Thin ice

This week I was rushed, and left home without finding in which coat's pocket my camera is hiding, so there are just a couple of shots from the cell phone before I zipped it inside the drysuit.

We launched from Oakledge, the southernmost park in Burlington.






Out to that point there's a thin skim of ice, maybe 2-3 mm. It is thin enough to flex and ride over the small waves on this calm day. You can just paddle through it, making a loud zipper sound as your kayak opens its own channel.

The platforms further out carry the nickname "dolphins," no idea why. They were used to offload oil from barges into the tank farm behind me. As far as I know, oil barge traffic on the lake ended in the 1980's.

We went by a couple of other coves that were well frozen, and I ran up onto a free floating slab that was about 6 inches thick. Other than that it was just a nice calm sunny day.

As we were packing up, a lone kayaker showed up with his boat on one of those 2 wheeled portage trailers, having walked it from home. Some reassurance that we aren't uniquely nuts for going out in winter.