So much snow and ice pellets fell on Tuesday night that the bellowing wind mounded everywhere, by the following morning everything was deep in gathered-and-dispersed-and-mounded ice pellets, leaving area roads  deeply furrowed with tire tracks of vehicles shoving their way through, and streets like ours were not cleared by municipal ploughs until the evening hours.

We plodded up the street, geared for a hike in the ravine, wondering what kind of condition the trails would be in, and guessing not quite wonderful. We carried our two puppies to spare their pads coming in contact with salt pools while trekking up the street to the ravine entrance, trying vainly to make our way along tire tracks. The entrance itself now presents a bit of a challenge, since over the course of the winter snow build-up from regular passes by the ploughs have created a snow-berm, a bit of a barrier that we must first clamber over to access the entrance leading to the ravine.

But the biggest hurdle is balancing ourselves, in fact. Because of the depth of the ice pellets and their slippery-sliding effect over the ice-and-snow-packed trails, one tends to lurch from left to right striding along. Not precisely striding, since the forward motion is, by necessity, fraught with the possibility of falling, so lurching is the more correct descriptive here.

Not so for our little dogs; the icy crust that formed on the snowpack now in many places takes their inconsiderable weight, so they had the option of running along on that heightened snowpack, while we wobbled on the trails, since the snowpack couldn't take our weight; we'd sink up to our knees with a misstep.

But it was a lovely day. The wind was nowhere near as blasting as the previous day, and nor was the temperature so deeply frozen. And the sun was full out in a clear, blue sky. So we wobbled along and Jackie and Jillie enjoyed themselves, particularly when we came across others doing the very same thing. We came across other trail walkers stopping to criticize the conditions, but lauding the beauty of the scenery. Our two little ruffians accosted other dogs and had a bit of a run-about.

My camera, however, didn't enjoy the atmosphere and the prevailing conditions and stubbornly balked. I can commiserate.