Snowshoeing in Oatka Creek Park

Brian, Sarah and Amy take a break.

With no sign of winter letting up and temperatures skyrocketing into the teens we joined some friends for a snowshoeing expedition in Oatka Creek Park.  Brian and Cindy Westrich gracefully volunteered to give Amy and me along with Rich and Sarah a guided tour of the park that is less than a mile from their home.  When we planned the outing earlier in the week the forecast was calling for temperatures in the high 20's to almost 30.

Interesting textures and shades of grey on the creek.

Although we barely made it to the mid-teens the exercise and the fact that we were coming off several days of below zero temperatures everyone was plenty warm enough. This park is not as popular as many of the larger county parks so we pretty much had the entire park to ourselves.

Brian gave us a wonderful tour of the park.  We learned about some of the names given to the trails by the local cross-country team that the Westrich boys competed for.  We snowshoed along the creek and he pointed out old abandoned mines and the trails the mining cars took.

Mallards on the creek.

They used to mine gypsum in the area to provide fertilizer to the local farms.  Most of the mines are closed off and the area is spotted with sink holes due to collapsed mines.  The major landmark of the park is Oatka Creek itself and the water was flowing freely as even weeks of below freezing temperatures have been unable to freeze it over.  There was fairly large flock of ducks using the creek as we hiked the shores.

One of many feathers left behind after something ate something.

The park houses an abundance of wildlife as evidenced by the many tracks we came across.  We also believe there are one or more large birds of prey frequenting the park.  We saw evidence of a small bird (maybe a female cardinal) having met its demise as well as some gruesome remains of what we think was once a squirrel (I decided to leave that picture out of the posting).

Snow covered rocks leading into the creek.

After finishing the hike around the park, we followed Brian and Cindy to their home for some skyline chili, wine and continued socializing.  We had a great time and were glad to get out and enjoy the foul weather a bit instead of staying inside and complaining about the cold and the snow.