I drove out to Francis Edward Williams trailhead and set off at about 10 am. I was trying to focus on capturing images with the intention of writing a non-fiction piece (as opposed to a simple hiking description) because I had just finished up the Non-Fiction course on Domestika. That piece hasn’t been written yet, but I’m liking some of the images I captured - because of the potential to use in the piece and just because.
I got to what I realized later was an unnamed lake north of Ministik Lake on the map. It would have been part of Ministik Lake in the past, but with the area drying up over the years it’s a completely separate thing now.
I gingerly started off across that flat, white expanse after finding come cool “snow dunes” near the shoreline. My goal was to walk across to Coyote Camp. I the location marked on my GPS and was able to walk almost exactly to the entrance from the lake side. I’ve seen the little inlet from the shoreline of Coyote Camp before, but of course never walked to the camp from the water.
Then there were only two “meadows” to walk through before I got close to the little portal alleway that is the transition to the trails beyond. Normally, I call it the “Five Meadows Hike” - today, because of the ice walk, it was only two. It was crazy how much faster it was getting there by being able to walk directly across the ice.
The hike had a real feeling of exploration and novelty at covering new ground, and a feeling of risk as I started out over the lake ice for the first time. During that time of year there is actually no risk and a few weeks later a group of us even did an ice walk with some standing water on the ice. Now that was a feeling of risk, at first, at least. As long as you continue to not fall through the ice, you get used to it.
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