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Monday, March 20, 2017

Robert Ingalls Preserve(Stephentown)

Welcome to Spring!  Spring began at 6:29am this morning and as exciting as that sounds, the foot+ of snow on the ground and temperatures in the teens overnights certainly have it feeling very much like winter still.  Bright sun boosted the thermometer into the 40's today, continuing our slow and steady snow melt and making for pleasant snowshoe conditions.  With only about an hour of daylight left, I opted to do a very local walk at the Robert Ingalls Preserve in the deep woods of Stephentown.  Although the parking lot hasn't been plowed, the snow has receded just enough to allow me to park the car off on the shoulder of the road.  The bright sun and a single pair of snowshoe tracks greeted my first steps into the woods.
Dropping down to Black Brook and bridge crossing.
Most of the brook is still snow and ice covered in the shade of the dark woods.
 A couple of small spots with open water along the brook.
 I crossed the bridge and then took the brook trail, which is the same spot I lost the other snowshoe tracks.  From this point on, I was breaking trail through several inches to a foot of slushy snow.
The evening sun setting on my snowshoe tracks.
 After leaving the Brook Trail, I did the Rock Polypody Fern Trail, looping back to the Ridge Trail and then the Main Trail for a total of about 1.5 miles RT.   

3 comments:

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  2. Looks like you had a fine snowshoe walk through the Robert Ingalls Preserve. Thanks for the lovely photos. I walked there a couple of years ago with some very knowledgeable naturalists, who explained the fascinating geology of this part of the state. Here's a link to my blogpost about that trip. I thought you might enjoy it. http://saratogawoodswaters.blogspot.com/2014/11/new-territories-ancient-rocks.html

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    1. Thank you for the link! Very interesting and informative! :-)

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