This is better than watching TV

If you are a connoisseur of wood stoves, you will appreciate what is happening on this video of our new Napoleon Banff 1100 model.
The secondary air feed at the top of the firebox is igniting the gases coming off the wood, creating a blue flame. This gives a more thorough burn, generating more heat and less smoke and particulates from the chimney.
Incredibly, these blue flames are coming from tinder dry balsam, generally considered a low caliber firewood. (See blog a few postings back)
To get the blue flame you must first get a hot fire burning, then check down the draft so it is only open a smidgen.
Half an armload of the balsam keeps the sunroom cozy for about six hours.
We should get even better performance when we burn dry birch next fall.

When the cat's away the wolves will play

Note the yellow eyes

This pair look like they mean business

A great spot for a nap

Before long they will need to shed those shaggy coats

Brenda and I and our dog, Cork, were down in the States visiting for a few weeks and while we were gone the wolves decided to make themselves right at home.
Cork and I took a walk today to pick up our trail camera cards and found three deer kills right on the trail. No doubt there are many more farther into the bush.
I guess with no new scent from me on our trails the two wolves shown above felt pretty relaxed. It's unusual to get a photo of a wolf in the day anytime yet here is one even taking a nap.
We were happy to see that about half of the snow here in Nolalu melted while we were away. I don't think Red Lake was as lucky. It has stayed cold there. In fact it is -16 C there tonight.

Fishing is like a trip to a parallel universe

One of my heroes, Aldo Leopold, once wrote that there were four kinds of people in the world: deer hunters, duck hunters, bird hunters and non-hunters. That pretty much sums it up alright.
I would say you could also divide the population into walleye fishermen, trout fishermen, bass fishermen and musky fishermen. I don't think there are any non-fishermen. Everybody fishes at least a little in their life and lots fish a great deal.

Size is relative, grandsons Raven and Quillan with 'huge' pike in 2006

Fishing transcends the human condition. You can be rich or poor, young or old, male or female, rural or metropolitan and you are all part of the same family of anglers.
Your equipment can be as simple as a stick or cane pole, a piece of line and a hook or as elaborate as an expensive boat, electronic depth finders and graphite fishing rods. There's nothing incongruous with the owner of the latter equipment leaving it parked at the dock while he joins the kids with the cane poles at the fishing hole on the local creek from time to time.
Just about everybody has fond recollections of their first fishing 

Brother-in-law Ron Wink with an 'equally' impressive fish

trip. It could have been with a brother or sister at the creek or with dad or grandpa on the lake. These are absolutely magical moments.
Fishing itself is a stream of consciousness, one out-of-body experience after another.
Casting out a bobber, hook and worm while sitting on the dock with your toes dangling in the water and seeing "faces' in the clouds overhead makes time stand still. It may take a tug on your rod to bring you back to the present.
Even if he has no formal education in physics, every fisherman understands relativity. He gets it when the kids come running to the porch out of breath and tell him that one of them briefly had an enormous rock bass on the line, just massive, and then illustrate by spreading their arms wide. The point is this fish was way, way bigger than the others, not literally the three feet between their little hands.
 Fishermen daydream, nightdream and fantasize about their sport. They can pick up a dry fly or a popper, a spoon or a plug, a spinner or a jig in a sporting goods store in the middle of winter and know with all their being that this is going to work wonders come next summer.
We shouldn't even call it fishing. We should call it a trip to the twilight zone.

Sunroom is finally finished

Our sunroom is finally finished and with the installation of a woodstove can now also become a moonroom, even in winter.

Haiku for What It's All About

Animals are entering bottleneck of winter

Fawn finds the least snow is beneath conifers

Whitetail doe also stays under cover

There is a time in the Boreal Forest when some animals simply are not going to survive the winter. That time begins now.
Two feet of snow have fallen in the past week. That makes nearly three feet on the ground in the Nolalu area. Travel is now difficult for whitetail deer and timber wolves and the snow depth even begins to restrict the activity of the longer-legged moose.

I clear trail through bush...

Deer are staying under the cover of conifer stands, especially balsam fir. Most of the snow in these places is caught up on the branches. There can be as little as a foot on the ground.
Timber wolves are no better able to travel atop the snow than the deer unless a thick crust forms, and that may actually be in store. Temperatures this week are expected to be several degrees above freezing in the day. The melting snow will freeze again at night and that is how a crust is made.
Some animals are adapted to stay atop the thick snow cover. Lynx, snowshoe hares, marten and fisher all have fluffy feet that act as snowshoes. So do ruffed grouse which have feathers

... and within minutes a deer takes advantage of the walkway

between their toes. Red fox can stay aloft simply because they don't weigh much. Ditto for red squirrels.
So it is the deer and moose that are most at risk. They will stick to their heavy cover, even if it means fasting from now until spring. They will tramp down a maze of trails and these will reduce the energy needed to move around.
Wolves, however, are not stupid. They know exactly the places their prey is likely to be and will hunt those spots thoroughly.
The heavy snow cover may send great grey owls southward. They arrived here about a month ago from farther north. Deep snow prevents them from reaching their prey of mice, in these parts, and lemmings farther north.
March is normally the month that brings the most snow so the situation could get even more serious as time goes on.

Snow now is taller than Cork

Snowbanks are up to the mailboxes along our road

He went thata way

Two-by-two tracks identify the marten

You can find these tracks just about anywhere you walk in the Boreal Forest during the winter. They are from the marten, known in the U.S. as the pine marten.
This is the main animal sought by trappers. They are easy to catch, easy to skin and bring a premium price per pelt, usually $80-$160. And, as indicated by their tracks, they are abundant.
The track sign is a little bit misleading, however, as one animal covers a lot of territory.
Marten are a mid-size weasel and kill virtually anything they can catch. Their main prey is the redback vole, a small, short-tail woods mouse. The population of marten explodes during years of heavy production of cones by spruce and pine. That's because the seeds in the cones are the main food of the vole.
Marten are expert climbers and are known to also catch red squirrels. They don't catch enough of them to suit me. I sometimes think that the weight of the squirrels on our acreage is greater than the whitetail deer.
Other than trappers, most people never see marten. They are wary of people and disappear like greased lightning.

Three wolves go for a walk

Time stamp shows spacing of the wolves

They are not nose-to-tail

Each one sniffed this same spot

Three timber wolves walk single file through the bush, only a dozen or so seconds apart, behind our home in Nolalu.
My trail cameras always photograph wolves on our densely wooded property in this fashion -- single file -- as they follow my trails in their quest for whitetail deer. In more open country, such as in a cutover, I have observed a different hunting technique. There they seem to fan out hundreds of yards apart. When an animal finds a hot scent it follows it and when it has flushed the deer it vocalizes to the rest of the pack what is going on. The excited call sounds like ki-yi-yi, sort of like a dog when it is hurt. The others then come running to the sound.

The treasure that others think is trash

Dead balsam with missing bark is what I want

I haul the wood out of the bush by using two snow scoops

Necessity may be the mother of invention but it is also the father of discovery.
For 20 of the 33 years that we have lived in Nolalu we heated our home with firewood that I cut from our property. In our first home, the old squared timber house built 75 years earlier, there was a single woodstove. In our present home, which Brenda and I and our two children, Matt and Josh, built ourselves, we installed an outdoor wood furnace which we used for 13 years before switching to a propane furnace.
We had no sooner bought the property and moved in when the entire region was hit by a spruce budworm outbreak. The spruce budworm is a tiny caterpillar that eats the new growth needles of its host tree. Despite its name, the favourite host of the spruce budworm is not the spruce but the balsam fir. After eating the new soft green needles the budworm makes a cocoon and re-emerges as a moth which lays its eggs in other balsams. The next spring the cycle repeats.
Balsams naturally shed one-fourth of their needles each season; so, after four seasons of having their new needles eaten by budworm, the trees die of starvation since they have nothing left to produce food. The budworm outbreaks cover enormous areas at one time. They are often the size of many European countries. They leave behind forests of grey, dead trees, devoid of needles. And that is the end of the outbreak because there is nothing left for the budworms to eat. But it is not the end of the balsam fir nor even the end of the budworm.

Primo dry, solid, white balsam is surprisingly good wood

Although every growing balsam is killed by the budworm during the outbreak, the mature trees left so many seeds on the ground before they died that new seedlings will sprout for the next 10 years. And since the budworms will also have died with the demise of the mature trees, the seedlings will grow like mad in a pest-free environment for about 40 years. Then the few budworms that are always present, nibbling on spruce as well as balsam, also go mad and the whole thing starts over.
This cycle has been documented in the Boreal Forest in Canada since the very first explorers started recording history and was undoubtedly well-known to First Nations people before that.
The only thing that can interrupt the chain is forest fire that simply burns up the balsam seeds on the ground. Other trees like jackpine, red pine and white pine have cones that open after a fire and also benefit from the fertilizer effect of the ash. So the pines take over.
Balsams are unique in Northwestern Ontario in that they are the only conifer that is truly shade-tolerant. In areas that burned many years earlier and are covered by large spruce or pines the balsams will eventually get a foothold again just from seeds carried on the wind. They become the understory, waiting for a storm or disease to topple the big trees. This is especially true on clay or loamy soils. On sandy soils only the pines with their taproots that can dive down to the deep water table can survive.

Large birch logs serve as a sawhorse

In Nolalu the budworm outbreak hit about 1985. About half of the trees on our 65 acres were balsam and it was obvious that within a few years they would all be dead.
Commonsense told us that since we heated with wood we should use the balsams but there was only one problem: they suck as firewood and are absolutely miserable to cut. Nonetheless I put up many cords of the stuff for the first few years, cutting the trees green while they were still solid and getting covered with sap in the process. The sap is impossible to get out of clothes. I split and dried the wood for a summer and burned the limbs in immense brush piles. My guess is that 50 per cent of the weight of the tree is in the limbs, far greater than other species.
And for my effort I was rewarded with wood that barely generated any heat in the stove.
I learned what everybody else already knew: balsam sucks.
Balsam firewood has such a poor reputation you can't even give it away.
Then we built our new house and installed the outdoor wood furnace about 100 feet away. (Outdoor wood furnaces heat water that is delivered to the house in underground pipes where it is either circulated for heat in room radiators or as in our case, in a large radiator with a massive fan as part of a forced air heating system.)
The furnace and house were surrounded by dead balsam trees. I had to get rid of them anyway so I just cut them down and fed them into the outdoor stove despite their low heat value. It took an awful lot of them but then there were an awful lot. It took me years to clean them up and over that time I gradually became aware that it was taking less and less wood to heat the house. In other words, the wood itself was producing more and more heat as the years went on! This wood was far superior to that which I had cut green and dried years earlier. What was going on?
Eventually I depleted the nearby supply and had to start roaming deep into the bush looking for more. I couldn't afford any machines for a long time and had to carry or pull the wood out by hand. That is when I developed an expert eye for the wood that would generate the most heat for the least effort.
First, the trees must be upright. Fallen-over trees are always wet.
The trees must have been dead for several years. Not only must they be devoid of needles but also largely of branches. The bark must be either split or missing. Without the bark the tree dries rapidly and that appears to be the key. Trees with intact bark are rotten inside.
When cut the wood should be white, not red. This white wood is sound and tinder dry. It produces good heat and burns about as long as jackpine which is one of the favourite Boreal firewoods. In fact, in some areas it is THE favourite although in Nolalu people think paper birch is best.
Balsam must always be kept covered. It absorbs water like a sponge. Even a light rain or melting snow ruins it.
We are installing a wood stove in our new sunroom and I have spent the past week hauling in dry firewood for it. The only trees that fit the bill on our acreage are still balsam which now are few and far between. It took me about three days to put up a cord.
Balsam has a lovely smell when burned. It smells very much like sandalwood incense.
Starting tomorrow I will start cutting green birch which I will split and stack for next winter. Green birch is far heavier than the dead balsam but fortunately I now have a tractor to move it around. I have kept a road clear all winter into a birch stand.

Wood is split and stacked and will later be covered, ready for new stove

Coyote with mange could be in trouble

Coyote has lost hair on its tail due to mange

This coyote with mange is the first animal I have seen this winter with the skin disease. Although there is never a good time for an animal to fall victim to this parasite, I would think it would be especially perilous this winter with the long run of bitter temperatures we have experienced.
Mange is spread animal to animal by the sarcoptic mite.
For some reason Nolalu seems to be a hotspot for mange. I have frequently photographed wolves and coyotes with the condition.
We give our dog, Cork, a drug to make sure he does not contract mange.

Living and dying with timber wolves

Eagles and ravens were picking on the carcass when we found it

The whitetail deer are clustering every day right in our yard and that should have been a clue as to how close the timber wolves were getting.
Today Brenda was on her way into town and phoned back to say there were bald eagles and ravens on a deer carcass about a half-mile down the road. I investigated and found the deer shown above. It must have been killed during daylight since it wasn't frozen. The temperature last night was -30C and didn't get above -12C in the day.
I can't swear it was wolves that killed this deer since it was within 50 feet of the road. But there were no car parts or headlight glass left on the road and there were wolf trails leading away from the carcass. The trails also seemed to indicate that wolves, not dogs, were to blame. I would suspect dogs would have made their trails between the road and the kill site.
Tracks show that wolves routinely come within 100 yards of our house. We wouldn't be worried except for our dog, Cork. We don't let him outside unsupervised.
I am trying something this year to keep the wolves farther away and it seems to be working. When I take my walks with Cork in the bush behind our house I take off my mitten and grasp branches that are growing near the trail, about a foot from the ground or right at wolf nose height. It occurred to me that touching anything when trapping spooks any canine -- wolves, coyotes and foxes. I've also "marked" some trees at the corners of our property. I've done this before but only when I see wolves doing the same thing. My message to the wolves is: this is my territory, not yours, so get lost. It seems to work but it also must be continuously kept up as the wolves recognize when the scent becomes old.
Wolves are a vital part of the Boreal Forest ecology and we don't consider them villains. They are absolutely no threat to people, just their dogs.

The deer are right outside our sunroom's windows

Sunflower seeds are good but so is the protection from wolves that comes from being near to houses

Blowing up the winter night

Balsam that just couldn't take it any more

When the mercury is cringing at the bottom of the thermometer you can sometimes hear shots coming from the bush. It sounds like a .22 rifle. Who would be shooting in the dead of a cold winter's night and with such a small caliber? No sane person, that's for sure.
If you mark the direction carefully and investigate the next day you won't find the snowshoe tracks of a human being but rather just a tree with its trunk split. Trees with lots of moisture, like balsam fir and balsam poplar are the usual victims. The sap freezes deeper and deeper, expanding all the while, until eventually the pressure is too great for the strength of the wood. The tree ruptures in an explosion and in the stillness of a crisp Boreal Forest night the sound carries like a rifle shot.
So there wasn't a Mad Trapper out there after all, just trees driven insane by unrelenting cold.

Spot the bunny

White on white

Picking out a creature that is all white from a landscape that is also all white can be challenging.
It's the snowshoe hare's eyes that give him away to a night vision trail camera.
I'll be darned if I can see one when I'm walking in the bush. There are bunny tracks everywhere but seemingly nothing making them.

When your smart phone can't save you

There are no cell towers out here

When your smart phone can't save you. That would have been a better title for the book reviewed a few posts back.
The truth is when you are really in the "wilderness" or "the bush" as we call it here in Northern Ontario you better have some skills other than how to wiggle your thumbs.
Case in point, you have fallen through the ice. What are you going to do, search YouTube for a way to get out? Or maybe you have been attacked by a bear and are being dragged away. Do you pull out your hip, sleek, digital device and calmly type: What to do if my head is in a bear's mouth?
Even if you did call out to The Cloud, it would fall on deaf ears because there is no Internet service out here, you see. That's why it's called the wilderness. There are no people or any of their inventions like cell towers.  In the Wild, the real Wild, you have to think and fend for yourself.
I've spent most of my life living in or writing about the Boreal Forest and while I don't know everything there are a few tips not often heard that I would like to pass on.

Black bears

The usual advice -- make noise, don't give them anything to eat -- is all that just about anyone needs to avoid bear trouble. But despite taking such precautions it should be noted that there are a few bear attacks every year in Canada, some of them fatal. (Keep in mind there are millions of people entering the bush every year and almost none experiences threatening situations. The odds of meeting a mean bear are incredibly low.) In nearly every case the culprit is a large male bear exhibiting predatory behaviour. My advice is if you ever see a large black bear, leave the area immediately. For instance, if you are canoeing and plan to make camp at a certain location but see a large male black bear anywhere near that spot, keep going. Get at least five miles away before stopping. How do you know if it is a male bear? Because it is large. Females usually are quite small.
Another thing to know is that these bears almost always attack lone people. So travel with a buddy.
If you ever need to do battle with a bear, know this: other than a gun your best weapon is a stout club. Something like a 1 1/2-inch- thick, three-foot-long birch sapling. It won't break when you swing it with two hands and all your might right across the top of a bear's head. Right between the ears is the best target. That's where the brain is located. A bear's skull is not very thick, nothing like a moose, for instance. You can crush it with a club and in so doing kill the bear. You just need one properly-placed hard blow but if you miss slightly and the bear is only stunned, hit it with all your might again, this time in the right spot, then get away.
Chances are the reason you might ever need to club a bear is because it has already grabbed someone who was alone when the bear attacked. Biologists, prospectors and forestry workers are the ones most at risk. They usually work loosely in pairs, sometimes hundreds of yards apart. Many times the threatening bear flees when the second person comes running after hearing cries of help. If it ever comes to stabbing a bear you need a knife with at least a six-inch-long blade to reach vital organs. A better idea is to club it. Bear spray must be sprayed right into the eyes of the bear and even then sometimes doesn't stop an attack.
Never climb a tree to get away from a bear. That's what bears do when they are afraid. A bear that was going to leave you alone might attack if it sees you climb a tree.
Likewise, walk but don't run away. If the bear follows you, even at a distance, make a club and be prepared to make a stand if the bear gets too close.

Traveling on ice

No matter how cold it has been, places with current such as narrows, rivers and creeks should be avoided. The entrances to long, narrow bays also are hazardous. So is the area in front of a beaver house.
Falling through the ice is only one hazard. There can also be areas with slush that can bog down snow machines and get your feet wet. Wet feet become frozen feet.
If you aren't sure about the ice conditions, don't travel.
We must also keep climate change in mind when considering ice travel. Lots of people just have a date in mind to make that first ice-fishing trip. For instance, they might have always gone ice fishing on the first of December because the ice is always solid by that time. Well, no longer. Even if the lake has been frozen for a month, the temperatures might have been insufficiently cold to make thick ice.
Check it first.

Store fuels outside

Never bring fuel cans inside a building where there is fire, machinery or electric motors that can make sparks. Keep the watertight caps secured on the fuel cans and leave them outside in the fresh air.

Just don't take risks

Just like there are no old, bold bush pilots, there are also no old reckless trappers, prospectors, biologists, etc. If you encounter a risky situation where you think you will probably be OK, don't do it. You must KNOW you are going to succeed.
Have you ever heard this saying? Never step on a log that you can step over and never step over a log that you can walk around.

Take out your boot liners

Every time you take off boots with felt liners, take out the liners and place them and the boots where they can dry. The liners will always be damp with perspiration and if worn in frigid conditions the next day can lead to frozen feet.

Carry a butane lighter

All you need to do to survive is make a fire. It will keep you warm and bring help. A butane lighter can light thousands of times. Keep the lighter warm in an inside pocket in frigid conditions or it won't have the pressure to light.
You also need to know how to make a fire in inclement conditions but that will be the subject of a future post.

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On a clear day we can almost see forever

From the corner of our house we can see Mount Baldy, one of two ski hills near Thunder Bay

Northwestern Ontario still has some of the cleanest, clearest air in the world. From our home on a foothill of Silver Mountain, just south of Nolalu village, we can see Mount Baldy, a ski hill 64 kilometres (40 miles) away.
We could easily see the smoke and lights of Thunder Bay (50 kms) except that a range of hills, part of the Norwester Mountains, blocks our view.
The elevation of Thunder Bay, at the top of the Great Lakes, is 199 meters above sea level. Nolalu is obviously higher yet but I don't know it's exact elevation. My guess is about another 100 meters.
Distance in the image above is distorted by the use of a telephoto lens.

Warm and gloomy or cold and sunny

Continuous cloudy, snowy weather can be a drag

You would never know it from the photo above but the days now are considerably longer than just a month ago. I notice the extra daylight especially in the evening. Cork and I can take our walk in the late afternoon, getting back home at 5:30 and still have lots of light.
When it comes to winter weather our choice here in Northwestern Ontario is for it to be relatively warm but cloudy or cold and sunny. I prefer the latter. Although I don't get seasonal affective disorder SAD like many others I still feel better when it's sunny.
Dogs love to lay in a sunny spot on the floor during the winter. I decided a few years ago to try it myself. It's wonderful! Find where the sun is beaming mid-afternoon and lay down on a blanket in that spot. The feeling is incredible.

Good book but needs a different title

Just about every outdoorsperson will find this book a good read. In fact I can envision people reading passages of it aloud while at the cabin and a lively debate ensuing night after night.
The book is chock full of facts about dangers that we all face when outdoors.
Here's a snippet: what is the most dangerous creature in the world? Bears? Wolves? Rattlesnakes?
You're not even close. It is the mosquito which kills about a million people annually, mostly in sub Saharan Africa, from malaria.
"Oh, that's cheating!" you might say. "I thought you meant in the United States and Canada."
OK, let's make it the U.S. and Canada then. Again, bears, wolves, rattlesnakes? How about scorpions or spiders?
Nope, it is the good old whitetail deer which kills 130 people and injures another 30,000 each year in the United States alone from auto accidents. Would you believe there are 1.5 million deer-auto accidents each year, resulting in $1 billion in insurance claims?
Incidentally, scorpions have only killed four people in the U.S. since 2005 but kill 1,000 annually in Mexico! Wow!
Animals and other creatures aren't the only hazard out there, of course. The weather also poses risks, both summer and winter.
Readers of this blog and anyone who also followed my previous Bow Narrows Camp blog should pay attention to author Timothy Sprinkle's facts about drowning and lightning.
Ten people drown each day in the U.S., however only 300 a year drown in boating accidents. I have long preached about making wearing a PFD (personal floatation device) a habit any time you are in a small vessel like a fishing boat or canoe.
Guess who are the most likely sportsmen to be hit by lightning. Golfers, right? Wrong; four times more fishermen are hit each year. I once gave my own advice to fishermen on this subject in What to Do When there is Thunder and Lightning in the old blog and the book backs this up.
Sprinkle also gives you the facts on frostbite, altitude sickness, carbon monoxide poisoning and dehydration/heat stroke as well as starvation, dysentery and hypothermia. Then there are risks posed by terrain like rockslides and avalanches.
I won't give the whole book away here but just recommend you get a copy.
One criticism I have is about the book's title Lost and Stranded. There are only a couple of mentions about people who are lost or stranded.
And while there is advice from experts about the various pitfalls out there, the subtitle Expert Advice on How to Survive Being Alone in the Wilderness isn't exactly accurate either since such advice pertains to everybody whether they are alone or in a group.
Lost and Stranded is published by Skyhorse Publishing Inc.

Plenty of activity on this trail camera

One of many deer photographed Jan. 11

Pack of wolves shows up two days later

Wolves come back after a couple of days

I clear trail with snowblower

Deer crosses newly-cleared road

On my way today to pick up camera card

There have been very few wolves showing up on my trail cameras most of this winter until today. The first wolf, photographed Jan. 13, was part of a pack of four to five. I had a hunch that wolves were about because there were lots of deer tracks in the field in front of the house as if they had been "pushed' out into the open.
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Star-nosed mole is a winter surprise

 Chubby guy was about eight inches in length

Put this under the "Things You Never Expect To Find" category. I discovered this large star-nosed mole on the shoulder of our road here in Nolalu today. He had not been run-over but rather seems to have died of hypothermia.
The temperature today is near 0 C (32 F) but just a few days ago it was -40 with the windchill. Not the kind of weather that makes moles scurry about.
Moles are fairly uncommon in the Boreal Forest. This is only the second one I have ever seen.
He certainly didn't die of starvation as he was one plump individual. He was eight inches, nose to tail.
Moles are insectivores and while they spend most of their time below ground star-nosed moles are known to also come to the surface in search of insects. In the winter they are said to stay below the frost line which I would suspect after the recent spate of cold temperatures and lack of snow depth is probably three feet down right now.
It looked to me like the mole simply got lost as he tried to cross the road. His tracks went back and forth from one side of the snow-packed gravel road to the other. He must have been dead for only a few hours when Cork and I came along since he wasn't frozen and no fox or raven had found him yet.

Cold snap has broken

Cork and I walking one of our trails that I have cleared by snowblower to cut firewood later

We are experiencing beautiful winter temperatures here now after two weeks of bitter cold.
We also picked up about five inches of fluffy snow. We could use another six inches to insulate the ground better. There was only about five inches on the ground during the cold spell and that probably means the frost has gone deep. A foot of snow is fair insulation but 16 inches would be better.