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The 2023 ice season is off to a good start. I’ve been out twice so far, thanks to Evan Perkins’s timely reporting of ice conditions to the Vermont and New Hampshire email lists. First a wonderful midday skate on the black and gray ice of Beaver Pond, second a morning skate on the lightly textured slush ice of Keiser Pond. I’ve also been adding ice entries to the atlas.

It’s time to get your skates sharp! I’ve added links to a couple of videos on how to sharpen Nordic skates. I’ve also added a couple of interesting papers on ice feature formation. And I’ve updated and reorganized the Nordic skating groups list.

In my introductory post I highlighted some useful features of the new atlas. Here are a few more.

It’s the start of another ice season and it’s time to relaunch the Ice Atlas. It’s an atlas for real now, with maps on every page. I’ve added launches and parking (and even a couple of restaurants!), useful links, lots of information, and of course photos and videos. For now it only covers ice in Vermont and New Hampshire, and just under two dozen spots to start with, but I’ll be expanding it steadily. Maine and New York will be along, I’ll be adding more detail to the existing entries, and I’ll be adding features like being able to see the latest satellite images right in the atlas.

Local ice boating and ice rescue expert Jay Whitehair is giving a talk at the Norwich Public Library on Wednesday (tomorrow), from 6-7pm. I’ll be there and am looking forward to it.

Very sad news: Bob Dill is gone. He was an inspiration for me, as for many, and this website would not exist without his example. His family published an obituary in Seven Days, and the IDNIYRA published their own memorial. And, of course, Lake Ice will continue on. It’s almost ice season, time to read what Bob wrote again.

We checked out a few ponds and lakes today. Nothing was great, all variations on semi frozen but very flimsy snow ice on top of harder, older ice. Will it be cold enough for long enough tonight to make a decent surface in the morning?

Grafton Pond is in excellent shape: 100% skateable, and the ice level is significantly higher than it was the last time we were out on it in December (and than the water level was last fall), so there’s more to skate and more islands in place of peninsulas.

We spent the morning skating on Smith Pond. It’s in excellent shape: 100% skateable, all decent, some large areas of smooth-like-glass ice, some fruit peel ice, a very few snow drifts, some frozen pedestrian and animal tracks, some bumpy areas, a tiny amount of shell ice.

Additional notes on satellite imaging for ice scouting, in the form of Q+A.

Getting the images while on the ice (or otherwise on the go).

Examples. Looking at images of Lake Winnipesaukee and Sunapee Lake to understand the ice.

Visualizing the data. Now that you have something to look at in the EO Browser, what do you look for?

Using satellite images to scout ice can be super helpful. The data that’s now freely available is absolutely incredible. But if you’re not up-to-speed on how to acquire and interpret the images, they can be a little confusing at first. Thus, I’ve written this primer.

Play video For the third time in three days I skated from the north beach to the gap. Each day it’s been a very distinct experience, all of them amazing.

We tried to skate south along the eastern shore of Lake Sunapee this afternoon, putting in at the Georges Mills town beach, but conditions didn’t allow us to get very far. After 45 minutes we had only made it about 2.5 km, most of which was walking through dense foam-like snow, sometimes postholing, often breaking through the crust into ≈4” of slush. There were a couple short stretches of skateable ice, mostly covered with a light skim of snow.

Welcome to Catamount Hardware, now home to the Nordic Skating Atlas. My short-term goal for this project is to collect and make easily accessible a range of useful information about places to skate in northern New England, including launch sites, parking, weather, bathymetry, and other commentary. I’m starting with places I’ve skated recently, and I’ll continue to expand from there.

As many others have reported, Waterbury Reservoir’s in good shape. Very consistent gray ice, ranging from very smooth to citrus peel to lightly scalloped. Some snow cover, and today, with an air temperature of 40º F when we started mid afternoon, that was mostly soft and not great to skate on / through. Occasional small areas were soft enough to slice down into with our blades, firm 1 cm slush. Once it all refreezes it should be even better.

Another great day on Moore. Lots of list folks out, everyone happy and friendly and having a great time. Just wanted to report that, sadly, it got enough snow, rain, and sleet today that it’s probably not going to be fun skating until some resurfacing happens. (If I’m wrong, someone please shout!) It mostly looked like the attached photo by the time we got off the ice this afternoon.

Amazing day on Moore Reservoir, thanks to Evan for the prompt update this morning. I believe a number of folks on this list took advantage of it. Following Evan’s on-ice advice, I followed the north shore upstream (yellow arrows). His emailed description from earlier today was completely accurate: almost all the ice was fantastic, some of it was just perfect, and there very occasional areas of shell-on-water. (The big ones I found are marked with yellow circles.

I took a very short spin on Lake Fairlee. It was ≈1” of smooth ice on top of 2-3” of water, on top of 7”+ of ice. There were skateable sections, but mostly it was shell on water. Video attached. The ice fishing season has moved from ATVs and tent shanties to pickups and tow behind ice houses. The pressure ridge in the middle of the lake has frozen over more than before, but is also more of an over folded ridge.

When I joined the Nordic skating lists, I frequently found that messages were winding up in my spam folder. I’ve heard from others that this is a shared problem. Here’s how to prevent that from happening, at least for Gmail accounts.

First, a caution: This is a report on wild ice, meaning thin ice with notable objective hazards. This is not (yet) the Lake Morey of the maintained and safe skating trail. Wear safety gear, check the ice yourself, and be prepared for surprises. I spent the afternoon on Lake Morey, and it was delightful. I checked the ice thickness many times in many places (using my pole and a Skyllermarks ice gauge). The thinnest I found (and I got off it immediately) was 5cm; otherwise it was 6-8cm. By the end of the afternoon (4pm) I was consistently finding 8cm ice. Not to say thinner ice isn’t there, I was just carefully avoiding it.

Out on Crystal Lake in Enfield NH right now. Very thick gray ice. The spots we’ve tested (with sticks and ice screws) have been too thick to get through, so 6”+. Ice fishing holes near the island on the west side are 10-12” deep.

After a nice long skate on Fairlee today, we stopped by Morey to see how it’s coming along. From the resort it looked like the whole thing is covered with beautiful black ice. We only tested it right by the shore, and it was a hair under an inch thick. We’ve got another complicated week of weather coming up, but perhaps it’ll be thick enough to explore before the next warm rainy spell.

We’re out on Fairlee right now and it’s fully skateable. Ice fishers out across the lake, one guy on an ATV. We haven’t managed to poke through the ice and keep getting bored around 6”. Ice fishers are reporting 6”+ everywhere as well. Texture is citrus peel-y, with very light snow dusting. Very similar to how it was before the thaw. Photo attached. Annotated map attached as well. Green circle is skate launch; red line is the usual pressure ridge, with thick ice passage along the south shore; white squiggle is snow along the north shore of the eastern lobe.

In late December the ice came in on Squam Lake. Some skaters were lucky enough to get miles of limpid black ice; the day that Sarah and I went out it snowed lightly, just a dusting on the surface, but enough to obscure the lake underneath. The day we were out five people fell through, in three completely separate, unrelated (and unknown to each other) groups. All were fine. We were one of the groups that broke through; we were prepared and everything went completely smoothly.