Hiking Up Beebe Hill On A January Day

I was hiking with my four youngest dogs in the Beebe Hill State Forest in Columbia County, New York. We found the actual hiking trail to have too much snow for walking, but the service road had been packed down enough for us to do some hiking. We began our trek by walking uphill into the quiet woodland. There were no sounds other than those of our own making:

A very brief (18 second) look at the dogs running happily along the trail:




Seamus walked on ahead, at first with great enthusiasm. But he soon began to tire. The three youngsters, seen below, were brimming with energy and playfulness. They explored everything between bouts of wrestling and running:

I paused just a few minutes into the hike and turned my camera back toward where we'd begun. It was a silent, snowy, beautiful scene:

But the trail turned steeper and we kept slogging our way uphill:

Seamus, heavyweight that he is, soon became tired and decided he needed to take a break. He sort of collapsed in the snow. Daphne and Fergus encouraged him to rise up and keep hiking which he did after a brief rest:

Daphne smelled something "wonderful" and began digging in the snow. Clover ran over to enjoy it also. I didn't intervene until Daphne began rolling in it, at which point I figured she'd found something either dead or fecal. Dogs do love that which is putrid:

And upwards we climbed, higher and higher on Beebe Hill and farther into the forest:

We'd begun the day in Albany where it was sunny and about 30 degrees. But it was snowier, colder and windier here:

And another look back toward where we'd begun. That small mountain in the background is part of the Taconic Range:

And beneath a fallen birch tree we progressed ever upward. I'll post more tomorrow: