Miles and Miles of Crack

No two of them look alike, though they often show up in around the same place every year.
A pressure crack, this time with sporadic little frost growths all along it, unlike this one, that was just steps away.

The ice is beginning to be safer, but as this crack clearly shows, it's FAR from safe yet.
I would have been WAY over my head if the ice gave way.
I wasn't the only fool out there though...Ice fishermen were right next to where I was.


As I was taking pictures, I heard this bubbling and then an unearthly sound I have no way of describing, building in intensity...I was totally spooked, and started back to shore.

Then there was a thunderous cracking sound, and a massive pressure crack formed about twenty yards south of this spot.
You can see it under the airplane in this picture.


I wanted to get closer pictures...but that was ill advised.

The pressure from this break caused the ice to jut about a foot and a half from the surface, running along the length of it. That's when most of the fishermen and I beat a hasty retreat.

"I'm just gonna go home and change my pants now" I said to them.

On the way back to land, a guy went through the ice, about five yards from shore, right in front of me.
They used a rope and grappling hook to pull his fishing gear in, which was on one of those sleds they use.
When I arrived at the spot, I asked for the best way to cross this last bit of ice, and they showed me the way that those of them that made it safely went.
"Swiftly" said the guy that got what we here in Canada call a "soaker"*.

As I was leaving I heard this same guy say "I don't even know if I want to go fishing anymore", which led me to believe they were thinking of heading further south on the lake, where the ice is thicker.
Can't blame him...I just about "painted" my underpants too, and I didn't get soaked afterward.
Nothing puts a damper on a good time like...well...being damp, in -12c temperatures.


I'm going to say this was four inches of ice at this location, further south (this pic is the view pointing north) it's six or seven inches....snowmobiles are already racing around on the ice down there.

Imagine the force it takes to push four inch thick slabs of ice weighing tonnes around like they were nothing.

*Do YOU call getting wet after going through the ice a "soaker"?
I'm interested in knowing if this a common turn of phrase or if it's a Canadian thing.

This picture hasn't been cropped, you can see the little blemish up at the top there, that I put my moniker over.
I usually crop this flaw on my lens out of pictures, but couldn't do it without losing the horizon, which really shows you how far these cracks run.