A Real Winter's Day

Today the sun shone brightly, there was no wind, and it was a crisp -10°C. We decided it was a day to play, rather than work, or at least to play first and then (maybe) work later.
This picture is taken from the end of one of our two local lakes. We park the car here when we go skiing on the lake. The road here goes along the lake to two houses where people live all the year around, and to a number of summer cottages. Fortunately one of the houses is owned by a building contractor with access to serious snow clearing machines.
The ski-trip was a little unusual. So far there's around 1,5 metres of snow fallen on top of the ice and all that snow is pressing the ice down, and that in turn is forcing water up over the ice.  That water mostly sits under the snow, until the snow gets pressed down by a passing snow mobile, elk, or skier.  I'm not sure what it does to an elk or a snow mobile but it freezes onto the base of a ski and your glide is seriously reduced by a large lump of ice under your ski!  So our trip became a sort of calculated guessing game as to where the water was and we zigged and zagged across the snow.  The ice under the soggy snow is still strong so there's no risk of falling through but stopping to scrape the ice of a ski is no fun. It was a short trip, enjoyable because of the weather, but I think we'll look for a land-based trip next time we're out. (HarlingDarling has a picture of the elk we saw on the ice.)
Once home I spent about an hour digging out the rubbish bins (ours and the neighbours) and making them accessible, to both us and to the bin men.  Then onto the roof of Betty's for the second time this year to clear away the latest fall. I admit I was pretty tired after a couple of hours or so up there. I thought I'd get sweaty as I worked but the temperature had dropped to -17°C by the time I finished so that wasn't a problem.  The day finished with a long hot soak in the bath, and a bit of TV while sitting in front of a log fire.
 All-in-all a very satisfying day!
(Backblip - today's blip will arrive very shortly.)