A Proper Winter
Wednesday, February 5, 2014 at 09:45PM 
The Palisades on the NY shore of Lake Champlain.
We have had a great ice year on Lake Champlain. We have been able to skate to places we normally can't get to. The ice has also taught us a few things: It gave some people more respect for big ice and the reality that ice is constantly evolving. The first half of the week the ice seemed stable and unchanging. By the end of the week there were several tricky ridges, holes, wide wet cracks and leads. These developed in a period of mostly cold weather. This resulted in several swims over the weekend when reports of great skating unleashed a sizable weekend crowd. One swim near the Palisades by an experienced skater who was looking at his camera while he skated onto a folded ridge.
This is the same ridge two days later. The plates have floated back making a loose plate ridge.
Another fell through to the waist in a small ridge. He had a dry suit on and was happy for it. Another fell through to the waist in an 18" wide wet crack that looked a lot narrower than it was. She made a quick exit and had a change of dry cloths, allowing her to continue on.
The wide wet crack is as wide as the distance between the poles. The white snow-catch ice over the crack is weak.
The most serious was a solo skater who skated into a large bird hole.
This is the smaller of two holes that are kept open, at least in part, by large numbers of Geese and compression forces in the ice sheet. This one is about 50 ft wide and 150 feet long.He wore his red ice fishing claws around his neck. They got lifted over his head as he fell in and once they loose they sank! He got out by using his skating poles as ice claws.
Most ice claws made for ice fishermen are made with materials that cause them to sink if they get loose.
He also lost one skate in the process, making getting back to shore difficult (he recommends always carrying foot traction -microspikes and yach tracks are examples). This was a clear affirmation about something we all know: Skating alone provides great flexibility on when and where you skate but it provides little safety margin if things go wrong as they inevitably will, sooner or later.
