Squam Lake

[Matt Steinberg]

Hello Everyone,

I skated on Squam Lake today. Starting at the grassy strip on route 3 in Holderness, NH you have to go through about 100 yards of slush and crap and cross a small pressure ridge, Beyond this you get to an area of hard gray ice that I did not measure but is at least 4 inches thick based on my pole pokes. There are widely spaced snowdrifts (the deeper ones are grabby) that can easily be slalomed through. The bay west of the grassy strip is almost blown clean in the middle and is mostly a fine orange peel texture with small rougher areas but all skateable. There are many frozen lava lines and pressure cracks that started seeping in the afternoon. This area is nice but as you work your way out towards the islands the ice is smoother. Once you get out to the islands about 2 miles offshore the drifts start to become much denser and you eventually reach a line of shard ice that marks the extreme boundary of what is skateable. There is a significant pressure ridge that needs to be crossed that started as a crack in the morning and was between 1 and 2 feet high rafted in the afternoon, It was also folded in places and very wet with boot deep slush spreading about 10 feet out on either side. To the east of this north - south ridge is a beautiful area about 100 yards wide extending from the north shore to the south shore and more than a mile long that is completely clear of snow and super smooth. As you work your way south towards the mouth of the bays, there are two more east west areas just like this, I managed to skate 47 miles in this NW corner of the lake so there is a lot of skating to be had here, you just have to persevere and do some route finding. There were probably at least 100 healed wind holes in this area that were beautiful black ice each about the size of a swimming pool. These were about 3 to 4 inches thick and a joy to play on. I did not find any that were unsupportable and you can use the visual cracks to scout but as always do your own testing in case there is an anomaly in there. This is also gray ice. While hard and not very aerated at this point, I would not stay out too late in the warm temps and sun tommorrow or you may be walking back when your blades start sinking in. I have attached my track. You can see where I have repeated lines where the best ice lanes were.