skate ice while the surface allows...

no matter where you are going, waiting for perfect conditions will rarely get you there.





it was with that in mind--after friday's inches of ice pellets covered by freezing rain--that pam and i went for a skate. pam had it from linda that people were out on canaan street lake so we packed our blades and went there.







just making it from the ice rink parking lot down to the edge of the lake, all of 40 yards, maybe, was a slippery challenge. but we made it and got our blades on and pushed off. the ice was mixed, much of it bumpy or mounded up with snow, but all of it frozen and mostly skate-able. there were some long, narrow smooth sections that you could pick out for their dark blue color. we followed those around the lake. where they were longest, we turned and repeated them--multiple times in some cases.

you can see a few of those dark streaks beyond pam down in the big bay in the cardigan mtn school bay. that pan was looking south. the eastern shoreline had a wide band of really good smooth ice which we back and forth-ed for quite a while. 

you can't see it on the map, but there is a small flooded cove way to the east that we love to skate into. i tried it and pam came in soon after. i took a picture of her at the far end.

more good ice along the edge took us down to the reservoir south end. on the way i spoke with a fellow walking out to drill a hole to lower a camera through. with a 360°lens he was hoping for an interesting 'under ice' view. we ran into some fairly rough ice in the reservoir so i stopped and took a pan looking north.

we headed back to the town beach, stopping to talk to two sets of fishing people on the way. taking our time, skating a few more dark lines back and forth, we got off the blades and out of our boots some two hours after getting into them. 



if there is no 'wintery mix' tonight, maybe we will try goose pond out tomorrow--before the forecasted new year's eve storm comes in. 


if not on a lake skating, there is plenty of other ice to go outside and play on! 

up high and in the wind...

the smartphone is still in the rice--but i am getting out and about!

the wintery mix has been with us of late, the couple inches of pellet-y snow under ice now after a few hours of rain inspired me to climb up cardigan and check out the local conditions 'up high'. 

the drive to the winter parking lot was not as bad as it probably was on friday but as i came up the last hill it was snowing hard. it was somewhat hard to see the women who walks her three or four, 'coated' dogs, up to the height of land. i also spotted andre, a former student and MOC member walking along chatting on his phone beneath a jacket laid over his head. we said hi, but he declined to walk up the mtn.

i strapped on my creepers and went up alone. the summer road in was mostly much softer than i expected. on the lower sections of the ski trail, i almost could have used gaiters, snow was about six mushy inches. i stayed to the trail after that and after the waterfall started meeting folks. to a group, each spoke of how windy and cold it was on the top. you could hear the wind rushing through the tops of the trees, so perhaps it was bad on the bald top where there was nothing to break it.

at the 'east amc' sign stuck in a low cairn i met laura and tim. we chatted about wind speed and how most people think it much higher than it is. i carry an anemometer, and they said they would look this post up if i would measure and record it. 

before i got to the top, two other groups passed me with their own wind-cold stories. one gentleman warned that "i hope you have a hat and gloves" as he assured me winds "had to be higher than 50 miles per hour." the young woman with him exclaimed, "it has to be 10° below!" i think i mumbled something like it must feel bad if you are not used to it.

the next couple, from the boston area, were also impressed with the weather, but didn't seem to have the same exaggerated forecast. the gentleman was even interested in possibly doing some backcountry skiing on the mountain. i mentioned my wind speed mission and gave them the blog url.

coming up onto the bare rock, the wind was indeed stiff, but not exceptional. i zipped up, put my hat and gloves on, and got out the anemometer. i measured as i went along up to the high spot, just west of the tower. the wind out of the west, north west, was pretty steady around 20 mph. i was thinking that would be about right, but stayed around to see if it got any higher. there were some higher gusts, up above 30 mph, but not much more. so maybe, 35 mph, certainly no more than 40 mph. 

running along on the way down, i wondered if either of the two couples whom i gave kobyvanbeest.blogspot.com to, would ever get the 'official' measurement. laura, tim, bc skier, and partner--if you see this great. and if you have any pictures from the hike, feel free to send them to kobyvanbeest@gmail.com. 

i did catch up with the one group with the hyperbolic wind speeds and temps. the man asked, and i gave him what i had measured before running on.

it was a great day to be outside and playing!

more skating--the thick and thin of it...

5 golden hours, 4 cold nights, 3 warm days, 2 different lakes, and a pair of skates on my feet...

maybe not perfectly tuneful, but you get the point--merry christmas and a happy new year! sunday i met skip, linda, and eben over to grafton pond for an after noon skate-a-thon. sunny, warm-ish, not too windy, fairly large patches of pretty smooth ice, what's not to love?

as i am want to say, "do you want the long list or the short one?" i will give you the short one now, a thin layer of ice over water from all that rain and warm. in the first minute skip's blades cut through--he went from racing along to flopped down hard in an instant. from then on we were actively sussing out those soft spots...avoiding the weakest spots, looking for their special glint and listening for the tell tale, high pitched crackling that spreads like a web from under your blades.

grafton pond is a wonderfully diverse skate, with all kinds of nooks and crannies, loaded with boulders, stumps and islands, protruding from the frozen surface. i was enjoying finding some interesting lines, criss-crossing the middles of bays and exploring the edges. at one point i aimed myself between a large boulder and a fallen tree. as i glided through i started hearing the web-crackling and made a turn toward what i thought would be harder ice.

long story short, i flopped like skip only instead of ice below me, i was doing the plank to avoid the few inches of water on top of the old, thicker ice. extricating myself carefully, i kept the soaking to the front of my legs and my gloves. if i kept skating, i knew i would dry.

it was about 15 minutes later, going to take a picture of linda gliding along in the distance, her blue jacket sandwiched between the ice and sky, i noticed my phone was gone. not hard to figure it out--it had to be back in the water. sure enough, when i skated back, i could see it lying atop the old, bottom ice, beneath the thin, broken top ice--in the water.

i picked it up and stuffed it into my pants pocket. skating up to skip, we heard the tone of an incoming message. something was still working. a few minutes later, another tone made me take it out and look. i took a picture of the pendletons, thinking maybe i was going to be lucky.

the image was still pretty sharp. even the shadow of the phone in my hands looks clear.

we skated for another couple hours, circumnavigating the winding shoreline, from cove to cove. toward the end, we found a couple of clean, smooth lines that crossed one of the widest portions of the pond and skated back and forth multiple times. at one point linda lay on the ice, absorbing the sun and resting up for a final push against the strengthening wind.

as we took off our blades we were all smiling--it was a sweet skate.


so sweet i woke up on monday and went off to try goose pond's ice. bright sun again, colder-ish, and about the same wind. i was all alone this time and able to fly to the north end with a couple of side trips exploring and launching off ice rising up sharply around sunken boulders. one large flake jutting up at a sharp angle lifted me into the air for a couple of feet when i hit it with good speed.


getting to the northernmost cove on the lake included crossing a stream of water running along a crack from the western to eastern shores. i wasn't too worried about falling through, but i didn't want do any more push ups in the water on the surface like at grafton pond. once across, the ice deteriorated, so i made a quick loop and recrossed the watery crack.


zigging and zagging, shore to shore i came back to the dam at the south end. i tried taking a panoramic, but this time the image was really blurry--i assumed moisture had finally infiltrated to the electronics and was now doing its damage.

the dam to the left, the 'beach' to the right, and the shadow pointing pretty much toward the north end makes for a weird perspective.

even with the failing phone/camera, it was a grand day outside and playing. when i go back inside, i will see if the ol' bag of rice trick can make the phone 'smart' again.