Magic Ice


Last year, somewhere around the end of March, a group of us ventured out in search of some water to throw our kayaks in. For some reason, we thought Deerfield Lake (the coldest, highest lake in the Black Hills) was the best place to go. First we stopped off at Flag Mountain to stretch our legs and enjoy a good view. There we noticed we could see all the way to the lake and were heartbroken by its very obvious still-frozen-ness. We decided that there was no harm in venturing down there anyway and took the road through Reynolds Prairie and down to the Northwest side of the lake. To our delight, we were greeted with a roughly 6-10 foot ribbon of water between ice and shore. I decided that was enough water for me and threw my boat in and paddled around the corner. I had no idea I was about to discover something amazing…

As my dog Tuesday ran the shoreline with me, I paddled away from our whole group, into the peacefully silence of a just waking ecosystem. For the most part it was all pretty effortless with the exception of a few places where I had to break the ice with my paddle to keep going. Where there was ice it was pretty thin and manageable. But then all of a sudden it changed into what I can only refer to as “Magic Ice” – the best way I can think to describe it is that it was like millions of pencil shaped ice crystals floating in water. That might not sound that cool, but when you hit the ice with your paddle the singular ice crystals would pop up out of the water and create super awesome towers. It was simply one of the coolest things I had ever seen. I went back and got Jaci and we spent hours whacking the ice and delighting in the results. It was like kayaking through a giant slushy.

Now, throughout the year, I would tell the story of the magic ice to people, and I would whip out my phone and show them the video of it and they would almost always say the same thing “I wonder if that’s something that normally occurs or if it was something truly unique?” Which, I have to admit, I thought to myself at the time of discovery. I mean, how cool would it be if we were the only ones who had ever seen that phenomena before?!?  The naturalist/scientists/discoverer in me had a solution to this. Why, we’ll just go back again a year later and see if it happens again. So, we did….

 

Unfortunately, This year’s trip up wasn’t as rewarding. After getting stuck in the snow on the way we finally reached the lake only to be greeted by nothing but ice. We knew it was much colder this Spring and we budgeted in an extra week before we went back, but sadly the lake and the magic ice still wasn’t ready. We arrived to a solid lake, frozen (almost) all the way to the shore. There was no way to get a boat into the water. That didn’t stop us from spending some time exploring along the shore line and witnessing a new phenomenon that was pretty cool… behold:

My theory is that even though the layer of ice was the size of the lake, it was free from the shore line and therefore floating on top of the water. The entire sheet of ice was bobbing up and down very subtly and creating the illusion that the water was draining out of the lake and then filling up again. It really did look like the lake was breathing and was completely hypnotizing.

Our quest to find the magic ice wasn’t a total failure though. We did discover that the ice crystals were there, they were just still too frozen together to create the magic pop. I think a couple more weeks and we’ll be in business.

I’ll be sure to let you know the results.

Until next time!