I spent three glorious hours this morning on the Amisk Wuche trail at Elk Island Park.  Huge, fluffy snowflakes were falling lazily to the ground.  There was no wind.  The forest was silent.  It was so quiet that the only sound I could hear were the flakes as they landed on my nylon jacket.

I couldn't decide whether to take snowshoes or skis.  It turned out that I didn't take either.  My hiking cleats did the job today.  

There were two inches of fresh, fluffy snow on top of the packed trail.  It's beginning to look like a winter wonderland.  Each little crook in the branches was filled with snow.  The broken tree stumps wore white caps.

As I made my way along the trail, I could hear the woodpeckers and blue jays calling out.  The squirrels were busy digging out their food from under the snow.  

The decaying, mossy logs that I photographed last week are covered with a thick layer of snow.  The rose hips were wearing snowflake caps.  Today, they provided the only glimpse of color in a forest of brown and white.

On the drive home, the bison were foraging for grass along the roadside.  They looked up as I passed by and I noticed that they had some very snowy 'beards'.  A coyote was laying on the snow on top of a beaver lodge.  I wondered if it was waiting for some unsuspecting beaver to surface through the thin layer of ice.

Once I got home, I had some shoveling to do.  That was rather pointless as the flakes kept falling until mid-afternoon.  The wind picked up for awhile; forcing the leaves from my neighbor's willow tree to let loose.  They danced across the top of the snow, finally coming to rest against a stack of wood.  

The morning outing was fantastic but my outdoor time didn't stop then.  I got to dust off the x-country skis today.  The first ski outing of the season just happened to be a night ski.  What fun!  We headed to the Strathcona Wilderness Centre where we donned our headlamps before setting out.  The trails were groomed but not track set.  The snow condition was perfect; no too fast and not too sticky.  I'm feeling rather proud of myself; no wipe outs this evening.  That usually happens on the first time out for the season.  It takes me awhile to get coordinated with the skis and poles.

There were a lot of animal tracks on the trails tonight; moose, deer, coyote.  We didn't see any animals while skiing but we did see a deer in the ditch on the way to the park.  

We were not the only ones that took the opportunity for a ski run in the dark.  As we were coming back to where we had parked, another skier was headed out on the trail.  It would have been even better if there would have been a starry night but I'll take any outside time I can get.