I think most people think I am bull shitting when I say I am heading out to the beach on a 5 degree day in January. However as it turns out I am far from the only one who enjoys the lakefront year round. This fellow was out in the lake catching some waves when I arrived. My understanding is that the best waves for surfing around here, such as it is, come in winter. Apparently those dry suits are well insulated, though I must say the water temperature was about 30 degrees higher than the air temp that day.

No leaves on the trees, sand pretty much frozen solid. There is nothing in this image to convey the steady 30mph wind coming off the lake except for the waves. Everything looks so calm and serene, but it was quite blustery with a constant roar from the waves crashing into the beach.

I have posted before how West Beach is bookended by steel mills on both ends. Here we see the Cleveland Cliffs mill at Burns Harbor. The steam being vented from the furnaces mixes with the cold air to produce some very atmospheric scenes.

I never did spot the owner of this lawn chair. It really is a great spot to sit and watch the waves come in.

This view shows the back side of the foredunes. These are the youngest dunes which have been stabilized by the Marram grasses. There is very little soil here, all of the vegetation is rooted in packed sand. But each year the decaying grasses, leaves and branches add a little bit to the soil layer. Eventually these dunes may resemble the ones further from the late which look like regular forrest land.

Here you see patches of unstabilized sand dune interspersed with patches of vegetation.

A look back at the parking lot. Less than half of the lot is visible in this image, and only a small portion of that has been cleared of snow. You can see my car and one other. Obviously this is not peak season.

The backside of the second row of dunes inland from the lake. These dunes are a little more uniformly covered in vegetation. Still mostly Marram grass.

By this point I was far enough from the lake to be mostly out of the wind. While you might think this was a more comfortable location, I was starting to become quite hot and had to shed some layers to avoid becoming soaked in sweat. This is an interesting aspect of hiking in cold weather. The balance between staying warm and staying cool, it is actually easier to stay warm than it is to properly regulate your temperature. When your inner layers start to get damp from sweat you can quickly become very uncomfortable real fast. I am starting to learn about proper layering and why cotton is considered to be a very inappropriate material.

You see this often, where the snow and ice seems to be cresting over the top of logs and branches on the ground. I suspect that what is happening is that the wood absorbs the sun’s heat more effectively than the reflective snow, resulting in this hollowing out effect.

Ice on one of the interdunal lakes. The almost pure blue winter sky gives the ice it’s color.

And here we are looking at steam bellowing from what must be one of the main furnaces in the neighboring steel mill. This particular stack would pop off a massive cloud of steam every 20 minutes or so. Here I caught in the early stages, the plume can become quite impressive. Watching this scene develop I decided to drive over that way after my hike to get some closer shots which will be the subject of a coming post.