It’s foggy in Sisters, but again no snow on this visit so we’re on the way to another hiking trail. This one, further up the pass than yesterday’s Metolius River hike, is a quick 3-plus mile jaunt around Suttle Lake, just five miles below Santiam Pass and 13 miles west of Sisters.
It’s a beautiful gem of a place in the Deschutes National Forest that we’ve stayed and hiked before during other snow-less or low-snow trips. 
Today, we again feel lucky to live near Oregon’s Cascade Mountain range as we break through the fog to blue sky and pull into the lodge parking lot and head quickly to the black cinder beach.
The lake appears frozen in places, but clear under a thin layer of ice as we begin our hike on the sunny side trail. A snow-capped jagged mountain peeks out in the distance as we make our way on a well-worn trail through the pines – Ponderosa, Lodgepole, and more.
Soon, the sound of shattering glass cuts through the silence. The highway is above us on this northern side of the lake so my senses are alert.
But it’s not coming from above.
We come upon ice clusters on the shore and look just offshore to see a downed tree, branches pulling back, then popping forward. At first, we think it’s an ice-trapped fish running like when you just hook it on your line. Or maybe the work of a beaver, or two, harvesting the limbs for a dam that appears to be nearby. See what we saw below.
Then we realize it’s the lake’s current sliding ice sheets under the tree, the limbs reacting to the force as if it’s alive. We’re in awe of this simple act of nature – in all of our hiking and outdoors years we’ve never seen this before, and our timing to catch this is perfect as the sun heats up the ice and other hikers begin joining us on the trail.
We decide to double back once reaching the western side of the lake to stay in the sun and the ice marvel is over – the lake water free of its ice shield like it never happened.