Dealing With Icy Trails

The combination of snow, then warm weather and rain, followed by cold temperatures has left the trails on Peebles Island like sheets of ice. Yesterday morning, I headed out to check on the eagle nest and fell only one hundred feet from the parking lot. Both camera bodies hit the ground, knocking off the lens hoods and caps. I decided not to try to go further and headed home to check out the gear.

Thankfully, all the gear is fine. This morning, in the same conditions (temperatures in the low 20s), I made some smarter decisions. I carried the cameras in a backpack so I didn't need to worry about them as I walked and I used a pair of cross country ski poles. It felt much safer and I did get over to the nest viewing site.

I did see one of the eagles on a tree on the other side of the Island that the nest is on but no activity on the nest. We're about two weeks from when they were sitting on eggs last year.

Here are some shots of the trail conditions out by the nest viewing location from the EOS M and kit lens.

Here are two shots of the nest from the EOS M3 and EF-S 55-250mm lens cropped to 100%.  The first is the JPG file out of the camera. The second, cropped slightly differently, is converted from the RAW file in Photoshop Elements 6.

As I was walking back to the parking lot, one of the employees commented on the ski poles. I explained that I had fallen yesterday. He said, "with cameras?" I said yup that was me. Someone had apparently seen it from inside.