Frozen Lake Walk

We've had some bitter cold weather here lately, which is good! I've been looking forward to this weather occurring for a while because it is what we need in order to freeze the damn lakes and ponds LOL. Last year we didn't get any persistent deep freeze weather and it was pretty annoying. This year that has changed which is a good thing!

We missed out last year for sure on the cold weather activities because we just sadly didn't get a whole lot of cold weather. It was enjoyable in it's own right, because you could go outside walking most of the time and your face didn't feel like it was getting frost bite. With this past week or so we've had what we didn't get last year which is a consistent week of temperatures that didn't get above freezing at all! I know most people would be complaining about it but I've been loving it haha.

The ice on the lake is finally thick enough for people to walk on! I haven't ventured out on it yet because it was actually incredibly steep of a dip between the sand shoreline and the actual flat ice for us to walk on. We didn't have cleats on and we would have slipped on our ass if we tried to venture out on it lol so we felt it is best to just stay on land and appreciate it from there.

As you can see in the picture above, the shoreline ice was pretty thick! The ice in the shallows is even thicker but we can't get out that far since we didn't want to fall. The shoreline ice was about 4 inches thick which is pretty darn good for shoreline ice considering that it has used up all its moisture to make the ice. The ice on the actual water is likely double that, I would say around 8 inches thick. This makes very good ice for doing things that you'd like to do such as ice skating or ice fishing on the lake. I didn't see anyone out there yet because it was in the teens for temperatures but I'm sure that if things warm up into the 30's this coming week, there will absolutely be people mulling about and enjoying it!

I love being able to look out at the lake and just seeing the wide open expanse of ice everywhere. The stuff in the middle is definitely not safe to walk on - the dark spot you can see in the pictures that is in the deepest parts of the lake. That is because it's moving open water. Yeah it is frozen but maybe only 3 inches thick or so, maybe a little bit more. I wouldn't trust myself walking on that unless I had cross country skis or something lol to spread my weight out quite a bit. No need to fall into the frigid water and have a heart attack hahaha.

It's really cool to see the lake finally frozen though. There is such a peaceful feel to it, very quiet and somber. There isn't all kinds of boats and shit all over the place, or jet skis making all that noise. Occasionally there will be someone skating across the ice but for the most part - everything is still and quiet. I think that's what I enjoy the most about winter, especially when I go out hiking with my son in the snow. The places that we go are incredibly quiet not only from the silence of the lack of animals moving around but the snow blanketing the area creates such a deep quiet it's really nice!

I am hoping to be able to get out here next weekend to do some exploring around! My son and I have walked around quite a bit of the lake with the water levels being down and drained but now that the lake is frozen, and we've got some continued freezing temperatures coming up in the next week or so, the lake will be a good solid ice cube for a while! As long as we don't get a week of 50 degree weather, this should remain this way for the rest of the winter which would be nice.

I would love to go around the other parts of the lake that we don't get to very often, I've got a couple places in mind. It would be nice to go down to those areas and just walk along the bank, on the shallow ice of course just to be cautious and just see what everything is like. The more we can explore around, the more we can figure out the little nooks and crannies for fishing and stuff!

When we got to the lake here, the temperature was 15 degrees. When we left, it got down to 13 LOL so it was really planning on adding a couple inches of ice to the layer that was already there! I'll take it for sure. I also have to get my son an updated pair of ice skates so we can try to skate around the place a little bit!