No Clues

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Birch Lake froze on November 30, pretty much typical if our year-by-year record is to be trusted. This time is different, though. Usually I get to enjoy watching the ice slowly form, a sheet gradually spreading out from shore while the water gives up its heat energy, until after a very cold and still night, there it is: a complete pane, shore to shore, glistening in the sun. This time we were away for ten days, and on arriving home we could see from our perch on a hill just a few patches of open water, the rest of the panorama pure white from three inches of new snow. The next morning the open patches were gone, the ice completely snow-covered.

Now about six inches of snow lies atop the ice, and that’s a problem. Each year I have to judge when it’s safe to take my walks on the lake perimeter, hugging the shoreline, and when the ice has thickened enough for safe fishing on my favorite spots above 12 to 15 feet of water. So each year I monitor the conditions as the cold days go by. It helps greatly if the ice is free of snow, because then I can read the visual signs, chiefly the stress cracks that form as the ice thickens and expands. A crack will show how close we are to the four or five inches I want under my boots before venturing out over deep water. Various sources say two inches, or a little more, will support a person my size on foot, but I prefer an ample margin of safety. I’m going to die of something, but ideally not by drowning after breaking through lake ice.

But now I can’t examine stress cracks or other clues, and I’m not eager to apply the creak test, slowly edging out to see if the ice begins to buckle beneath me. So maybe I have to rely on math before I venture out and apply the acid test: drilling holes with the electric auger. Once the first ice forms, it initially thickens by an inch per 15 freezing degree days. That’s defined as the number of degrees by which a day’s average temperature falls below the freezing point of 32 Fahrenheit—so a day with an average temperature of 17 degrees counts as 15 freezing degree-days. We’ve had lots of freezing degree-days since the lake iced over but, ice being a passable insulator, the progress of freezing slows down as the sheet grows thicker. If I were to guess, I’d say based on experience that Birch Lake now has about three inches of sound ice out away from shore where I like to fish.

I believe I’ll give it another two to three days of deep cold before I walk out onto the snow and see how rigid the ice feels underfoot, and whether it’s time for that drill test. The start of ice fishing can wait a little while. Winters, as we say up here, are long.