The start of a new year! As you can see from the photos, there was still some snow and ice on the ground but nothing as bad as the few weeks before christmas when a couple of outings by the team had to be cancelled due to the extremely inclement weather. The ice on the ponds was hard enough to bear a man's weight but, rest assured, we did not put that to the test!

We were clearing trees around the perimeter of the ponds to allow more light to reach the water. There were some larger trees actually in the ponds and it was decided that, with the ice there, it might be too dangerous to try and reach these trees. No one wanted to catch hypophermia by putting on the waders!