Plurr report

[Evan Perkins]

    This is a report about several people going through the ice on Squam lake in New Hampshire on December 28th, one of which was me! (just getting around now to writing a report on it, but I thought there are a few things that were worth other folks hearing about).

        I know about myself and two other prepared Nordic skaters who went through the ice. There was also a fourth person, but I don’t know anything about them, just that they went through the ice and got out safely. Of the folks who went through the ice all got out safely and carried on with their day in one way or the other.  The three folks, including myself, that I know about were prepared with proper safety equipment and gear.  

     The conditions on Squam that day were thick ice in the larger bays, ranging from 3+ inches to 6 inches. As you headed out towards the islands, the ice conditions were variable. This ice had formed under wind so they were holes that had been held open by the wind, some that had healed but were thin. This lake also has significant lake current as it has deep and shallow areas where water travels between.  Lake current is generally slow, but its main hazard is that it brings 38° water from deeper in the lake up to the surface, thereby creating conditions where ice under thinning can happen, particularly in shallow areas between islands and such.

    About five or 6 miles into our skate I fell through an area where the surface was completely without any delineations between thick and thin ice. We were skating on 2+ inch ice, knowing that anytime you are on ice that thin you have a very little margin for error. I was following another skater when I heard some zippering (for really the first time that day) under my feet and saw them turn off. I turned the other way and skated right into what was approximately a 15 foot ring of thin ice where the ice tapered from 2 1/2 inches at the edges to one half inch in the middle. Because the ice was thin, I elected to have my wife Heidi, throw me a throw bag so that I did not have to push a lot of cold water through my clothing trying to chop my way back to the thick ice. Even though thick ice was not very far away, at that point in my mind I was just interested in making sure that I got out safely and stayed warm enough to comfortably skate the rest of the day as there was a lot more lake to skate. This worked out well. My wife Heidi executed a perfect throw, and bracing herself with her skate sideways was able to haul me out with relative ease, even though I am significantly heavier than her. I was kicking to assist. We then executed a quick clothing change from our rescue bags and we’re on our way skating within probably 10 minutes. One note of interest is that I was able to retrieve one of my poles (which I had not brought with me while I was being hauled out) by tossing the throw bag over it, and having the weight of the bag catch it so I could drag it back towards me back to thick ice(this happened after I had changed.) The temperature was a mild 31°, which helped every part of the process. No wind.

       After this, we proceeded with our day, although we did stop back by the car which was on our way to the other part of the lake to have lunch and restock the rescue bags with some extra dry clothes we had in the car. This also presented a good opportunity to thaw out my skates in case I had to take them off and put them on again at some other point during the day. 

At no point during the rescue did I have time to get particularly cold as everything happened fairly quickly and we had been skating briskly long before it happened, so my circulation was high. Obviously, this would’ve been different on a really cold day, and I might have become more chilled during the changing process. 

        One thing that may add to the interest of this report is that I was filming right up until about a second before I fell through the ice. It was a beautiful section of clear black ice. If you watch the video carefully, you can see that under my wife Heidi‘s feet, right towards the end of the video,  the ice depresses…this is where she skated over the edge of that thin hole. Just after that, she veers off and the video ends. Just after that, I veered the other way, right into the hole! One thing to note is the huge potato like Boulder that is actually lying about five or 6 feet below the surface, but looks like it’s right under the ice. This is most likely the cause of the thin ice . There is lake current that moves through this channel and that most likely was causing the 38° water from lower down in the lake to be forced up and over the boulder, thereby inhibiting this ice from thickening and underthinning it in the warmer temperatures. This boulder is also visible on Google Earth. This was the first time that I had fully gone through the ice, completely submerging for the most part, although I did not get my head underwater because I laid flat as I went through. It is also a situation where the ice reading was so difficult that without local knowledge of that particular spot, it would be hard to avoid doing that same exact thing in the future. Another thing to note is that this boulder is also fairly close to shore on the south facing shoreline, so that may have caused additional thinning, adding to the current. Lake current, unlike river current, is not due to gravity alone, but is more similar to weather systems and air masses in the sky. It’s about colder water moving to where warmer water is, denser water moving to where less dense water is. On this particular day it had been windy for several days before, and half of the lake was still open until that morning, creating conditions where one half of the lake was probably significantly different temperature than the half that was under ice due to the wind mixing in cold air. This probably increased current flow in the lake. Just a guess… ,I’d be happy to hear someone else’s opinion on that. 

      Some lessons learned are that these rescue systems work well, I had many layers of protection, even if I did not have ice spikes or flotation, with my knowledge of how to get out of the ice I think I probably could’ve done it, but because I had all of those things and someone was there with a throw bag, I was able to get out of the ice so quickly that I did not even get cold. This is not really a learning, but just a reinforcement that every time we choose to skate on ice so thin that we do not have a large margin of error, we greatly increase the likelihood of going through the ice where there’s some anomaly that has caused the ice to thin or not thicken. Lastly, it is always comforting to know that your partner is going to kick ass when it counts the most!

      I hope this report was helpful, Evan

[Sherry Gray David Blaney]

This is helpful, thank you.  I see why a VT magazine I read recently mentioned that Nordic skating is a sport one cannot learn on one's own!

Sherry Gray

      __o
     ‘\ <;
( * ) /  ( * )              

///hogs.cages.invent (what3words.com)

Mackubin Street

Saint Paul, Minnesota 55102 USA

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[Linda Howes]

I wondered that too Nancy about "laying flat". Evan, I also appreciate your detailed report. Very educational. Happy for the good outcome!

On Mon, Jan 2, 2023 at 7:33 PM Nancy Hirshberg <na...@nhirshberg.com> wrote:

Thanks so much Evan. Always so helpful to learn from the experience of others.

Can you please explain what you meant by “I did not get my head underwater because I laid flat as I went through”? What do you mean laid flat? Not a life guard job kind of stance? On your back or front?

Thanks-

Nancy

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[Pam Pearson]

Hi Evan-

Nicely done!  Thanks for a helpful report :-).  Another possible reason the ice was thinner there because of the boulder (in addition to your educated guess about currents, also a good one) is simple albedo: the boulder (and perhaps surrounding shoreline boulders, you can see the more varied ice to your left close to shore) held and released heat, warming from below: if you could see it so clearly, so could the sun, assuming that portion of the lake was not in total shade this time of year.  (This is one reason why shoreline ice is sometimes thinner than further out, in addition to “heat” coming from the bare ground at water’s edge.)

Also a great example of how properly equipped folks with a change of clothes can go on to have a nice full day of skating, even with a “plurr."

Best!

Pam

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<IMG_151800596.MOV>

[Sarah Berman]

Thanks Evan, this was very helpful!

Sarah Berman

Content | Instrumentl

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they/them

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[Dr Jo]

Chris,

What a great report, thank you for this.  So glad you had good outcomes and your many excellent observations will be helpful to others without a doubt. 

I was out there that day and appreciate the many challenges you cited.  Your reflections on the cognitive/emotional challenges are really valuable.  Its so easy to become over-focused ("I really want to make it to _____ today"), or complacent ("someone else already skated this"), or lose focus -- maintaining constant focus & attention is tiring.

It's also easy to misunderstand info from other skaters about exactly where they went and what they saw, or recognize it when there, or use 2nd-hand information.  Looking together at paper and digital maps with other skaters was helpful for us that day and the next. 

Caution re other skaters' tracks is well-placed:  conditions can change rapidly, even if just following your own tracks back, let alone not knowing how different the circumstances may have been for another skater.

That day I had a fright while crossing pack ice that initially looked like other pack ice crossed that day.  Crossing big chunks of very thick ice, sort of like the tiles of a mosaic, and moving quickly, not testing a lot bec it looked like the former pack ice), I heard the pitch change -- caution signal! -- and suddenly discovered the "grout" ice around the thick mosaic "tiles" was thinning fast. Skaters behind me heard the pitch change a full second or so before I did and pulled back, but hadn't had a chance to call out yet.

Had to laugh at being annoyed about the coffee as you dunked, the mind does funny things in emergency situations.  And our memory/perception of what happened, what we did/saw/heard may or may not be accurate, sometimes pics/video can help a lot with understanding the events.  

I agree with your idea of actual plurr practice or mentally rehearsing correct technique so its much more likely to kick in when needed.  Correct technique is key, which may include letting your legs float up behind you so you're horizontal with the ice, making it much easier to use picks to get back onto the ice in the direction from which you came.  As you noted, the 'swimming pool' mantle is much harder.  There are some really good safety videos on this topic. 

More tips: 

Have plastic bags for wet gear (even with a drysuit, for your wet gloves)

Work wet skate bindings a few times so they are less likely to freeze shut.  Isopropyl alcohol or regular water can help unfreeze them but takes time & is a hassle. 

Do not rely on your phone for anything on the ice, including maps:  sometimes phones freeze while skating, becoming useless (happened to me that day).

Thanks again for taking the time to reflect and report, Chris.

Jo

 

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From: nhnordi...@googlegroups.com <nhnordi...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chris Boone <cbo...@sent.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 3, 2023 1:56 PM
To: NH Nordic Skating <nhnordi...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Plurr report #2, Squam Lake, 12/28/22

 

Hi friends.

Thanks for writing this up Evan. My girlfriend Sarah and I were two of the other people to go for a swim in Squam that day. As Evan mentioned, we were prepared and everything went completely smoothly, but nonetheless it was a great learning experience for us, so I want to share our perspective. Which involves more mistakes and bad choices than Evan’s, and is perhaps more representative of what it’s like for those of us who aren’t semi-pro wild ice skaters. ;)

Overview: We got on the ice after Evan and Heidi, and after the light snowfall had started. (See attached photo to get a sense of what the ice looked like, and attached map with annotations.) We headed east from Pipers Cove (green circle) along the southern shore, enjoyed Dog Cove, skated up and around the point into Sturtevant Bay, had lunch, then tried to head north from there but were stymied by inconsistent and thin ice. We worked our way back through the narrows south of Kimball Island, where we stopped to make coffee and ran into a couple groups of other skaters, then cut back north of Great Island. We were exploring in the direction of Bowman Island, to the west of it, when we fell in (red circle). We self-rescued, skated back the way we had come to the closest safe shoreline, then beelined back to our truck (red arrow).

As Evan said, the ice along the southern shore in the bays was strong and excellent; the farther north you got, the more inconsistent and generally thinner it was. We stopped and tested the thickness often, trying to stick to ice that was at least 4 pokes thick (or at least 2” when we actually measured). You can see from the way our track gets pointy north of Sturtevant that we were repeatedly blocked by thin ice (I’ve marked some of the spots with pink circles). We repeatedly experienced zipper cracking and got off that ice immediately; we were trying to be relatively cautious.

One cognitive error that’s clear in hindsight: We ran into Jamie shortly after setting out, and he told us that Evan and Heidi and some others had headed north, so I got it lodged in my head that a northern route was possible. We both prefer loops to out-and-backs, and returning a different way sounded fun, so we kept looking for ways to make that happen, even though all the evidence in front of us said that returning the way we came was the safest choice. This frame of mind persisted even after we ran into Evan and Heidi and they said they hadn’t made it far north, and had actually skated around the exact same way we had. I should have reassessed our plan more carefully with that new information, but I didn’t.

Mistake: We were trying to find a way through the islands, for fun, and when we realized we couldn’t, we should have turned south to go all the way back around Great Island. But we didn’t, and cut to the north of it. We should have stopped to consider and discuss the possible implications of this, but we didn’t. Things had gone so well up until that point that we were getting sloppy. (Much as most alpine accidents happen on the way down.)

Mistake: We followed a single skater’s track north along the west short of Bowman Island, and reduced our level of caution and frequency of ice thickness checking, as though the presence of a track was a guarantee of safety. It’s certainly a piece of interesting information, but it’s only that. We should have been increasing our caution as we got farther away from known ice.

Mistakes: And then we wandered off the track. At which point we fell through. There was no visible indication of change (we had earlier seen indications of plate boundaries even despite the snow cover), there was no visible or audible cracking. The ice tilted forward under me, then gave way. Sarah was behind me and to my side, she saw me going in, then the ice under her gave way too.

Mistake: We were too close together. In sketchy ice areas we tend to stay about 10m apart, or more; here we were chatting and had drifted to more like 10ft apart. Again, getting sloppy.

Successes: We both self rescued easily and quickly. The falling in was fast and smooth. I certainly didn’t have time to think about body position or much else, other than “oh shit here we go”. Neither one of us went in above the neck, neither one of us experienced any kind of shock reaction. I was still carrying, and drinking from, the mug of coffee I had made a few minutes before, so my first thought in the water was annoyance that it had spilled. I grabbed the floating mug, grabbed my floating pole, checked on Sarah, then used my ice claws to haul myself out onto the ice we had come from. Sarah forgot about her ice claws and just hauled herself out.

This was the first time I’ve fallen through with a dry suit on, and boy was it nice. I felt fine in the water, not rushed or panicked at all. Then totally comfortable once back out. I just changed my gloves and was good to go, albeit with soggy boots (my dry suit has booties, so my feet were fine). I was wearing a belay jacket over the dry suit, with thick synthetic insulation, and it didn’t absorb much water.

Sarah wasn’t in a dry suit, but had a dry bag backpack on, which presumably provided flotation, and definitely kept her extra clothes dry. She wasn’t soaked through, but she was very wet, so we skated immediately to shore. But that skate was enough to warm her up, so rather than change clothes and get cold due to exposure, we decided to just skate back to our truck, which was very close. At which point we changed and headed home, only having cut our trip short by a little bit.

Observation: We (as a community) talk about pulling ourselves out of the water onto the ice pretty casually, but even in this very easy to manage scenario, it was clear that many people would find it hard to do. Can you mantle (push your body weight up by your arms, while keeping your center of gravity out behind you) out of a swimming pool? Now imagine the swimming pool edge is slick ice not rough stone. Now imagine you’re covered in wet clothes and gear. Now imagine you can’t rely on the edge of the swimming pool so you have to slither forward using little ice picks to grip. Then factor in colder temperatures, wind, current, and other obstacles, and suddenly you’re dealing with a real physical and mental challenge.

Success: Practicing self rescue would be great, but in lieu of that, talking it though and pre-visualizing it can be helpful. We had talked through various emergency scenarios while skating, and had both been pre-visualizing the self-rescue steps, so when we actually fell through, we knew exactly what to do, and simply did it.

Success: We went into this outing knowing that, in terms of risk management, there was a higher than normal likelihood of something bad happening, but relatively low, and very manageable, consequences if something did. So we packed and dressed accordingly, and tried to make choices accordingly. Obviously we left room for doing better, but we had a wonderful skate and both consider it a very successful outing.

I hope this report is helpful.

Chris

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[Chris Boone]

Reposting this for cross-state visibility. Apologies to those of you receiving it multiple times!

Hi friends.

Thanks for writing this up Evan. My girlfriend Sarah and I were two of the other people to go for a swim in Squam that day. As Evan mentioned, we were prepared and everything went completely smoothly, but nonetheless it was a great learning experience for us, so I want to share our perspective. Which involves more mistakes and bad choices than Evan’s, and is perhaps more representative of what it’s like for those of us who aren’t semi-pro wild ice skaters. ;)

Overview: We got on the ice after Evan and Heidi (and company), and after the light snowfall had started. (See the attached photo to get a sense of what the ice looked like with a thin layer of snow on it and the attached map with annotations.) We headed east from Pipers Cove (green circle) along the southern shore, enjoyed Dog Cove, skated up and around the point into Sturtevant Bay, had lunch, then tried to head north from there but were stymied by inconsistent and thin ice. We worked our way back through the narrows south of Kimball Island, where we stopped to make coffee and ran into a couple groups of other skaters, then cut back north of Great Island. We were exploring in the direction of Bowman Island, to the west of it, when we fell in (red circle). We self-rescued, skated back the way we had come to the closest safe shoreline, then beelined back to our truck (red arrow).

As Evan said, the ice along the southern shore in the bays was strong and excellent; the farther north you got, the more inconsistent and generally thinner it was. We stopped and tested the thickness often, trying to stick to ice that was at least 4 pokes thick (or at least 2” when we actually measured). You can see from the way our track gets pointy north of Sturtevant that we were repeatedly blocked by thin ice (I’ve marked some of the spots with pink circles). We repeatedly experienced zipper cracking and got off that ice immediately; we were trying to be relatively cautious.

One cognitive error that’s clear in hindsight: We ran into Jamie shortly after setting out, and he told us that Evan, Heidi, Jo, and Chip had headed north, so I got it lodged in my head that a northern route was possible (even though he didn’t actually say that). We both prefer loops to out-and-backs, and returning a different way sounded fun, so we kept looking for ways to make that happen, even though all the evidence in front of us said that returning the way we came was the safest choice. This frame of mind persisted even after we ran into Evan and Heidi and they said they hadn’t made it very far north, and had actually skated around the exact same way we had. I should have reassessed our plan more carefully with that new information, but didn’t.

Mistake: We were trying to find a way through the islands, for fun, and when we realized we couldn’t, we should have turned south to go all the way back around Great Island. But we didn’t, and cut to the north of it. We should have stopped to consider and discuss the possible implications of this, but we didn’t. Things had gone so well up until that point that we were getting sloppy. (Much as most alpine accidents happen on the way down.)

Mistake: We followed a single skater’s track north along the west short of Bowman Island, and reduced our level of caution and frequency of ice thickness checking, as though the presence of a track was a guarantee of safety. It’s certainly a piece of interesting information, but it’s only that. We should have been increasing our caution as we got farther away from known ice.

Mistakes: And then we wandered off the track. At which point we fell through. There was no visible indication of change (we had earlier seen indications of plate boundaries even despite the snow cover), there was no visible or audible cracking. The ice tilted forward under me, then gave way. Sarah was behind me and to my side, she saw me going in, then the ice under her gave way too.

Mistake: We were too close together. In sketchy ice areas we tend to stay about 10m apart, or more; here we were chatting and had drifted to more like 10ft apart. Again, getting sloppy.

Successes: We both self rescued easily and quickly. The falling in was fast and smooth. I didn’t have time to think about much, other than “oh shit here we go”. Neither one of us went in above the neck, neither one of us experienced any kind of shock reaction. I was still carrying, and drinking from, the mug of coffee I had made a few minutes before, so my first thought in the water was annoyance that it had spilled. I grabbed the floating mug, grabbed my floating pole, checked on Sarah, then used my ice claws to haul myself out onto the ice we had come from, letting my legs float behind me. Sarah forgot about her ice claws and just hauled herself out.

This was the first time I’ve fallen through with a dry suit on, and boy was it nice. I felt fine in the water, not rushed or panicked at all. Then totally comfortable once back out. I just changed my gloves and was good to go, albeit with soggy boots (my dry suit has booties, so my feet were fine). I was wearing a belay jacket over the dry suit, with thick synthetic insulation, and it didn’t absorb much water.

Sarah wasn’t in a dry suit, but had a dry bag backpack on, which presumably provided flotation, and definitely kept her extra clothes dry. She wasn’t soaked through, but she was very wet, so we skated immediately to shore. But that skate was enough to warm her up, so rather than change clothes and get cold due to exposure, we decided to just skate back to our truck, which was very close. At which point we changed and headed home, only having cut our trip short by a little bit.

Observation: We (as a community) talk about pulling ourselves out of the water onto the ice pretty casually, but even in this very easy to manage scenario, it was clear that many people would find it hard to do. Can you climb out of a swimming pool using only your arms? Now imagine the swimming pool edge is slick ice not rough stone. Now imagine you’re covered in wet clothes and gear. Now imagine you can’t rely on the edge of the swimming pool so you have to slither forward using little ice picks to grip. Then factor in colder temperatures, wind, current, and other obstacles, and suddenly you’re dealing with a real physical and mental challenge.

Success: Practicing self rescue would be great, but in lieu of that, talking it though and pre-visualizing it can be helpful. We had talked through various emergency scenarios while skating, and had both been pre-visualizing the self-rescue steps, so when we actually fell through, we knew exactly what to do, and simply did it.

Success: We went into this outing knowing that, in terms of risk management, there was a higher than normal likelihood of something bad happening, but relatively low, and very manageable, consequences if something did. So we packed and dressed accordingly, and tried to make choices accordingly. Obviously we left room for doing better, but we had a wonderful skate and both consider it a very successful outing.

I hope this report is helpful.

Chris Boone

https://www.instagram.com/catamounthardware/

https://catamounthardware.com/

On Jan 2, 2023, at 6:37 PM, Evan Perkins <evanwpe...@gmail.com> wrote: