Since the beautiful winter weather keeps, I thought it was time for a serious walk. So I took the shortest way to the camping area by the lake and crossed the lake and a narrow strip of forest to get to the big bog. On my way I noticed that they had just laid new ski tracks round the lake and also behind it, all the way to the bog. I wonder how I can find out exactly where this route reaches… With a little luck, we’ll have skiing weather next weekend so I can do a little tour.When I got to the bog, the going got seriously difficult. It was mostly knee deep and sometimes even more, and with this soft new snow it wouldn’t have helped with skis or snowshoes either. But I persisted and waded around looking for photo ops. A bit disappointing that I didn’t find many… but all in all, wading around in snow is fun, as well. Hard work, but fun. When I came back, I took a shortcut. Or what I assumed would be a shortcut. I followed an old snowmobile trail so I didn’t sink quite as much in the snow as I would otherwise, until I came to a ditch. Packed snow, I thought, and stepped in. And sank. I tried to pull out my foot but it was stuck. In muddy water. So I pulled harder and the ditch released its grip with a big slurpy sound. Once I was standing up again, I surveyed the damage. The water had gone in the boot from top but it wasn’t too bad as I had gotten out fairly quickly anyway. My toes were still dry and comfy but the mud-ice-water mixture formed a big crust around the boot and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t get rid of all of it. So my left foot felt a bit heavier than my right when I walked on… every once in a while I had to stop to brush off the snow that kept sticking to the wet boot. I was careful to jump over the other ditches I came across!

At sunset I took my skis and headed to my ”three pines” sunset spot. But, it figures that if we get sunshine all day, it will cloudy up from the west just before sunset so I froze my butt and camera batteries off while waiting for some light to happen. Bollocks to that.

Well, at least I got to use the L-bracket. Since I was shooting vertical, I got the real benefit of the bracket straight away – I don’t have to flip the head, so the tripod setup is much more stable and balanced than it would otherwise be. I do have a concern with the bracket though, and it’s that the remote control (TC-80N3) is a very tight fit. It feels like it doesn’t quite snap in place like it used to do because the rim of the bracket extends so far out from the camera body. Since these brackets are custom made for the camera model, I wonder why they couldn’t just simply cut a small notch in the metal for the remote cord. The good news is that the remote works anyway. I’m tempted to cut a piece out of the thick rubber at the root of the cord so it fits with the bracket but if it works as it is… I guess I should leave it well alone. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broken, eh?