Cruising Adventures of the Red Witch

February 2nd (Tuesday)   Today was our last day off of work before we start back onto our next 14-day shift of ten-hour days.   I thought I would just write a quick note because I wanted to send along some pictures from our fun in the snow.       We got snow three times over our two weeks off, and we had an amazing two weeks of lovely weather.   Between the snowy days we had sunny days and very little rain.   It was the nicest two-week stretch of weather that we had had in a long time. We went for two beautiful walks up along Martin River.   It was an area that we had never explored before and it was particularly beautiful in the snow.       We followed the trail that was cleared up to about three kilometers into the valley.      At first the trail came through the forest and out into a lovely marshy area where the river meandered its way through an open grassy area.       We saw several pairs of du...

January 24 th (Sunday)   On Sunday we got snow!!   There had been a snowfall warning issued, and although many areas with the warning did not get snow, we got lucky and got it.   The snow started at around 18:00 on Saturday and it kept on snowing.    Each time we were up through the night we would look out and have a smile on our faces when we saw that it was still snowing.    It stopped at around 03:00, and we had gotten about 8 inches.   We were out early in the morning to play.   We built two snowmen, and Jason shovelled snow and cleared the snow bank left by the snowplough from around our truck and those of our neighbours.   We also had a brush on a pole that we used to clear the snow off of our truck and also from our neighbours' trucks.     We went to the boat to clear the snow from our enclosure, and enjoyed the quiet stillness of everything in its blanket of white.   Walking down to the boat in the snow broug...

January 22 nd (Friday) On Friday we were all packed and ready for our day hike, it was a beautiful clear day.   We started hiking at around 08:45, when it was light enough in the forest to see.   We headed up into the forest behind some of the upper-level houses across the river in Martin River, and started to make our way up Goat Mountain.   We had planned our route up the mountain by looking at it from a distance and observing the lines and patches of deciduous trees that most likely marked an old slide area or gully.     We had also looked at topographical maps and we could see the cliffs at the top, but it looked like there would be a route around them.   We also talked to Doug, one of the residents here who had been up Goat Mountain.   He did not make it all of the way to the top, but he took a similar route to the one that we planned on taking, and he had made it up above the tree line.   He told us that that was the route of the old teleph...

January 19 th (Tuesday) The shift that we had just started was the shift that would take us until after Christmas.   We decided to do “our Christmas” after our shift, so we ended up doing it on December 31 st , and it was a lovely way to spend New Year’s Eve.    January, and the new year, started with strong winds and heavy rain.   On the January 1st we got 55.8mm of rain, and on the second we got 55.2mm.   It was a wet start to the month, and with storms back-to-back, only occasionally broken up by the occasional gale, we had rain every day in January until the 20th.   By the 20 th we had gotten 379mm of rain.   We also had a lot of hail in January, and one time that it hailed, but only for about 30 seconds, it hailed so hard that everything turned instantly white in a thick layer of ice pellets.     Note that the background is white from the hail on the ground. It has been quite an unusual month with so many thun...