Moore reservoir Waterford vt 2/29

[Evan Perkins]

   I checked out the surface of the Rez. It looks like it is mostly good quality orange peel maybe some rougher orange peel and some places and then big puddles and pools of smooth looking ice. The reservoir is down at least 20 feet vertical from its high watermark so it has some pretty incredible ice topography some of which looks in good enough condition for vertical skating . There was definitely a big moat  in some places . and another places it looked like you could just walk onto the ice after making your way down a sloped ice bank. I checked from the dam. I would recommend traction to access the ice.

    Harvey’s Lake in Barnet Vermont was also similar except quite a bit more rough orange peel because they got snow there as the temperature was changing last night. All puddles that I found had already frozen through as of midday today so I did not find any sandwich ice, given the cold temperatures today and tonight I would not expect to find any tommorrow. I also did not see any evidence of shell ice .Given that this resurfaced under Highwinds and the temperature got cold quickly. It’s unlikely there is shell ice.

   Both of these venues could have been skated today, but with the wind it wouldn’t have been super fun. 

    Given the forecast for the next 10 days, and the quality of the ice that remains in our region, it’s not impossible that tomorrow (and potentially early Saturday morning in the cold spots )may be the last good day for Skating. I have, however, skated plenty of times in April on years that we have had big thaws in March, so it’s not impossible that some colder weather later could resurface some of the older thicker ice. Both the long-term and short-term forecast however, do not look good for that happening.

    Both pictures are from Moore reservoir

    Evan

[Evan Perkins]

Moore this morning. Lots of smooth, glassy ice that was very cold and hard. Almost difficult to skate. But it will be easier if you have sharp blades and when it gets warmer. Also, lots of orange peel which we were skating whenever we could because the smooth ice was so smooth. Really fantastic scenery as a reservoir is as low as I’ve ever skated it. It’s probably down about 20 vertical feet with big ice walls as close to glacier  Skating as we’re going to get here in the east. 

   The ice gets more variable as the reservoir narrows on the east end towards the river inlet. There are large areas where there’s kind of a Styrofoam snow texture on top of the ice, but it’s still good to skate and the scenery at that end is pretty incredible with the steep ice walls. Definitely good possibilities for vertical skating. I think this ice will also probably be good early tomorrow morning as it supposed to be in the high 20s tonight.