Ice safety workshop & tour Sunday March 29th

[Jamie Hess]

As promised, here's a REVISED schedule of events for Sunday. Come to
one or both!

SUNDAY 9:00 AM: Meet at Dewey Beach on Lake Sunapee to skate out
through Sunapee Harbor, onto the Broads, and wherever else the ice is
tolerably skateable. This tour will take 90 minutes and finish
promptly at 10:30. Dewey Beach should still work, but if it's
compromised, we'll convoy to another nearby put-in spot. The ice on
the Broads is bumpy but skateable if you have 50cm (19") or 55cm (21")
blades. If your blades are 45cm (17") or shorter, this tour will be
challenging.

SUNDAY 11:30 AM: Ice safety and rescue workshop on Pleasant Lake. Meet
in the Elkins Post Office parking lot. (Park on the right side of the
building as you're looking in from the street.) This workshop will
take about an hour, with plenty of opportunity to ask questions. By
the time the workshop ends, the ice may be too soft to skate on, so we
can adjourn to a local pub for a social gathering, or alternatively,
you can stop by our family's farm for maple syrup and grass-fed beef.

What will the workshop cover? You can learn a lot about self-rescue
and peer rescue without anyone going into the water. (That said, if
someone volunteers to jump in and get wet, and we can find a hole big
enough to jump into, watching and participating in an in-the-water
rescue will be even more instructive.)

Have you ever tried tossing a throw rope across the ice to someone?
Did it land close enough for them to reach it? Have you stuffed the
rope back into the bag in the proper way so it's ready for its next
use?

Have you used ice claws to slide across the ice on your stomach? Have
you reinserted the claws into their holster without getting the
strings into a hopeless tangle? Practice these skills and they'll be
instinctive behavior that you can perform without hesitation in an
emergency.

We'll also use ice testing poles to gauge the strength of the ice, and
practice picking up visual cues from the ice color and texture to
decide where to test. The ice should be rapidly softening around noon,
so it will be the perfect time to observe how quickly it loses
strength. I'm hoping we can also witness how black ice and gray ice
deteriorate at different rates under different conditions.

See you Sunday,
Jamie