A few weeks ago, I stumbled across the details For Winter Walk Day 2012 – Wednesday, February 8. In 2011, more than 100,000 Albertans reported participating in this program, intended to encourage Albertans to head outside to exercise, even in wintry weather. This year’s sponsors / promoters (which include Safe Healthy Active People Everywhere (SHAPE), the Alberta Motor Association, Alberta Health Services and the Alberta Sport, Recreation, Parks and Wildlife Foundation) were hoping for more than 120,000 particpants.

In Calgary, those taking part in Winter Walk Day enjoyed sunshine, blue sky and temperatures just a bit below freezing. Options included walking on your own or taking part as a group – through a community association or club, your school or your workplace. I headed out on my own, with camera and GPSr in hand. Over the course of about 90 minutes, I covered just 5 km (3 miles), but I found 4 geocaches and took lots of photos. Here are a few of my favourite pictures:

As far as the geocaches are concerned, one was part of the Calgary Parks 100 series, which I blogged about recently; it had the best natural camo that I’ve seen in a long time – a very pleasant surprise! Two of the geocaches were puzzle caches I solved earlier in the week and the containers were very well done and quite well placed. And the fourth was a nice large container, easily spotted without having to trample the nearby vegetation. I picked up a travel bug to move along and even traded swag at one cache. All-in-all it was a very enjoyable, late morning walk.

Participants in the 2012 Winter Walk Day are encouraged to report their participation level (i.e. minutes walked) online at SHAPE (safe healthy active people everywhere). I’ll be their website over the next few days, to see just how many Albertans took part this year. And I look forward to at least a few more winter walks before spring 2012 arrives!