Thursday, January 27, 2011

Tracking training

After my crap tracking ability from the previous day I figured it was time for a refresher course. Loaded up the classic skis and headed to a place where I should find an abundance of animal tracks, the Wye Marsh Wildlife Centre. It wasn't long into the ski when I started seeing my first tracks, lots of them actually.


First up, pretty obvious deer. There were lots of them, I didn't run across any face to face unfortunately.


Awww I paused for a few moments on this one. Cougar? Fox? Wolf?


Naw Molly back tracking. Dog.


This one took a few minutes to figure out, You may think snowshoes but I was trying to be a bit more specific. By the depth of the imprint, the direction it was heading etc I'm pretty certain I came across the tracks of the rare two legged cougar. It was a little out of it's element as there were no dance floors to be seen.

After my tracking training was done I was back to focusing on skiing. I have to admit that the Wye Marsh is a very beautiful place to ski.


There track set is by no means spectacular but it has improved from previous years and there were some new trails groomed. I highly recommend everyone gets out here for a couple hours. Not the most challenging trails in the line of climbing but for building base endurance miles it's pretty good. The scenery makes up for anything it could lack.


Just shy of 2.5 hours had me covering every trail with a couple overlaps of a few, the temptation to keep going was there until the stomach started to hint other plans. In a very vocal means my stomach started to scream "Feed Me!!!" Another 20km plus day, this time staying in my happy place with my body feeling pretty happy.

Changing up from the bike is helping both physically and mentally. That sense of movement is a great feeling. What will I do today? Will Molly be recovered for yet another adventure? Hoping so.

1 comment:

jvk said...

We were out skiing on Sunday and I see this black object come running up beside us. I'm like holy S**t. Thought it was a coyote.

Turned out to be a black lab. We had a good laugh at my reaction.