Salmon Hole looks very different than the last time I saw it. And by that I mean it’s covered in snow, and actually daytime so I can see my surroundings. When I visited this time, the stairs were so icy and covered in snow, that my friends and I had to slide down on out butts instead of walking down because of how steep it was. The branches were all bare of leaves and covered in a beautiful blanket of snow, as was the ground. Even the shallower part of the Winooski had a frozen layer on top. This is a pretty drastic change, seeing as last time I visited I didn’t even wear a jacket.
Another notable difference was the absence of mammals and birds. Normally when I visit, there are birds and other rodents moving around the wooded area. This time I only saw tracks that they were there. Most of the tracks that I found were dog tracks, which makes sense as a lot of people in the area tend to hike Salmon Hole. However, there were other tracks that I found that might be fox tracks. They’re pretty deep, but not packed down which makes sense as foxes aren’t really heavy creatures. The tracks found also shows a diagonal walked which, again, leads to a fox. The fox tracks are shown below. The pictures I took of the dog tracks were kind of hard to see as there were footprints surrounding them so those will not be included.
