The ski season has now wrapped up for me. Most of my skis are cleaned up, storage wax applied and put away so it was time to think about other activities. After a weekend of lethargy (following last weeks "work" chaos - an exhausting week where nothing seemed to go as planned) Monday was to be the annual hike up to the Luskville fire tower. Bryan had booked it months ago but – as with anything booked months in advance – turns out one of the regulars couldn’t make it and the weather looked a little sketchy so we decided on another option. Instead we headed to P16 , dropped a car and then drove up to P15 to hike the snowshoe trail into Healy and Herridge shelters with an exit route down the Pine road to the first car. Turned out to be a nice little loop. The snowshoe trail still had a few spots where the snow was pretty deep but the trail “spine” was solid so walking was easy. There were also a few flooded sections but short bushwhacks were not too tough. We met up with three gentlemen who were pre-hiking the trail, checking the trail condition in advance of a larger group coming in on Wednesday. They were busy building up “bridges” where there was water to cross and dragging off blown down branches to clear up the trail. I wonder if the NCC was giving them a fee for the hard work. Probably not but they were doing a fine job so we let them go ahead of us :). Once at Healy we enjoyed lunch in the dwindling sunshine. After lunch, I noticed a live animal trap had been placed behind the shelter. Whoever had dropped it had clearly forgotten it as the trap had been sprung and the victim had expired inside the trap. In fact the poor thing had been mostly devoured by other creatures that had managed to pull it bit by bit through the bars of the cage… talk about picking at your food. Not a good way to go. On to Herridge (Dave’s first visit) where we inspected the bird feeder which was a busy spot as always. By this time the clouds had rolled over and the temperature was dropping so we didn’t stay long and were soon on our way down the trail for home. Scattered along the ski trail on Pine road a few patches had a lot of snow - over a foot deep in spots. Not too good for skiing though as there were long stretches with no snow at all followed by 2 or 300 meters of good skiing. Clearly we’d made the right choice by walking today. Firetower or no this was a good start to the hiking season.

Even the snakes would give a thumbs up for spring(if they could)...