Ice Breaker Week-End : Trip Report by Tom
9 of us decided to uphold the MOC ice breaking tradition. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, we drive down for a weekend of paddling near Lake Saranac in Upper State New York. Now remember this was last weekend, so we're talking mid November as the lakes begin to freeze. Think about the cold of winter camping and the wet of canoeing now do the unthinkable and put them together and you have the ice breaker trip: the search for ice to break in our aluminum boats.
Driving to our departure point was daunting as the first lake we saw was completely frozen over, a lake I've paddled across during the most frozen over ice breaker that I've been witness to. Once we got over the light bickering about who was going to be the third wheel in the canoe as Isla graciously signed up for the task, we hit the water. I don't think we made it 300 yards before we hit ice. Instead of taking the detour we pushed through excited and almost disappointed, because the whole point of the trip is to find ice and now that it was found it we've lost the excitement of the search. Not that the feeling lasted long, instead we came up with the search for a method to get through this ice. We pretty much spent the bulk of the next two days breaking ice up to 3 inches thick. We perfected the ice breaking technique.
Here's how to break ice:
The leading canoe should have one paddler with decent stamina, his role is twofold: first he has to help steer his boat and has to rock it side by side. This helps break up the ice; he's also best standing near the back of the boat so that there is little weight on the front so that it will slide up onto the ice without too much effort. The next boat should have three paddlers and stays very close, the rear two paddlers just paddle and brace the boat during the push off. The front paddler helps paddle when they can and has to push the front boat forwards. This is the driving force of the effort. The remainder boats follow suit and relieve stress of the boats in front of them by pushing. Properly coordinated this technique will give you about .5 to 1 knot speed and make a rather impressive sound as the aluminum boats crash through the ice.
We didn't do our normal loop, which meant covering a lot less ground but saved us some grueling portages which wasn't missed by anyone. For the next group that is thinking about going next week, chances are slim that you'll be able to go, but if the weather stays warm like they say it will be you might make it.
I'd just like to give a little credit to everyone this weekend for working so well together, but special mentions for Marianne for being the driving force, kneeling in water she kept pushing without a single complaint, Steve for surviving on nothing but oatmeal, the French pair for making our food look second rate next to theirs, Isla for volunteering to be the middle paddler, Peter for showing us that you can do an ice breaker in a cotton t-shirt and sneakers, Olivier for the wonderful photos, Marc for lying about not hating our couscous and still giving us some Belgian chocolate for the effort and most importantly to Vero for camping with me in sub zero and loving it.
A few other little things that we've learned on this trip is, eating by the famous turtle is stupid as it's the coldest place to be, there are much better shelters to stop for lunch. There is no wood on the island that we camp on on Follensby Pond, but a short canoe west of the island, along the portage is a great place to harvest wood. Sausages make a great meal on a campfire.
Here is the link to the current photos:
Photos
And here is the link to my old photos if you'd like to compare old ice breaker trips to this one
Old Photos
tom