Snowshoeing 1:21:42 [3]
Across the street, In The Dark (Charlie's Apex headlamp).
Another "J-J gets lost in the woods at night" adventure. Planned to do the Mystery Blazes loop, and it all started out fine. But when I actually got to the north end of the Mystery Blazes, I couldn't follow them at all. Gave up after a little ways and just headed off in the right general direction, since I know the topography well enough. Got up to the vernal pool in the saddle, and found one blaze, but couldn't follow them. So I just headed downhill and decided to wing it. Drifted pretty far to the right, through very nice woods, and after a while it was clear that I was not on track. At one point I spotted a line of tack blazes, but they were pointing in the opposite direction from the way I was going, so I had to keep turning around to see if I had gone the right way. Gave up on that, crossed a marsh, and popped out on a trail... the Horse trail! I certainly had drifted to the right. Back out on the trail to pick up the southern half of the blazes, which I was able to follow much more easily, but then I decided to try going east on the Incognito road. That was much longer than I expected, and probably did get pretty close to the house at 9 Valley Rd., but I was able to take a side trail down to the brook instead of going through their yard.
About 50/50 snowmobile trails and unbroken snow. The timing on this worked out nicely. I went out pretty late (after 10 PM), and the snow had hardened up enough that I was able to mostly stay on top with my regular snowshoes. Probably would have been softer earlier, and if I had gone with O-shoes, the packed stuff probably would have been okay, but the unbroken stuff would have been total nasty postholing.
Something in either the snowshoe bindings or the snow surface kept making funny squeaking, creaking noises that sounded like there was either an animal or a person talking right next to me in the dark. Creepy.