Hi,
We are in eastern ma, and this year we got a good solid 5 or 6 inches on our ponds. Then a foot of snow and a warmer week. When we drill, water pushes up the hole and floods. Yesterday, gray pools are forming on top and it’s slushy as hell. Now we are getting another 6 inches and a frigid week.
How do I gauge this for safety? Is the weight just too much?
Pete
Hi,
We are in eastern ma, and this year we got a good solid 5 or 6 inches on our ponds. Then a foot of snow and a warmer week. When we drill, water pushes up the hole and floods. Yesterday, gray pools are forming on top and it’s slushy as hell. Now we are getting another 6 inches and a frigid week.How do I gauge this for safety? Is the weight just too much?
Pete
IMO, with 5-6 inches of ice and a foot of snow, thats gonna make some serious dangerous ice conditions.
This reminds me of the time when there was like 2-3 inches of ice on top, sandwiched with 3-4 inches of water, then the bottom of 4-6 inches of ice bottom.
That was always scary when the ice was thin like 1/2 inch and your feet breaks through to water, then solid ice way under.
Take a spud bar with.Sometimes you can walk on top of that sandwich ice,very freaky when you do break through that crust layer.Lots of insulation keeping the main layer from further freezing.
Basics of ice safety on questionable ice is to wear a float suit (at least the bibs), have ice picks around the neck, carry sharpened HEAVY spud bar (like the Rapala version), carry a ‘rescue line throw bag’, and utilize the buddy system.
That sandwich ice can be really scary. Sometimes you’ll bust through the top layer routinely and it’ll pucker your you-know-what. It’s one of my least favorite conditions on the ice. Hopefully the whole series of layers harden and fuse up.
Slush has little to do with ice safety. The ice is not a bridge from bank to bank, it is a raft. Ice is about 8% less dense than water, so it floats, about 8% out of the water. 6 inches of ice with no weight on top would float with the ice surface about 1/2 inch above the water surface. If you stand on it, it bows down slightly, and that half inch is slightly less. If you put a foot of snow on top, the weight of that snow will push the top of the ice under water. Water will come up through every crack and hole, and make slush. Eventually, the snow will settle and the slush will freeze into “white ice”, and become part of the total ice thickness, and you can walk on that new surface.
As someone also stated, there is a point where the top of this new surface freezes, and the underneath is still slushy, and you get layers of crust and ice, but the original 6 inches of clear ice is still there, and melts extremely slowly, so unless you are near springs or warm water, it is still safe.
Out here, the larger concern is going to be the shore edges rotting as the snow melts on shore, and boat ramps and streams melting the clear ice from underneath.
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