Champlain: Button Bay, VT to Northwest Bay, NY redux

[JoAnn Berns]

Talk about lucky... another sunny day on the Button Bay/Northwest Bay ice arena, with negligible wind, mid-20 temps, and fantastic ice.  Hoping others can get out to enjoy it before the snow predicted for Friday night.

A very light snow dusting greeted us.  Much of it sublimed away on the southern end of this ice sheet during the day. Where it didn't, it provided a nice bit of blade grip on the super-smooth surfaces.

Skated the perimeter staying inside the rubble bands, including deep into NW Bay, and criss-crossed the middle multiple times (~35 miles).  

The uniformity of both ice thickness (~8") and surface smoothness across the entire plate is striking.  The smoothest ice is almost everywhere but the northern end, which is light orange peel.  

In late morning the lake was incredibly "talkative" with booms, rumbles, cracking and space lasers, after which it quieted until late afternoon when it spoke again, but less.  

There were fewer pressure ridges and open leads than yesterday.  The existing pressure ridges tended to be larger and wider.  The biggest had sections of open water up to 30+ feet wide at points, blocking off NW Bay and running in an arc around much of the entrance to that bay.  For the 4 ice boaters who arrived from Montreal preparing for tomorrow's breezes, the only available crossings were at the farthest shore points at each end of the bay.    

No hazards seen beyond the pressure ridges, leads generally no wider than a foot, and lots of healed cracks generally easy to skate over with nordic blades.  Snow patches tended to be a bit grabby.   

We forayed a bit into the southern rubble band and found some decent smooth snow (gray) ice plates but... don't bother.  Really.  

There's an eagle who seems to reside at the SW point of NW Bay.

Enjoy!

Jo