Day 7: Snowshoeing on the lake

It felt very cold when we stepped out of the house this morning, and sure enough once we got to the village thermometer we found it was showing a temperature of minus 23. We were walking towards the frozen lake to try and find a snowshoeing path that we'd seen signposted while we were skiing in the woods the other day. On the way we passed a sign advertising ice swimming in the lake, but we decided to give that a miss and stick with our original plan of snowshoeing instead

The lake looked beautiful again in the snow.

We put our snowshoes on and then we were ready to set off.

Tim's beard had already started to freeze  

I was looking rather cold too!

As we set off across the lake, we could see a slightly pink glow in the sky, although the colours weren't as strong as they had been the other day.

After a while we reached the far side of the lake and found the start of the trail, marked by blue poles.

The path led us through the trees.

The snow was pretty deep here...

...especially if you strayed off the path

It was beautiful here, but extremely cold!

Tim and Alfie decided that they were too cold and that they wanted to head back to the shopping centre to look for some souvenirs. 

I decided to carry on on my own and explore some more of the path.

Once I was on my own, I may have got slightly carried away taking photos of trees again  

The further I went, the deeper the snow seemed to be.

It definitely wasn't getting any warmer; if you look carefully in this photo you might be able to see the ice on my eyelashes, as well as my white hair  

The path became narrower...

...before leading up a snowy slope into the forest.

Now I really was right between the trees.

I was glad of the blue poles; without them it might have been difficult to tell where the path was going.

The path continued along a little ridge for a while, but then started to lead quite steeply downhill.

I decided I'd better turn back, because I might not get down the slope - or if I did, I might not get back up again  

I started making my way back towards the lake.

It was coming up to 2pm now and so there was an orange glow in the sky...

...and a bit of pink over the big fell in the distance.

I tried a sunset selfie  

As I emerged back out onto the lake, I was excited to see a herd of reindeer crossing the lake.

They were quite a long way away, so it was difficult to get a good photo.

Once they'd moved off into the trees, I continued on my way and was over halfway across the lake when I saw a single solitary reindeer in the distance.

He started getting closer.

Was he going to walk towards me?

Wow, he literally walked right past me!

I've never been as close to a reindeer as this  

By this stage I was in danger of turning into an icicle, so I headed back towards the supermarket.

Tim and Alfie had had a successful shopping trip and discovered that, while we'd been out, the temperature had dropped even lower, hitting minus 25; a record low for this holiday!