You can see it creeping in on the outer edge of the rink in that top photo. Once cleared of snow, that water will freeze up into good ice, but it is the clearing that is the challenge. Brian used the big tractor this time round.Slush is nasty stuff. If you get into it, with skis, boots, (or gosh forbid) a snowmobile, you'll soon discover that the almost super-cooled water layer will freeze to you almost as soon as it gets into the open air. It clumps onto whatever is coated with it, getting heavier and heavier, and getting you wetter and wetter. I made the serious mistake years ago of trying to short-cut across a beaver pond about 1 mile from home on cross country skis. The skis were so thick with slush that it wasn't possible to lift them. Boots were soaked through... and efforts to scrape off that slush with sticks of wood still left the skis too sticky to glide. It was a truly horrible experience, and one I have ever after endeavored NOT to repeat. This middle picture gives you a good idea of what slush looks like. Brian drove tractor here, making ONE pass... one was enough. Let it be.
Luckily MOST of our rink is no longer actually on the water. When the lake first freezes, the water is touching the shore. Over winter, the lake levels are drawn down by the MNR, leaving most of our rink sitting on the lake bottom, where the slush doesn't go. The slush may cause our rink to become longer and more narrow, but it won't shut it down completely!It does have advantages. On the other hand, it leaves us with one of those rare skating rinks built on a slope... If you look closely, you can see where the rink starts to slope down to the right.
I'm assuming by now the season's been called to an end....
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