A crack in the matrix, southern Isle of La motte 1/20

[Evan Perkins]

    I went looking for the open area I saw between ice plates on the 1/16 satellite images. I parked at Pelots park on sourth hero. I would not recommend this access and involve finding a way down over the cliffs, it was not easy or particularly safe. The area in Black on the satellite had a few spots that looked like they were skimmed over when I looked at it. I thought they might have held this area open in the strong south wind. By open, I mean, not crushed by the ice plates getting smashed back together. That was definitely true for the first half. I found some great 3 inch black ice all the way out to Isle Lamont. It wasn't all perfect. There were some bands where wet cracks had turned into slush cracks due to wave actions, but they were easy to skate over. When I got to isle la motte it was definitely quite a bit messier,  the black band had been crushed together partially ,creating some really cool ice formations, I was able to skate all the way over to New York in Monty's Bay, but a lot of that was on older, polished avocado, peel ice, which was actually quite good Skating. Definitely snow drifts still but easy to skate around. Overall, it was an enjoyable trip, but they were plenty of hazards. some small polygons of thin ice that were very hard to detect and unsupportable, some thin ice pressure ridging, and a lot of the ice had been broken up into Polygons by the intense south wind of the last several days. i'm not sure I would recommend unless someone was close and had good ice reading skills. I finished up the day with a sunset. Skate around mallets bay , which was really excellent. thanks to all the folks who have been reporting up there!

     Happy Skating, Evan

[Evan Perkins]

One safety note about my last post, I was here in a southwest wind. I definitely would not recommend being anywhere in this area in a  north wind where these plates could disconnect and float down the lake. And obviously, I meant to write isle lamotte ,not isle of lamotte