Winter alive and well - barely

[Matt Steinberg]

Good Morning Everyone,

I believe my friend John Piccone said it best in his post yesterday that "winter is only done if you want it to be." Typically I try to skate as long into April as I can. This year has been challenging. Choosing not to spend a day off driving to northern Maine yesterday, I decided to hunt for ice locally. I started off by meeting my friend at the Dodge Hill boat launch on Moore Reservoir at about 630am. The shorelines pretty much seemed melted out beyond the reach of a plank so alternative methods were required to reach the solid ice. See pic below ($10 at Walmart and I recommend bringing a roll of Flex Seal 😂). Once on the ice, we headed east and encountered a lake almost completely covered in heavy, dry shell ice for the first 2 to 2.5 miles. This was mostly double polling with the occasional stride possible in a random clear area. The reason for the perseverance was I was betting that when we rounded the point where the trajectory of the lake is oriented north-south instead of east-west, the ice would change. After crossing a small pressure ridge, that came to fruition and we suddenly had about 2.5 miles of old large grain black ice that was solid and moderate to rough orange peel with occasional small areas of scalloping. Totally skateable. We skated up to where we met the open water at the CT River inflow. We retraced our steps and my buddy left for work and I skated over towards the dam and highway on the west side. After going through more shell, when the orientation of the lake changed back to north-south again, all the shell cleared and this time I was treated to a few miles of light to moderate orange peel. By this time it was around 11 and the lake was becoming very active, cracks quickly wetting out so I headed back to Dodge having skated 16 miles. I was sent a pic this morning that showed the area I skated yesterday where there had been a 6 inch crack had opened up into a lead at least 100 feet wide by this morning, the lake is breaking down fast and this weekend may be its curtain call.

After leaving Moore, I headed to Franconia Notch to check out Echo and Profile Lakes. Echo was completely free of ice, not a speck. Profile a half mile down the road was locked in shore to shore. I was able to easily step on to the ice. 90% of the lake was all drifts or dry shell and unskateable but especially the south and eastern shores were lined with wonderfully smooth sidewalks about 5 to 10 feet wide and was the best ice I have seen in a month. This was only 1/3 of a mile in length but was such a pleasure that I just lapped it for about 11 miles in case its the last smooth ice I find until next November. Profile is also a special place for us New Hampsters. It was the famous viewpoint of the "Old Man of the Mountain", that great stone face sentinel that dominated Franconia Notch until May 3, 2003 when it disappeared after the clouds cleared from a storm. Skating across ice that will be gone in a few days or weeks and staring at where the soul and cultural icon of our state stood proudly invincible for millenia, until suddenly it didn't any longer, helps you put things into perspective. Spring ice is crappy, its dangerous, and its fleeting. Here's my disclaimer of not venturing out unless you have all the gear, know how to use it, have extensive knowledge of all the dangers and intricacies of spring ice, its complexities, and how it can change rapidly with minor deviations in the weather and take a buddy or two. That said, I love this time of year. The hunt for ice and the ability to travel over it in its most vulnerable form is thrilling to me.The valley lakes will all be gone after this latest rain and thaw so  I will now head high and north to keep the season going.