Mendota Black Ice
Earlier today, I posted a picture of the snow-covered ice of Lake Mendota. This evening I recieve an email and pair of amazing pictures from Alice Hagen.
Here is the first pic, her description of this day, and then a second picture. Clicking on both pics gets you larger & differently cropped versions:
I first joined the skate tribe as a member of the Madison clan! Skating on Lake Mendota is hard to come by. Most of outdoor skating in Madison is done on the lagoons at Vilas Park which are groomed as the weather allows. Skating on Lake Mendota takes the right combination of a hard freeze, low wind, and no snow to make for decent skating.On January 1, 1999, I was fortunate to experience such an event with fellow skate tribe members Amy Fuelleman and Dave Evans. The lake froze solid pretty much in one night. We braved sub-zero temps to get out on the ice, and it was worth it - it was pretty much glass.
The ice was about 5 inches thick and crystal clear. The craziest part about the whole thing was that as you were skating, you could see the lake bottom about 10 feet below - this caused some vertigo while skating - especially when a fish would swim by!!!!
-Alice Hagen
Thanks Alice!! Many times, I have seen beautiful pictures of Europeans on natural ice that simply makes me sooo jealous! Thanks for helping show that we have great black ice here too!
A Dutch sports scientist once said “A winter of natural ice skating is worth more than all the scientific papers & physiological analysis of speedskating ever written!” Looking at pics like this, one can see why!
Filed under: on the road, from the coffee shop
Black ice–something to behold! I have never been on black ice, except for the type you drive on. I remember talking to “Doc” Maynard at the Petitt back in May ‘05 about the possibility that the fastest possible speeds/records could be set on natural ice such as you describe.
I have had my eyes set on Bear Paw Lake, just 3 miles south of Chilliwack, BC, at 5130′ and just large enough for a regulation 400m track. The downside right now is it is under at least 200″ of snow and I don’t see any rational reason to attempt to dig it out. (run a search on Google Earth for “98295″–which happens to be just 1/4 mile east of my farm. Pan east about 6 miles or so, and you’ll run smack into Bear Paw Lake.)
Can’t wait till late spring when the lake may be skateable…
About fastest speed on natural ice, we skated some river black ice that was normal glass like and then came over a bit of black ice with structure. A better skater than me said he could feel it was much faster…
Maybe in the quest for tenths of a second a track should be tested to see if having a structure would make a difference? It seems that all smooth shapes in nature do have some structure that helps with air/water flow.
Fantastic ice! Sigh…
We had those great expanses of ice last year around Oslo, this year we’ve had too much snow so our black ice periods have been few and short.
And skating is so nice when you don’t have a crappy turn coming up in a few meters to throw one off one’s rythm.
Turns should only be practised doing circles around up croppping rocks or bouys to break the monotony or ease the muscles, or going around land details…
Ive skated many times on black ice in New England and I love it! What really used to scare me was the safety cracks. They would rumble through like thunder and you could feel the whole ice sheet settle. It would always cause us to race for the shore like crazy.