Waking up at 5:30am to the patter of rain isn't the most inspiring paddling weather, especially when it's thirty degrees out in February. So after stretching and pulling a strange combination of odd fabrics onto my frame and consuming a cup of coffee that left me chewing grinds, it was time to roll.
Pulling the truck down to the launch for the lake it hit me that I had forgot a pole. The launch is located at the top of a long inlet that is connected to several others eventually leading to a main channel. The entire inlet was covered in ice a thick sheet of ice. So thick that several weeks prior Tony and I had rode bikes out across the ice only to find a shelf about a half mile out leading to open water, cutting the ride short.
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| Out on the inlet. Somewhere around nine degrees |
Simply with the potential for some open water paddling, we decided to unrack boats and start shoving across the half mile of ice that separated us from the hopefully clear main channel. The forgotten pole would have been a great addition to the paddle and claw-like shovel kept in the truck for digging out.
Getting on the ice was a simple task, get across it was not.
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Pushing across the inlet about half way. The slush had just started and was only getting thicker.
This was where it felt like you where pushing a canoe across wet sand. |
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The forward thrust is effective and
good practice. Open water in the distance. |
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| Very cool looking holes coming up through the ice. |
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| A thin ice sheet that spread for thousands of feet provided a bit of entertainment with trapped air bubbles beaming out from the paddle blade with ever stroke. |
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| Some crazy storm clouds rolled right in front of the sun for about twenty minutes. So thick it turned the early morning back to night. The sun was so filtered by the clouds it appeared as a full moon. |
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| Returning onto the ice shelf. Jeff wasnt to stoked about this. |
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On the way back to to the inlet the path we had created was already turning to a channel.
Making the slide just a little bit easier. |
After two and half hours of breaking through and pushing across ice, getting rained on, and having the sun blotted out we needed to rack boats and get going work. if your not living your dying.
