I love the mountains, but not in the winter. I am not a snow person–I have a hard enough time staying warm without any snow. My son and daughter-in-law live in the mountains and spend a lot of time enjoying the outdoors in all seasons. We joined them for snowshoeing the other day.

It was a beautiful day. I realized that, because I avoid the mountains in the winter, I never see this beauty in real life. All the views looked like calendar photos.This is Union Valley Reservoir in the El Dorado National Forest. No one else had been there since the last snowfall. There were huge expanses of untouched snow. Gorgeous.The snow had a sparkly crystalline surface which even Matt and Kaleena, who spend a lot of time here, said was unusual.    We had one experience which, fortunately, turned out OK, but could have been tragic.  Sam, one of M & K’s dogs, bounding ahead of us, fell through the ice into a creek. When he couldn’t get back on the surface he panicked and Matt had to rescue him. (You can see the photos in Rusty’s blog.)  Fortunately, among all of us we had spare socks and pants.  Also, fortunately, Sam wasn’t in the lake, but in a stream (although it was still waist high water).    This was my first experience with snowshoes and it was Rusty’s first experience walking through the snow. He finally figured out that the snow was fluffy enough that he could sort of plow through and didn’t have to lift his feet all the way out of it. He was also obsessed by the sparkles in the snow. Look back at the other photos of him and you’ll see that he is just staring at the snow. (That’s a Border Collie thing–not staring at the snow, but obsessing over sparkles or shadows.)  I took a lot of photos with my new lens but there is a lot to learn about photographing snow.  I have a hard time seeing the meter through the lens when I’m wearing sunglasses, and without the glasses I can’t make out what I am sort of seeing. So there was a lot of trial and error. Some were over-exposed, but there are enough decent photos for me to enjoy.