2020-03-22 62 29

Location

In lake Pyhäselkä, about a kilometre from the nearest shore.

Participants

Kripakko

Plans

This hashpoint was located within a manageable distance from my home. I did not know the ice situation in advance, so I just planned to go to the shore and find out if the ice was thick enough to walk on. It probably would be since we had had quite much freezing weather during the past weeks.

Expedition

Today the weather was sunny and the temperature was +1 °C, perfect for spending time outdoors. I set out cycling towards Kuhasalo, a small uninhabited area near the town that is preserved for recreational purposes. I arrived at the shore and saw many people walking on the ice. A fisherman told me that the thickness of the ice was about 40 centimetres, so easily thick enough to support a car. Five centimetres is enough to support a walking person as long as it is clear ice with no air bubbles.

The surface of the ice was slightly rough, so it was not as slippery as it could have been. I noticed that I could ride the bicycle as long as I kept a somewhat stable speed, did not do any sudden moves and avoided large bumps and hollows. I could then ride rather uneventfully to the hashpoint and back. There was a large crevasse that I had to walk over, and I stopped a few times to take pictures of interesting ice structures.

There was a part of this experience that I could not capture: the sound of the ice. When ice contracts during the night and expands during the day, a weird combination of low-pitched cracking, bubbling and rumbling sounds is created. This is known as singing ice. I could not record the sound with my phone because wind was too strong and obscured all other sounds, but I could easily hear it with my ears. It was quite close to this video [1] but not as frequent.

In addition to being a Walking on Water Geohash, this was indeed also a Cycling on Water Geohash, a much rarer feat.