I suppose it always goes this way: when you’re worrying about a big project and have put three people other than yourself on the task, that’s when something goes wrong. Thus it shouldn’t really have come as a surprise to me when, at 
seven a.m., my email beeped and one of those three people happily said “no work! see you Monday!” With a bit of a sinking feeling, I checked the university website – and, sure enough, we’re closed today. Next, I opened the Weather Network site, and oh crap… this was a great time to remember that I didn’t have all of the files I needed at home. With nobody to help, I figured I might as well do what I had to do on the weekend, after the plows have caught up to the road.
And that decision made, I happily made a second mug of coffee and did not make the effort to get out of my fleece pajamas for the next two hours, because, snow day! And while I *could* spend this day purging through my books or washing my floors or something equally uninspired, we’ve had so little snow this year that on a snow day, one must play in the snow! Furthermore, I have my little trail-mapping project! Perfect!
Well, except for the part where, even with my wonderful winter tires, I wasn’t sure I’d make it out of the driveway. Well, I’d be pretty confident, except for the part where the last 20m are uphill, and there is a nice base of ice underneath. Lately, it’s been a bit tricky – I creep up to where I can see the road, and if there is no traffic, no problem. If there is something coming, I have had to back up a bit and try again. One morning, it took three attempts before I got out of the lane! And even if that were not the case, the trail parking lots are not plowed in the winter (neither is the wee little dirt road that leads to the closest lot) and while my snow-munching tires could probably get me there, and into the lot – at the rate it was coming down, I might not come back out. Worse, if the plow went by while I was *in* the lot, I’d have a snowbank – and an uphill slope – to overcome to get out. All things considered, I figured it was better to walk.
But who wants to walk on the roads when it’s like this? Fortunately, snowstorms have low visibility. See, I know I can get to the trail parking lot cross-country from here. The only tricky bit is that it’s all farmland, and Google Earth shows it’s no possible to be completely out of sight of the farmsteads for the whole trip (not that I’ve ever been given grief during my back 40 explorations, but I don’t really want to set a precedent). In a snowstorm, though, I can go within 300m of a farmyard and not even the dog cares that I’m there. And I strapped on my snowshoes and started stomping. The only really difficult bit was coming back onto the concession road – if you walk along the road, you think it’s all woods. Turns out, that’s just a fringe of woods, which is densely populated with estate homes, and behind is all fields. Those 200m of woods were the trickiest bit, but then there was a field that went all the way through.
There were no tracks at all when I got to the trails. This had a tiny bit of a drawback – I couldn’t keep to the trails I was trying to map. See, they’re not blazed or anything, you just follow a track in the snow or well-worn ground without snow. Well, there was no track in the snow. If there was a dense understory, the trail location was obvious, but when I got to more open areas I lost the trail. I now have a lovely GPS bushwhacking track. After a while, I stopped and opened my tea thermos and thought about it, and in those three or four minutes of thinking of course I got cold and noticed that my gloves and toque were soaked (it was snowing heavily, and my body heat kept melting the snow that fell on thinly insulated parts…) I changed my gloves for the mittens in my pack and decided it was time to trudge home, in defeat. No progress was made on the map today.
Still, I spent 10km on my snowshoes on *my* snow day. It was time well spent, I think (except for the part where my bookshelf is still a mess). Also, cross country? Less than half the distance as by road, *and* more interesting. And the plow did indeed come and block in the lot while I was in the bush. I would have had to do a lot of shoveling.