Snow biking with Shyla and our elk herd

Our old friend, the wind, has returned, and Shyla's ears flapped in the "strong breeze" this morning.

I said recently that she didn't seem afraid of the wind. Well, I need to revise that. Something had her uneasy this morning at sunrise, and it might have been the wind. Here's another ear position. Based on her eyes, I didn't think that she looked thrilled with the cold wind.

We took a shorter than usual hike because it was a big day. It was the day that Shyla went snowbiking with me for the very first time. We went only a half mile, to test out her leg. To be honest, I don't think that snowbiking is any more stressful on her body than zooming in circles around me as I hike. Snowbiking is slow because it's so hard to propel huge tires through snow... and Shyla tends to follow the bike closely.

It was a great first ride, and her gait still looked perfect after it (no limp). We'll stick with very short rides for a while, as she continues to rebuild the strength in that bone. On the vet front, she does have one more x-ray ahead of her, to make sure that the unusual "lesion" that we've been following is continuing to resolve, like a fracture rather than something more insidious like an infection or cancer. I feel very confident that the x-ray will be fine because I can feel that the lump on her bone has shrunk to be a fraction of its original size.

This is my fifth winter of snowbiking on my Fatback snow bike with very wide tires (4").

Most places near us, the snow cover is much thicker than atop Hug Hill (photo above), where snow gets melted and blown away very fast. However, this is, by a huge measure, the best year for snowbiking so far. We had a couple of substantial storms before Christmas, and then we had beautiful weather over the holidays. Tons of people went out walking on the trails, packing them down beautifully for snow biking.

Today was the first day that I ventured very far on my bike since my pneumonia, and I found endless trails to ride. That is a very different situation from most years, when the majority of trails are blocked by huge snow drifts and are truly impassable in January.

I get to see our elk almost every day when I ride my snowbike but they're usually pretty far away from me. One of you asked about how the elk deal with fences. Fences seem to cause them some consternation. In the photo below, the majority of the herd was on the side of the fence closer to me. A few lagging elk were pacing along the fence line searching for a good place to cross it and regain the safety of the herd.

Here's the leading part of the herd, not looking back at the elk having trouble with the fence.

In the center of the photo below in the midst of the lagging elk, you can see that one of the bigger laggards was taking the leap over the barbed wire. As I watch them make these leaps, I imagine that the elk sustain quite a few barbed wire injuries while trying to get across fences. The fences seem toughest for the calves, who are so much smaller than the adults.

Today, the herd was even closer to my house. I used a very fancy lens and extender that a generous friend loaned me to take photos from more than a hundred yards away.

Some of the herd was resting, lounging in the snowy meadow. Magpies were fluttering around them, landing on their backs. This photo was from very very far away (and isn't in perfect focus) but you can see a magpie sitting on an elk's back. The elk didn't mind. It's a symbiotic relationship. The magpies eat the parasitic bugs that live in elk fur, which is an advantage to the birds and the elk!

It is so fun to be able to watch the elk throughout the winter! And, I am thrilled that, after months of patience, Shyla and I had our first snow bike ride together today!