A Late Winter Hike at Cape Spear!

I’ve been on mid-term break all week and itching to get out for a little hike, but the weather has been uncooperative: I’m not one for extreme cold weather, and with wind chills dipping into the -30C range, I was waiting it out. Friday started promising, warming but windy, and knowing that I’d only be out for a couple of hours, I waited for the later part of the afternoon, when the temperature got up to -4C. It was still pretty windy, but once I got into the shelter of the woods at the start of the Cape Spear Path, it was a wonderful snowshoe trip! My goal was Staffordside, or at least the branch that leads to the valley, but I left it too late, and given my lack of exercise this winter, it was probably for the best… snowshoeing is hard work at times! I turned around as the path climbs the ridge over Sharks Point at about the 4 km point (the parking lot where I started is about at the 1.1 kilometer point). 5 or 6 km in the bright sunshine through the snowy woods!

I saw a few interesting birds of prey including a snowy owl who I scared up from some rocks just past the lighthouse. I fumbled with the zoom lens with mittened hands and didn’t get it on in time to get a good shot of him. Afraid that’d happen again, I hiked out to my destination with the zoom attached and switched to the more landscape-friendly 18-55mm for the return trip. A pair of eagles flew overhead as I descended the hill to the parking lot: even without the zoom lens, they came close enough for me to get a couple of nice shots!

Pics below and in the Cape Spear Path gallery!

A not insignificant amount of traffic had made its way to the lighthouse.

Footsteps leading to the lighthouse.

The best shot I got of the poor snowy owl I frightened, flying over the Cape Spear Path trailhead. I didn’t see him until I was on top of him.

A look back toward Cape Spear from the ridge above Sharks Point. I tried to capture the wind which was a deciding factor in my turning around here instead of at Staffordside.