Re: [Paddlewise] Winter paddling and ice

Maybe there is an advantage to living in N. California.  Lake Nacimiento was about 55 degrees last weekend ... There were just 4 kayaks and about 20 motorboats sharing 16 miles of lake.

Here's a question - How much of the east coast is subject to icing of rivers and lakes?  I've seen pictures of the Potomac with sheets of ice ... Do rivers and lakes often freeze further south than the Potomac?

jerry.


At 04:55 PM 02/02/2000 -0500, John Waddington wrote:
>I want to second Ralph's comments and add an extra.  I often
>paddle in the winter.  In front of where I live I have about a 50
>metre expanse of ice which I slide across, then, where the current
>is always strong, there is a narrow passage of open water out past
>an island to the main channel.  Last winter I was out one day
>where there was a fairly strong offshore wind.  I didn't worry
>about it much since I was sheltered by the trees on the shore. 
>Unfortunately the wind shifted while I was out.  A great deal of
>the broken ice, which had been pushed to the other side of the
>river by the offshore wind, suddenly came back and started to jam
>my passage to home.  This was grinding, crushing, loose pans of
>ice anywhere from 1 metre to 10 metres in diameter. If I had been
>caught in it it could have crushed my kayak easily as the pressure
>from wind-pushed and current-pushed ice is tremendous.  I would
>not have been able to seal land (what is the opposite of seal
>entry?) onto the hard, regular ice if I couldn't have gotten to
>it.  Fortunately, I saw what was happening and made a fast paddle
>home and just made it before my passage closed in.  If necessary,
>I could have landed several hundred metres up river and walked
>back, but I'm glad that I didn't have to.
>
>John
>
>ralph diaz wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Just an added caution in paddling in ice...make certain that there are
>> no Coast Guard icebreakers around.
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