Monday, November 25, 2013

Too Cold to Work

When it's 8 degrees out and wildly windy, there are better things to do than work on the little building.  So a little pond hockey was in order.  Most of the ponds and lakes in the area are not frozen, but this one is.  The water depth is only about three feet and it's at around 2300 feet in elevation so it freezes early.  We shoveled for about thirty minutes and then played hockey for a few hours.  The photo is the departing shot at the end of the afternoon with Cascade Mountain in the background.

What was interesting about the day, beyond the normal beauty of playing hockey in such a setting, was the behavior of the ice, which had a great deal of flexibility to it.  It would compress one to two inches if two skaters were next to each other.  We ultimately attributed this to the conditions under the ice and under the water.  It is called "Mud Pond," and our assumption is that the mass of organic matter on the bottom was compressing, allowing the ice some space to move.

Interesting.

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