Snow, and the shoes for the occasion.

Winter time entertainment. It come is all forms, shapes and sizes. I love a good ol’ winter adventure sesh, especially when you find yourself amidst a beautiful balmy winter day. Not to mention in the stunning Northwest Territories region of Canada. It’s not uncommon to find temperatures dipping down to -50c in January/February, yes freeze your limbs right off kinda weather, so -22 was feeling like a Arctic summer dream. I always say, once you get past -30c, its just friggen cold, and the number of it no longer matters.

That is where my fire place comes in handy, oh yes, a nice toasty warm fire. I get that bad boy blazing in the winter, so when you come in from the ridiculously cold conditions, and need to thaw your lungs since the air pretty much froze in there – your house is like a oven sent from heaven! I absolutely adore it. It’s a winter pleasure for sure. Every season has its perks, no matter what, you can always make the most of any situation, and this is an example of me looking on the the bright side of any circumstance.

Being a balmy winter day, my friend Krystina and myself decided that we needed to get out and enjoy some time with mother nature and all her winter glory. Gosh, its damn stunning out here in the winter. Sheer winter blanket beauty coating all the tree’s and landscape. So I kicked off my high heels, covered my bare feet and we dawned the best shoes for the wintry occasion, which happen to be none other then, snowshoes, and we hit the trails at the golf course just outside town, in Hay River, NWT.

Literally I hadn’t gone snowshoeing since high school, which was quite awhile ago now…. I mean at the very least it was 16 years since I had a pair on – which made this little excursion extra exciting. Not that snowshoeing is a great level of difficulty, its just a nice, relaxing form of winter exercise.

Once we got out there and got ourselves together, it was GO time! Initially it was feeling cold ass out there with the wind chill. Even through my 3 pairs of socks my toes were feeling frozen, but we trooped on. Knowing that once we got our blood pumping we would warm up.

It really didn’t take long before frozen toe syndrome was a thing of the past.

The trails at the Hay River Golf Course are very well done. Full of snow shoe and cross country skiing tracks.

It’s apparent that these are pretty popular winter sports from all those tracks. We were in awe of the winter wonderland-esque beauty that we were surrounded by. Totally engulfed in it.

 There wasn’t the best path markings, and we did get lost in and amongst it all for awhile, not in a bad way though, in an adventurous way. As any good traveler knows, “It’s not always the destination that’s important, its the journey along the way”. Oh, and we did at one point find our way, or should I say, ‘Ricardo’s Way‘, so we followed the snowy brick road.

It was so peaceful, calm and serene. At many parts the snow was being blown off the branches giving the effect as if it was snowing. There was another area where there were birds chirping, and squirrels playing. It was majestic to say the least.

In the end we covered just shy of 6 km of distance, and killed a few hours, enjoying every moment, stopping to bask in the endless splendor, playing background music(when my phone was actually working), and held up trees….

  Oh, come on now, who doesn’t like to spend some time holding up a pine tree?!

I say when my phone was working because the darn thing kept freezing and shutting off on me….. So I would stick in my shirt and un-thaw it. It’s not as though I have loads down there, so there was plenty of room for it. Worked like a charm I tell yah. Iphones clearly aren’t built to brave arctic winter conditions, but she did well considering. We even had icecycles on our hair and eyelashes.

  Being awesome kept us warm though. It never fails.

We knew we found base again when we came into view of the club house.

Yes we were melting with enthusiastic joy of our accomplishment of the day.

Another afternoon of rocking my little world, and doing so with the epic company of a life long friend. It was a breath of fresh scenic air, and a bonding event with mother nature herself. So if your feeling like a nice chilled little winter adventure, slap on some snow shoes, grab a good friend, and get your asses out there.

I am already preparing for round two before I leave my Northern homeland, this time busting out cross country skis. Let’s put our best foot forward. Happy winter days!