of robins looking for food. I had hoped to follow the mountain bike trail to the water treatment plant and run down to the Hailes Cave overlook, but the snow slowed me down too much and it was getting dark by the time I reached the hang glider launch area, so I decided to take the snowmobile trails back - I could run fairly consistently on them. Along the way I had some great views of the crescent moon framed by Jupiter and Venus - beautiful!

JMH