Rotten but lacey patches of ice floating down the La Platte River.

Rotten Ice

Two Mallards swimming in the reflection of a mast of the sailing canal boat, the Lois McClure

Perkins Pier, Burlington, rotten ice, trees ready to bud and a rowboat anxious to be set free from its exposed winter home.

Looking across the "Cut" from South Hero. The apparent island in the middle is really the northern end of the causeway as it extends north from Colchester.

(04/01/05) A Rapidly Changing Lake, Shelburne Bay - Early spring brings rapid changes to the lake and what a difference a week can make. By law, all ice fishing shanties have to be off the lake by the last Sunday in March. Last Sunday (last Sunday was the last Sunday in March) was a day with temperatures in the low 40s and there was still solid ice as far as one could see as we crossed Sandbar headed to South Hero. Para-skaters were racing across the bay to the south having more faith in the ice than common sense might dictate. The ice looked slushy and yellow in places, a far cry from the hard clear black ice of February. There were just few ice fisherman on the northwest side of Sandbar. The traditional village of shanties and trucks usually found dotting the ice in January and February had pretty much disappeared. The south wind was brisk and the air felt cold. When we got to the Crescent Bay shore which faces south and opens to the broad lake the ice was still solid all the way out to Stave Island and there was a car about a quarter of a mile off shore. My immediate thought was that the car owner had even less sense than the para skaters. That thought was confirmed when I learned that a neighbor and his dog had fallen through the ice not far from shore, about half a mile west of where the car was sitting, several days before. He had been drilling fishing holes through 2 feet of ice just before he fell in. Fortunately both he and the dog got back to solid ground safely.

A day latter work drew me back to the islands. The sky was gray but the temperature much warmer and the wind calm. There was a low lying fog hovering just about the ice but ended sharply 30 feet above the surface. . We rarely get fog in the Champlain Valley. If it is going to happen however it usually does so in September and in early spring. I saw my first great blue heron of the season standing on the ice in the wildlife refuge on the east side of Sandbar. I must admit I have never seen a heron standing on ice. It looked strange to say the least. Just the same it was a welcome sight, which made me feel that spring was almost here. I don't know how optimistic the heron was. I don't think ice fishing is in his repertoire of skills.

Three days later I drove down to Shelburne Bay to check on the ice. The bay was still frozen across and devoid of fishing shanties and cars except for a few brave souls near the entrance to the La Platte river . The next two days were warm and sunny, warm enough that I put work aside, resurrected my rake and started cleaning up the south facing and protected part of our yard and flower beds where daffodil, crocus and hyacinth bulbs were starting to poking up. I also placed some foul smelling garlic sticks in strategic places around them to try to ward off the rabbits in our yard who last year ate the leaves off every single tulip in the yard before they had a chance to bloom. There was still snow in the back of the yard and the ground was still frozen around the compost bins but from the back deck I was convinced that spring had arrived. I was curious about the state of the ice in Shelburne Bay so Sophie and I drove down to check it out. Sure enough there was open water in the La Platte river and in the immediate bay area were the river flows into the lake. Looking across the opening, I could see reflections of the trees on the far shore in the open water, the images being interrupted by large sections of ice floating in the water. Despite the fairly strong south wind the open water was glass like, protected from wind by the ice around it. There were gulls sitting on the ice along the shore and there was a flock of ducks of some sort floating in the open water far enough off shore that I could not get a good picture of them or even distinguish what kind of ducks they were. A woman arrive with a good pair of binoculars and identified the flock as mergansers. Just then a great blue heron flew by. There were honking geese on the shore of the La Platte and the water flowing out of the river into the lake had thin patches of rotten lace like ice floating in it, moving north at a stead but slow speed. This little river looked like it was single handedly trying to push all the ice out of Shelburne Bay into the broad lake. It had a long way to go but clearly the ice was on its way out and spring was in the air. The National Weather service said the lake temperature was 34 degrees F.

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(04/06/05) Daily Changes - The Osprey are Back - The lake is changing daily. It is very exciting to watch for many reasons, not the least of which is that each small step in the Lake's awakening from its winter slumber brings Margy and I closer to getting back on the water. Yesterday morning I wandered down to the Burlington waterfront. The bay looked like a punch bowl at the end of a great party with just the remains of ice left to chill the leftover punch. The ice didn't have must humph to it but it was creating areas of smooth water between the pieces of ice while the rest of the lake was well rippled by the northwest wind. The birds seem to like to use the floating ice as a resting place in between feeding sessions. There were two resident Mallards near the shore, swimming back and forth across a reflection of one of the masts of the Lois McClure. The Champlain Maritime Museum's newest boat, a replica of a sailing canal boat of the late 1800s, will be taking her much anticipated voyage down Lake Champlain, through the Champlain Canal and locks, into the Hudson River and down to New York City this summer.

Yesterday, on my way to South Hero, I saw two osprey in a nest on top of one of the nesting platforms that VELCO provides in the Sandbar wildlife refuge. They appeared to be the first arrivals of the season. The other nests were empty. Ice still covered the vast majority of the water on both sides of Sandbar but only a fool or bird would set foot on it. There was a fairly large flock of mergansers swimming near the southeast shore in a small area of open water. The area on either side of the short opening under the Sandbar was also free of ice. That opening allows small boats to pass from Mallets Bay into the Inland Sea during the boating season. At first glance that might seem like a strange place to find the first open water in the area. It is fairly shallow and protected. But looks can be deceiving on the lake. The Lamoille River, one of the major rivers feeding into Lake Champlain, flows into Mallets Bay just south of the Sandbar causeway. There are only three relatively small openings through which that water can flow out of Mallets Bay into the broad lake. Two of the openings are on the railway fill, the western boundary of Mallets Bay. The other is this small opening under the Sandbar causeway. With heavy rains and warm temperatures facilitating snow melt over the weekend, the Lamoille River has been raging all week. You cannot keep pouring water into a mostly closed bay without having a fairly strong current develop through the three outlets that exist. There was open water around the openings on the railway fill as well. A walk on the South Hero end of the causeway revealed lots of birds far off shore congregating on the line between ice and open water. A friend reported that he had seen a large flock of snow geese flying north at the same location the day before. All of these birds, can't be wrong.

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(04/11/05) Spring is Finally Here - The Burlington Bike Path was packed with bikers, pedestrians, roller bladders and people pushing strollers, as I biked by. The day was sunny with just a slight nip in the air due to a gentle northwest wind off the lake. Everyone was clearly into a spring mode and rightly so. It will get cold again. We will have many more night time freezes but spring is undeniably here. YES! Even Margy my illusive kayaking partner is back. YES!

Dramatic changes on the Lake continue at a rapid pace. Margy called on her way to Grand Isle to report that every osprey nest on the VELCO power poles in the Sandbar Wildlife Refuge was occupied and then some. Two poles that did not have nesting platforms had pairs of osprey on them. The first pole had a nest build on the crossbar of the pole and the second pole had 2 osprey longingly looking at the pole with a nest wishing theirs was built. Before VELCO started its osprey platform placing program, the osprey would build nests on the cross bars of the high voltage transmission lines. That placed the nests fairly close to both the high voltage lines running below the crossbar and the lightening arresting lines running about the crossbar. Needless to say, with a wing span of up to 6 feet, these birds were at high risk with such a nest placement. The nesting platforms that have been built atop the poles extend upward from the crossbars so that the platform is well above all power lines. The number of poles with platforms has increased over the years but It seems that no matter how many platforms the power company builds, there will always be more demand. These osprey know a good thing when they see it. Sandbar Wildlife Refuge has got to be one of the best places to send the summer from an osprey's perspective.

Margy also reported seeing several kayakers in the water. Perhaps they were fishermen taking advantage of the opening of trout season. Although, even if you don't fish, the sight of open water after so many months of winter is very enticing.

Unfortunately not all observations on the lake this week are so positive. On a painful note, it was first reported in the Burlington Free Press on 4/7/05 that a major Burlington sewer pipe, crossing under the Winooski River between Colchester and Burlington, had ruptured and was pouring up to 700,000 gallons of raw sewage a day into the river. It is a short distance from that break to the Lake. The 2 foot inner diameter cast iron pipe was installed in the 1950s and at the time it was installed it was buried several feet beneath the river bed. The diver who found the leak ( talk about a dirty job!) then examined the entire pipe and found that: "In some places the force of the current has unburied the sewage pipe and eroded the earth beneath it." He reported that in one place the pipe was at eye level 5 feet off the river bottom. It took a diver 3 days to repair the pipe and today yet another smaller leak has been detected. Fortunately this has happened during spring run off when the river flow is huge and the water temperature still very cold. The Burlington Free Press (4/8/05) reported that the spillage amounted to a small fraction of the total flow of the river right now.

Clearly there is no villain here, other than perhaps the forces of nature, but it is a tragic event that is painful to live with. And it speaks strongly to the power of water and nature. The Winooski river meanders through many hair pin turns on its way through the sandy delta area created long ago and it is clear from old oxbows that are now dry that the river's course is constantly changing. Nature is not as easy to control as we would like to think it is. Incidents such as this one should be forceful reminders to us that we need to maintain a high level of respect for nature and its laws. In that light I feel compelled to end my description of yet another warm sunny April day in northern Vermont by publicly apologizing to my husband who I foolishly talked into unplugging our heated bird bath yesterday as we were working in the yard without jackets in the warmth of the sun. This morning I spotted two sparrows standing on the ice in the bird bath trying desperately to get some water from the frozen surface. Enough said about the forces of nature and my willingness to be lulled into a false sense of security. I immediately filled two pitchers with warm water and rushed out and refilled the bird bath hoping the warm water would perhaps melt the ice below but, at the least, provide the birds with some water until the sun could work its magic once again. The birds are my personal harbingers spring. I trust their judgment and figure we both need as much help as possible as we navigate the up and down weather of early spring Vermont.

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The sailing canal boat, Lois McClure, tied up at its winter berth at Perkins Pier in Burlington.

A view of the rocks and sand on the bottom of the lake taken through almost crystal clear water from the Burlington waterfront This is a sharp contrast to the very murky water pouring out of the Winooski River 5 miles to the north.

Shadows of early spring bikers standing on the Winooski pedestrian bridge and reflected in the murky and swift flowing water pouring out of the Winooski into Lake Champlain.