Skating on a Lake

A little more than two weeks ago I was randomly invited to go iceskating on a lake that had frozen over this winter. Now, as it had already turned into March, the ice was melting away but it was still thick enough to skate on… or so they said.

The skates I was going to use strapped onto my boots, the big mistake I made was to bring a pair of boots that were very soft. Honestly I forgot that I had a pair of other boots in storage as I have hardly ever used them, so I figured I had no other option. The result was that my feet could not handle the skates at all and I ended up using a pair of sticks to be able to get anywhere, while struggling to not twist my ankles.

The ice started out looking kind of ok, the surface was a bit soft, but it worked. In the beginning the inside of my head was a theater showing all kinds of horror scenarios about going under the ice, but it stopped when I had to focus at trying to keep up with the other people without breaking my feet and suffering from burning arms.

We traversed suspicious white ice, scary cracks, spooky dark ice and finally ended up where the ice transitioned into open water. After this we had a break at a nearby island to grill some hot dogs and relax. While doing this a whole lot of other skaters went by, which was reassuring as it would suggest that the ice actually was fine. After this went back out on the ice, but a different route, and eventually managed to get back to where we started. Phew!

All in all it’s pretty nice being out on a lake like that, I just need to wear better boots next time. As a bonus we went to a different area on the way home as there were supposed to be icebergs there. In reality it was tons of ice that had been piling up, and my adventurous friends that lack any sense of self preservation of course ran straight out to it. As they did survive I followed, recorded some video and took a bunch of photos.

Below is a large number of pictures from the skating taken with the Go Pro HD Hero and the island plus ice taken with the GF1. Just following the titles for all images will give you the entire story, pretty much :) I do notice that my image display plugin is acting up though… not sure what’s up with that. Perhaps it’s just my browser. Oh, and at the very bottom is a short video I cut together!

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One Response to Skating on a Lake

  1. Pingback: Ryds Grottor | A. Aronsson's WeBOLLog

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