Mascoma Lake

[Matt Steinberg]

Much to my surprise, the 19 degree temps, last evening's wind, and the clear skies allowed all of the deep slush covering Mascoma to freeze solid. This was not what the majority of people  would consider good skating, but I have a special place in my heart for crappy spring ice. Today was a laboratory for the many variations of degrading spring ice. Sections of beautiful, deeply etched black ice had reappeared in various stages of decay. Tracks of smoothish hard grey ice was found in lee of snowmobile tracks. There were large areas of granular surface hoar leftover from the yesterdays warmth. There was basically no sandwich ice other than right near the moats lining the shores or where the snowbanks from the old plowed trails pooled water up.  The old plowed trail is quite dangerous at this point. Over the last few days it acted like a canyon almost draining the surface water. This pooled in a lot of places making foot deep wet shell that was very smooth but completely unsupportable and hiding large person swallowing drain holes. One could be skating along on the smooth surface and instantly get swallowed if not able to recognize these. Until you were right on them they were only recognizable by a texture change of new large crystal ice that is hard to see in the bright sun. The white ice surface would not support blades by 945 this am. Some nice sidewalks along shore. Let's see what happens after this weekend 

[Matt Steinberg]

Hi All,

I skated Mascoma south of the bridge this morning. This was a pretty good quality skate. It is definitely spring ice in all of its fascinating forms. All the usual suspects are here. Lots of frozen machine tracks criss crossing the lakes at various spots, some pockets of dry shell, barely frozen moats and open water along the western shore, around rocks, and points of land. The main hazard that poses quite a danger are the half dozen large areas of 6 to 12 inch deep wet shell surrounding unsupportable person sized drain holes. These are in the middle of the old trail. There are a few anomalous smaller versions of unsupportable drain holes at various spots out in the middle. All of that said, there are very long and very smooth lanes of hard grey and old black ice out in the middle. Some of these go on for more than a mile with some bumps here and there. I have attached a track. If you don't mind some crappy ice and can route find your way around you will find some beautiful ice out here