Just another boring outdoor family excursion along some of the most beautiful and unique winter landscapes in Ontario.
Each winter, the cold winds off Georgian Bay push freezing water onto the shallow, sandy shores of Wasaga Beach. It creates a surreal, other-worldly mash-up of snow volcanoes, ice flats and pressure cracks that the vast majority of the world never gets to see.
And we live 8 minutes away!
I personally love parking a ways away and walking through the cedar forest trail to the frozen beach with my kids. Watching their demeanor change with the landscape just makes me feel like I’m doing right by my kids.
Some notes about this video:
The space where ice meets open water can be deadly. We know this beach very well. It’s shallow for a long ways out. Even then, the ice hills created by the wind and snow can be deceptively dangerous, especially if they become slick and slippery. The valleys can be difficult to climb out of if the slopes become slick ice. I scouted the area in advance and chose an area that was mostly flat. During the video, I’m carrying safety/rescue gear and a GPS enabled cell phone. I tested the signal strength in advance.
Also, with my focus on safety, I missed recording some super funny and endearing footage of the kids on the way back off the ice. By then, they were more comfortable with the landscape, and the forest was in sight. So they started being more playful, but I missed capturing all that. My apologies.