The January Thaw came early in the first week of January which hobbled the Christmas accumulation a bit, but we’ve recovered nicely since then. Enough to make getting out a really enjoyable experience.

By no means are we setting the snow shoeing world on fire, but we’ve had a decent go so far starting on New Years Eve just before the thaw, out by Indian Pond. I’ve finally gotten around to posting a few shots of that. Tried to experiment with the flash a little bit.

Then we did an evening walk and dinner hosted by VINS last Friday.

And Saturday we were out again, across the river in Fairlee. There’s a large bluff on the Vermont side which I assume was carved out by the river at some point a long time ago. I always stare up at it when I cross the bridge, wondering what it would be like to stand at the top and look back, and recently learned that there’s a way up.

We parked at the lake and walked up the ridge to ‘a’, then backtracked down to the golf course and out onto the lake where we ran into some ice fishermen at ‘b’. We were out for about 2 hours with the temps in the low teens but the day was beautiful, with the sun shining brightly and no wind.

After stuffing it in my camera bag nearly a month ago, this was my first outing with the the new lens and I’m thrilled with it. I had been concerned that 200mm wasn’t going to give me enough reach but I have to say it’s quite narrow. As we were standing atop the bluff I found myself needing to step back quite a bit to get Amy and a sliver of landscape in the frame even at 70mm, but this isn’t so much a complaint as it is confirmation that there are certain tools for certain jobs. I decided which lens to bring with me and tried to take the pictures that lens takes.

The hope with my new bag is that I won’t need to make that decision often, but on Saturday the only bag I was interested in carrying was the one filled with things that would keep us alive in the woods for two hours at 10˚. I kept the camera strapped around my neck the whole time, exposed to the bitter cold and snow. Normally I shy away from subjecting the equipment to that kind of abuse – I would never stop crying if it broke – but I’ve seen it used by others in worse conditions. And as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve purchased this stuff so I might as well get what I paid for. So I’m happy to say that both the camera and the lens shook the cold off easily. The lens takes incredibly sharp photos. Couldn’t be happier, although I will still probably pick up the 1.4x Extender in the coming months. It offers too much to pass up.

Here’s a shot of the river winding south from that bluff. The rest can be seen here.