I was thinking how I would describe the best way to walk on a frozen creek just before I fell through the ice.
No, seriously, I was shuffling along looking down at my feet, sliding my soles slowly along with my feet flat so as to get the maximum spread of my weight on the ice. I'd picked a spot where the ice looked thick, well away from the current, a spot where the ice was off-white, where there were no rocks poking through, where nothing popped or cracked or creaked underfoot.
My method had been working fine for the past hour and a half.
I'd wandered all over this shady section of Jumping Pound Creek looking at all the nifty little ice formations without so much as a splash on me.
I'd gone right to the edge of the open water to take pictures and shoot video without any incident at all.
And there was lots to shoot.
This section of the creek runs through a shelf of exposed rock and gets no direct sunlight at this time of year -- it barely gets any in the summer either -- and the ice just builds and builds.
Mostly it grows in sheets where moisture in the air over the relatively warm water of the creek turns to frost during the coldest times of the day and then melts slightly during the warmer parts before another layer of frost forms. All this alternating freezing and thawing builds layers of thin ice sheets that eventually collapse and form a more solid mass.
Eventually that covers the slower moving parts of the creek with a crunchy, flaky surface that will crumble like a cracker under the slightest weight. I kept my 220 pounds off that. No, I walked on the clear ice. That's the strongest, the ice that looks like a sheet of glass that you can see the sediments and algae on the bottom of the creek through.
In places this was six inches thick and it held me just fine. Along the edges by the still open, swift moving water is where I found most of the ice I wanted to photograph.
I call it splash ice but it probably has a real name. It's formed by water splashing up and freezing against something -- a twig hanging in the water, an outcrop of rock, the edge of a boulder. Splash after splash hits and freezes and the ice builds up. It's basically the same way cave formations are built but on a much faster pace.
In some places it forms lens-like ice, in others it's a more random array of nodules and bulbs. Where a branch hangs in the water, little sheets of ice build out horizontally as the branch sways in the current. Thicker ice forms over logs as the splashes build and build.
Things that fall on the ice get incorporated into the structure. Away from the open water where the ice has formed over eddies, leaves and conifer needles and cones blown by the wind are taken into the ice. Tiny air bubbles form around them as the water freezes.
The air over the moving water is always a bit warmer than the rest of the air and shelf ice forms there too, just like it does along the banks.
But the constant thawing and re-freezing forces most of the air bubbles from it and it stays glass-clear. Little fissures along the underside will cloud it up in places but mostly it frames the water flowing underneath as windows melt out of it.
I spent a good portion of my time on my belly, crawling to the edges to get my pictures so I could spread out my weight and crawling back to thicker ice before standing up again. I carefully looked at the ice to judge its strength, watching for thick, clear spots or flat, milky-colored areas to shuffle my feet.
OK, this is working out really well, I thought to myself as I headed toward shore across a 10-foot wide sheet of tough-looking milky ice.
And then the whole thing collapsed.
Fortunately, I kept my balance as the ice gave way and the shin-deep water raced in around my legs. It was so cold that it burned as my shoes filled up and my jeans soaked through. Now that the ice had broken, I could see that I'd been walking on a dome over the water with nothing underneath to hold it up.
As I sloshed to the bank and hauled myself onto dry land, my thoughts on best way to walk on creek ice re-formed in my head. And they boiled down to four words.
Just don't do it.
MIKE.DREW@SUNMEDIA.CA
