January 28, 2020

New year new salmon hole! This is the first time I have been to the site this semester and it has completely changed since the last visit. A few inches of compacted snow covered the rocks, logs, and path. The trail was icy and rugged from the frozen imprints of hiking boots from the warm up earlier this week. There was barely any visible green vegetation and most of the loose leaf material and woody debris was covered with snow. Some areas of the waterfront area stayed warm or wet enough to prevent snow build up which left exposed rocks and sand. The ice was not clear and appeared to be stressed after repeated freezing and refreezing. The hole froze across the entire cove but was open at the other end where the water was running faster.

I was able to see a lot of evidence of animal activity on the walk in. There was a game trail that was packed down and stained with mud that weaved through the trees and crossed the human pathway.

I saw a grey squirrel on the way out but that was the only live animal I had seen. There were plenty of diagonal tracks in the snow from whitetail-deer, fox, and domestic dogs. The ice was frozen and I could make out a faint track on the frozen top layer of snow that appeared to be from a smaller mammal, probably a fox. There were signs of deer in the vegetation as well, I could make out markings from deer stripping the bark off of younger trees and eating the buds on the edge of some branches.