First Day Hike 2017: Snowshoeing the Oberholtzer Trail at Voyageurs National Park

Today we kept our tradition of participating in a hike on the first day of the new year. This year was a little bit different though. There aren't any organized first day hikes in our area so we headed over to the Rainy Lake Visitor Center area to do a snowshoe on the Oberholtzer Trail. It was Sierra's first time on snowshoes and she was very excited.

We parked in the lot near the boat ramp and strapped on our snowshoes.

Sierra tested them out immediately by walking in the deep snow off to the side of the parking lot.

We took a shortcut through snow-covered low shrubs

and joined the official trail.

Sierra was pretty good on her snowshoes, although she fell many times.

Often, her fall was on purpose; an excuse to play around in the snow.

We passed the snow covered expanse of cattails on Black Bay,

made our way through a forest of snow covered trees,

and continued on through a boulder passageway

to the overlook with the bench.

We relaxed at the bench for a bit,

huddled together for snowshoe photo

and then turned around for the walk back to the car.

Because we didn't move very fast with Sierra, I was getting quite cold by the time we were back at the car. Altogether, it was a nice way to start 2017 and a good first snowshoe for Sierra.