Thursday, November 26, 2009

Walking on Thin Ice?




I was up at Wollaston, Saskatchewan last week with Cyrielle and wanted to go for a walk to the Northern Store in Hatchet Lake... well there are two options - the ring road around the bay or across the bay. As we were walking, we considered that the bay was a considerably shorter distance to traverse than the ring road, we saw people playing hockey and we saw ski-dooers crossing... we decided to cross the bay.

Now initially we hesitated as I've heard that ski-doos can cross open water if they maintain their speed... I've even seen a picture of it... maybe youtube even has videos. I would personally not want to test the theory as I did hear a story about someone running out of fuel in the middle of the bay and their ski-doo sank.


After what seemed like a significant delay in neural processing, we started across the water. We did however stop to check the depth of the ice as we proceeded... it seemed to range between 4 inches and thinker. If you look closely, my foot is next to a transverse section of crack (horizontal across the photo) - it is about 4 inches deep. The unerving part of crossing the bay was that when we started we could see the bottom with the rocks... then as we delved farther from shore the water beneath the ice turned black!!!

It was exhilarating to walk cross the ice!! Our current philosophical debate is now centred on whether that consitutes walking on water??



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Both those posts make me want to pass out. First, from the thought of stitches, I'm queasy already, and 2ndly, from being able to see the lake beneath the ice. |You would have had to knock me out first!!!! I HATE deep dark water. HATE. really HATE.

Glad you could do it!

Love Kel

Anonymous said...

NEEDING an update!!!! You were doing so well! Soo.....what about Mike????

Kel

Anonymous said...

Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!