The Winter has continued along the path that it has taken since December. There are cold days and then warm. The cold can be bitter cold with a piercing wind but two days later it is back to temperatures in the 30’s or low 40’s. Then, a warm front comes through and it goes to the 50’s and then the process repeats. Snow comes with some of the storms but the most recent one was just rain, about 1.5 inches of it. Things are now “quite icy” as it has been below freezing at night although it is supposed to warm up today. Over all, this has been a mild winter and heating costs have been lower than normal and woodsheds have more wood in them than is normal for this time of year.
Below is what a shoreline looked like after a recent 3 or 4 inch snowstorm. It looks like winter and, in fact, it was still snowing when the picture was taken.
The next day, some more snow had fallen and has covered the surface with a smooth, white coat. It was a beautiful day to be at the lake.
But the sun, warm temperatures and rain took a toll on that wonderful white snow cover. The shore was still snowy but there was enough rain that fell to make much of the snow on the lake turn to slush and then re-freeze.
In places, the tracks of snow mobiles playing games was frozen into interesting piles. One nice thing is that, as long as the snow mobiles don’t go through the ice (which would be hard to do now except in the usual places and near bubblers that keep docks free of ice), they don’t cause much harm, if any, to the lake.
With a telephoto lens, Mt. Chocorua looked almost ghostly in the distance. This mountain can be seen from the SE part of Lake Wentworth.
Finally, you can learn a new term, “nip-twigging”. The picture below is around one of the camps on the lake sure and there dozens of small hemlock “twigs” on the ground. Earlier in the season, twigs were found around the bottom of another nearby hemlock tree. And the cause, porcupine chewing. They climb the hemlock to get some food and “nip” off twigs in the process. Apparently, there are times when they fall out of the hemlock trees and skewer themselves on their quills but apparently this porcupine has not done that. You can see its track going from under another camp to the hemlock tree now being used for food. If you come back to your camp after the winter and see lots of hemlock twigs, you will know what happened.
