Welcome back to the Salmon Hole Riverwalk along the Winooski River!
Although there is less snow on the ground since my last visit, it is certainly colder! Cold enough that large portions of the Winooski River, specifically nearest to the shoreline, are frozen solid. Large ice sheets cover most of what used to be the rocky, sandy bank of my location, making it quite slippery and a bit precarious to walk along. I could no longer discern where the bank ended and the river began so to avoid a rather soggy, freezing walk home, I did not test these boundaries. Due to the snow and ice cover, all signs of vegetation on the riverbank are hidden.
Animal Activity
Despite the frigid temperatures dropping to the single digits, it seems not even cold can keep the nearby wildlife from playing in the snow!
These tracks are a continuation of the path of the first picture in the gallery. The prints are relatively small, and the owners of these prints would also have to be small since they were traveling on and off the ice sheets over the river. At first, I thought these might belong to a pair of small dogs, but I think it might be possible for them to be fox tracks (maybe just wishful thinking because dog prints would make sense). Either way, whoever left these tracks continued past my phenology spot and along the river’s icy banks.
