On Saturday, while my nephew Ian was playing in a hockey game, my sister Elaine & I went out with Erin and Dion to skate on the river. What’s interesting, is I’m fairly certain this is the first time I’ve skated on this river. It amazes me really, because I grew up skating all the time (at the rink at school and at the dugout in our pasture)… and I’ve certainly spent many a summer hour wading through the river. My brother and I even paddled a canoe downstream one summer when the water was high enough that it covered the barbed wire fences. But skate on it? Never.
Anyways, that’s exactly what we did on the weekend! It was fantastic… the sun was shining, my niece, nephew, sister and brother Gordie made wonderful company, the ice was amazingly smooth, there was no one around and the scenery was beautiful as always. I love skating on The Forks river trail, but this surpassed that in so many ways (even though the length we were able to skate was only about a quarter mile). It felt like such an adventure to skate on a surface that I’ve never skated before and I loved that when I took a break to lay down in the middle of the ice to soak up the sun, that I could hear it shifting beneath me. It was also really neat that we could skate up to open water, and see how the ice swelled up into a small hill away from it.
There was also this lovely shimmery layer of snow over top of the ice… almost crystal like… and where the springs had recently flooded over top, the ice was smooth as glass, and almost turquoise.
Home just keeps getting better and better.
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My sister Elaine took some photos too… see them on her Flickr stream. This one to the right is an Instagram snap by her… and yes, I really was that happy.
This ice is caused by overflow. The water seems to find it’s way to the top at the edges, and slowly floods the surface. The top of the overflow will freeze, and the water will flow between the ice layers, for a distance. The ice here, is about 4 feet thick. The soil the river flows on is silty & loose shale, so the water can easily flow through the soil. As well there are plenty of springs. A little farther downstream and upstream there is an open stream of flowing water for short distances that don’t seem to freeze, even in the coldest weather.
Thanks for the explanation Gordie!