Lake Willoughby, Vermont 1/19

[Evan Perkins]

I skated for a few hours on Lake Willoughby this afternoon. There is good black Ice that's about 6 inches thick in between the cliffs in the narrow part of the lake. It looks like the whole lake could be skated, but there are more slush bands and rougher looking ice on the northern end where it widens out. There is great, black ice between slush bands, which are also easy to skate over, there are also some areas with interspersed slush islands but plenty of good skating out there. Definitely some large areas of great Skating ice, in general not perfectly smooth but good Skating even for hockey and figure skates once you get out there. If you park at the south end expect to walk over several hundred yards snow covered, rubble band, but it's pretty easy walking, the good news is that Willoughby is only supposed to get 1 to 3 inches of snow tonight and the wind is going to continue through the night and tomorrow so it most likely will completely blow off. That means that this venue could be good for the next week and into next weekend if the forecast holds. It's not the best freeze up ever on Willoughby but particularly if you've never skated this lake it's definitely worth a trip over . I was perfectly happy skating a couple hours. I did not see any open water or hazards besides for a few suspicious 10 inch wide piles of snow in the middle of the lake that I believe were

probably hiding thin spots as there were still some slush underneath the snow . We did find a little sandwich Ice and a couple places, but that will be fully frozen by morning. This lake will be well over 1 foot thick by the end of the week.