Lake Champlain, Essex to South hero 2/7

[Evan Perkins]

  A group of four left Charlotte town Beach at dawn . we knew that the north wind had blown the ice pack back down into the Essex Charlotte area on the previous days . We were able to cross from thick shoreline ice to the thick main ice  by just crossing a small crack. Although there were definitely lots of other areas where the Ice had not fit back in perfectly and there was either 2 inch ice or three-quarter inch ice and in some cases 3 inch ice. This was not Ice that we traveled on besides for crossing it once later in the am , 2 inch ice. We skated down to Essex and then back up. We made sure to be off the main ice pack by 9 AM. The southeast winds were very light that morning almost calm. But we knew, as soon as the winds built up a little bit and expansion cracking from the sun, weakened the connections that that plate was likely to move. We traveled up the shoreline for quite some time and ended up portaging Shelburne point at the base of the thin part. By the time we started our portage, we could see that the big ice pack was starting to move, we had been off it for a long time at that point. From there, we proceeded to skate out of Shelburne Bay up through the waterfront and then all the way up to South hero. We had placed a shuttle vehicle at Leddy beach Which we skated back to in a fairly stiff headwind from the northern terminus of our Skate. This skate was only possible due to our timing and paying close attention to conditions, and every of inch of ice pack that we were on. 

     There were plenty of crossings of rubble and piles of shoreline ice from thin ice that had been blown up onto thicker ice pack. I think a particular note is how amazing the Skating is on North Beach and Leddy beach . lone rock point was fairly easy to get around, but really only appropriate for folks with Knowledge and gear as it bordered on very thin ice. Which may be back to open water as of this morning. Apple tree point was also possible to get around, but we had to walk across 4 foot high piles of three-quarter inch plate ice which had been stacked on the point. Obviously it is snowing today and there's going to be a big storm and everything is going to be different after it but if the Ice north of Burlington waterfront survives and is blown off, it's an amazing destination in its own right. As other folks have reported. 

     We also had A German man named Hendrick with us who lives in Scotland. He flew over just to Skate. Hendrick was a competitive short track speed Skater when he was younger and then has competed in the long groomed track outdoor races in Europe. That was my first time getting to skate with someone of that caliber, pretty amazing to watch. Hendrick had never skated on wild ice besides for groomed tracks so he got a real intro to the best New England has to offer in terms of Ice terrain. He skated the whole route on custom carbon fiber speed skates and carried a stool and a pair of shoes for potential portages, of which we only had one. The stool was a nice innovation, he was very comfortable on breaks!

      

[Evan Perkins]