Snake Mountain

We were lucky enough this weekend to have great weather. It was so nice out we were able to fulfill our promise to the kids from the Mount Philo hike, which was hiking Snake Mountain next, now rather than wait till spring. True most trees are pretty bare, but it was still very beautiful. And the fact that most of the leaves are down had an unforeseen benefit: there were a lot of beech trees along this hike. Beech trees, while deciduous, do not lose their leaves as easily as other trees. You can see brown beech leaves still clinging to the branches even in the middle of winter. So the children became quick to recognize the smooth grey bark and papery-thin leaves of the American beech.

They both hugged a few beeches along the way

We talked about two different types of ferns we saw along the trail, Christmas fern and wood fern. Christmas fern particularly interested the little lady, its waxy J shaped leaflets look a little like Christmas stockings, giving us an easy reminder of its name. This fern is actually an evergreen.

She makes an identification

As we kept going up we talked of many things, such as how the types of trees were changing along the way. We jumped over (and, in the case of the young gentleman, in) many muddy patches. We also looked at tons of cool mushrooms. 

We're still collecting pine cones, and found some on an Eastern hemlock. We hadn't collected any hemlock cones for our Four Winds lesson on our searches thusfar!

My friend is taller than me, she had better luck reaching them

The tactics I have been discussing, those I picked up at camp, came in very handy here, as after the first few minutes on the trail we were already getting requests for breaks every few feet. We used tasks, like collecting cones, as well as games and songs. At one point we pretended we were pulling ourselves up the mountain with invisible ropes attached to cool looking trees. The young gentleman at this point threw me a look like "...really?" and walked right by me. The little lady loved it though. Guess he's just no fan of mime.

We also found this really cool log that looked like a crocodile. It may or may not have eaten all of us in turn...

...ham

And after all we made it to the top in time for lunch. The view was spectacular!