The Icening

(You can just go to the flickr set, if you want.)

Amy, Rufus & I missed the last two Sunday greyhound hikes up in Wawayanda State Park due to headcolds (hers, then mine). She had to miss today’s too, because of a hair appointment, but I decided that Rufus could sure use the exercise and the grey-companionship, so we headed out around 8:30 a.m. to meet up with the regulars.

The park is about 20 minutes away from our house, a lovely drive up through the wooded roads of West Milford, skirting Greenwood Lake. With all the rain we had at the end of last week, the lakes and streams were all swollen. Nothing was spilling up on the roads, so the drive wasn’t hazardous at all, even with Rufus walking back and forth in the back of the car, checking out the view from the windows (and obscuring it by pressing his wet nose against the glass).

About 4 minutes away from the park, I saw an interesting sight on Upper Greenwood Lake (U-G-L-V, you ain’t got no alibee / You UGLV, you UGLV, yeah, you UGLV!). On the other side of the lake, there’s a ridge of tree-covered hills, and I noticed that the trees from midway up the ridge to the top were covered with ice, while the trees below the midway point were clear. The sun was shining from my left side, and the reflection off the top of the ridge was gorgeous. I thought of stopping to take some pix, but didn’t want to get to the park late.

Then the road began its gradual elevation of another 75-100 feet. And that’s when The Icening began.

Suddenly, every tree was coated in ice, dipping down on the roadway. Broken tree-limbs were strewn everywhere. One minute earlier, I’d been driving through clear roads, with no sign of ice. It was gorgeous and bizarre. Was the temperature difference so critical that a few dozen feet of elevation was the difference between heavy rain and a blanket of ice?

We arrived at the entrance to the park, only to discover that the gate was locked. Another car of our group was waiting to see what the backup plan was going to be. I shrugged, parked the car, took Rufus out for a crap, and started shooting some pix. I found myself transfixed by the noise of the ice cracking. It followed the wind, and

Soon, another 4 cars had arrived, and the organizers decided that we should  drive down the road a hundred or so yards to the Applachian Trail segment that leads into the park. There were some misgivings about walking along trails where ice-covered limbs could fall and clock somebody on the head. There were also concerns about the trail being blocked by fallen trees, but the Hiking Greyhounds crew is nothing if not intrepid! (Also, we have nothing better to do on a Sunday morning.) So we drove over to the trail, parked our cars, put our dogs’ coats on, and started marching through the ice-covered woods.

It was an adventure. Stretches of the trail were iced over, and the dogs were surprised to discover that they had zero traction. Fortunately, we didn’t let them build up any speed, so none of them got hurt. Still, the trail was tough. We had to clear a lot of (small) fallen trees; the dogs were not good at improvising their way around the branches. Many of the damaged trees were young, so the branches weren’t brittle and tended to snap back after we pushed them aside. Still, no one lost an eye.

Soon, we made it down to a pond and then arched up the trail toward the ranger station where we meet on other Sundays. Two of us had gone ahead a bit, pushing through ice-covered branches that hung down like beaded curtains, and arrived at the station as a ranger was walking from the station to his patrol truck.

He was carrying a large black shotgun with a side clip of six shells and said to us, “You know the park’s closed, right?”

He advised us to stay off the trails, because of the possibility of getting walloped by falling branches. We let him know that we were just going to walk on the main road through the park for a bit, and that we’d be careful. “Okay,” he said. “Because I never saw you.”

The rest of the group soon arrived, and we took a pleasant walk down the road and back, meandering through this icy wonderland.

As is our wont, we traded grey-stories, asked advice, and wondered whether “all of them do [x],” or if it’s just ours.

Now go check out the slideshow!