Well it’s that time of season again as I took our truck off the ice March 17 ( going by memory last year was March 28 ? )
We normally park out at Barepoint and I can access her by snowmobile or Quad to run to town for fresh produce during the ice out period. That is what I did last Spring at the start of pandemic, then Reserve set up roadblocks and we didn’t get our truck back till around June 01. We then rented Vehicle/Boat slip from Smith Camps for month of June and they let us move back to Barepoint July 01.
Not wanting to go through that again I called Manager at Barepoint and he said they are in a mini lockdown as surrounding reserves have outbreaks. The Rat Portage Reserve is getting vaccinated over the next 2 weeks. So for the second season in a row we were scrambling for Truck parking during break up, fortunately friends offered their yard and I can quad/snowmobile to their dock.
This is a different type break up this year, normally we have holes appear on South side of French Narrows Portage that we navigate around as well as our own landing. This year they are still solid it’s the Ministry landing in town was the first to go, the ice was flooded with water so you don’t know where holes are so people were putting sticks in them as markers ! When coming off the ice with big truck it pushes a wave and water spurts up these holes. Another problem was the pressure ridge in Andrew Bay, the water is 12” deep on our side of it. People have been moving over trying to find dry spot to cross but when I took my chainsaw and ice bar to cut it down on January 07 there was no ice on either side of the road under pressure ridge. I’m afraid of dropping a tire in that area. An alternate route for us is to run Parallel to south side Barrier islands to 12 mile but there are 2 pressure ridges this route.
We have our usual spring birds back , crows,Geese, Eagles, Foxes were barking weeks ago. Back on Feb 23 while Debbie was splitting wood for my shop it was plus 4 and we saw a mosquito fly by, must have been in wood ?
On final note I’m leaning towards an early ice out ? Unless we get a lot Spring moisture lake is very low I may not have enough water under the bow of our boat to float her off lift. This wouldn’t be first time.
Stay safe
