These photos are from a while back when a friend and I ventured out on the ice at Lake Audubon. As you can see, the ice was very thick at the time…nearly three feet in places! The slab pressed upward by the pressure ridge in the photo above is around twelve feet tall. Ice that thick is easily capable of supporting a vehicle or ice house. What about the lake today?

This sort of ice hasn’t had the time or the cold to form yet, but I’m told there are plenty of guys heading out onto the ice with their big pickup trucks and fishing gear. A friend of mine drilled a test hole this weekend and found the ice to be twelve inches thick…essentially the bare minimum for that sort of thing. Then we had 50+ degree weather yesterday, which couldn’t have helped things much.

I wonder how long it’ll take for the ice to thicken, and whether or not someone’s going to “take the plunge” before that happens? As for me, I think I’ll stay on terra firmer for a while until the ice sheet gets a little more fortified.