Big changes

There is still too much ice in boat channel to get past Bald Island today so I pushed a little ice 200 yards and 9" thick,candled ice and went out into Andrew Bay past Eagle Island. Made it all way to Moore Bay Lodge. It's also wide open on East side Queer all way South to the Elbow.

Still ice West side Queer and also North side. Still 1/4 mile from reaching Cat Island to head up past Scotty's Island. Could only travel 200 yards North in Hades. Expect big changes tomorrow as NE winds picking up,there is also big cracks forming and ice is starting to move.

Spring update

Laurenson Lake is open this morning and we usually open 7-10 days after that. On yesterday's outing I could not get very far as the strong NE wind blew all ice from North side Dorian Marsh into the boat channel plugging it up. From Green Bouy G4 just South of Bald island looking into Andrew Bay appears to be open but too much ice to get there.I was sure we could have made it to Moore Bay but Bob was in there yesterday with his ice boat and said not yet ! Don't expect much change today so will wait and go for another boat ride tomorrow to see how far we get.
Going back to the picture of ice I picked it up on Friday was 11" thick(1/2" melted by time I took picture. Back to same place on Sunday and ice was only 5" thick but 100 yards West and back to 11"

picture from Rick

Boat ride

The ice in the picture was 11" when I picked it up some melted by time we took picture. I got this piece 75 yards short of Green Bouy #G5. The boat would just ride up onto ice and sit there,the Harbercraft has a very square stern took me 30 min to get turned around. This is the furthest I have ever made it on first attempt.checking back in diarys by time I get to this point we have boated to BarePoint anywhere between 5-14 days.very hard to predict when we may be boating due to cold overnight temps. Last night we made 3/8" the wind/sun took care of that on large body of open water but around docks just melting now at 14:00. My first prediction was May 05 ,guessing anywhere between 1st to 5 th ??

Spring thaw

As of yesterday I cannot get quad onto ice from our South landing,ice is candled and pulling away from shore.North landing has 14" ice We can canoe from our Island to East Allie. Almost on track with last year and we boated out May 01. So far we have only rec,d 3/8" rain from this disturbance, has melted all snow in bush. With cooler forecasted temps guessing boat out May 5 ?

We're back !

For whatever reason I have not been able to post anything for sometime ? Have been getting Peter to post. Here is an update of lake conditions from the ground. Took truck off ice March 12, holes in road south side of French Narrows Portage. With the heavy rain on Mar 15 it melted all snow off the ice,then it turned to snow again picked up 3.5" this was a good think as it protected the ice from the sun for next 10 days.the last 5 days of March were sunny calm and highs 10c. Working on the south side of our Island shirtless ! Then April arrive and the -10 at night tightened things up with April 03 low of -16 re -froze all open water between Us and East Allie. Been snowing a little every day for past 4 days with 2.5 accumulated on ground. A friend was fishing in Manitou on April 4 on 21" ice. I will go to Town on April 8 by snowmobile,pretty sure this will be last trip till boating season.As crossing Portages getting tougher with poor ice. Long range temps are not very high so best guess is boating May 05-9 ??