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