Weather Puts Icing On The Lake Event Called Unusual, Rare, Not So Bad Compared To The Big Chill Back In…
Attorney Scott Reed marveled from an office window Friday as Lake Coeur d’Alene up and disappeared.
Frost spread from the lake’s 100 miles of shoreline to its center, swallowing the blue waters in a sheath of ice.
“It sounds like I was watching grass grow, but it was more exciting than that,” Reed said. “The center just closed up. It was … wow.”
It took about two hours, he said.
After a week of subzero temperatures, most of the 20-mile-long lake’s surface froze for only the second time in a decade.
Or the third. Perhaps the first.
Because nobody officially tracks when or if the lake freezes over, old-timers Friday could agree only that it’s unusual.
“It’s a beautiful, crystal white,” said Chris Mitson, owner of the Squaw Bay Resort. “It looks froze over solid as far as I can see. I’ve only seen it like this one other time.”
Gary Stockinger at Washington Water Power recalled a 1987 freeze. Resident Clint Barber remembered 1979.
Most residents remember 1986, when lake legend Fred Murphy died after driving his snowmobile onto the frozen surface of the lake. But even son Skip Murphy who, as his father did, makes his living running tugboats, believes the lake nearly froze in 1991.
Regardless, the unusual event grounded lake traffic Friday, stranded a few residents and provided recreation for at least one skating buff.
Reed spent his lunch hour Friday ice skating from the Third Street Dock, past rock outcroppings with candelabra-like icicles, to the southern point on Tubbs Hill.
“I’ve done this maybe a half-dozen times in 40 years,” Reed said.
Newcomers were awed, old-timers unimpressed.
The Bennett Bay Inn’s new owner, Iowa native Debbie JoHannson, couldn’t take her eyes off the footprints across the water.
“There are all kinds of tracks,” she said. “I keep thinking, ‘I would never do that.”’
Ernie and Ellen Peyer, caretakers living in a lakeside home at Casco Bay, raced the ice in their boat as they snuck to and from Coeur d’Alene to stock up on food.
The road to their winter home isn’t maintained. Now, their only exit is a mile-and-a-half hike to U.S. Highway 95.
“We’ve got the refrigerator stocked for a month or so, so we’re just going about our business,” Ernie Peyer said. “There’s plenty for us to do.”
Phil Waring, a six-year resident, spent Friday working on his taxes because the ice kept him from his job - delivering mail by boat. The dozens of residents on his route won’t get mail until the ice melts.
“Next winter, when my contract is up, I’m moving to a warmer climate,” Waring said.
Thinking of Waring took Skip Murphy back 30 years to an icy winter when his father delivered mail by plane.
“We’d fly over the houses and bomb it (mail) out onto the ice right over the houses,” said Murphy, whose crew spent Thursday breaking the ice to keep some paths open. “Now that was a winter.”
But Brooks Seaplane owner Bill Brooks couldn’t take over for Waring this week. The ice docked his sight-seeing tours because he no longer had safe landing sites.
“It just put us right out of business,” he said.
But Brooks, a 50-year native, was unexcited. He recalled the biting winters of 1949 and 1950, when ice on the lake was 3 feet thick.
“You could drive a car from here to Harrison,” Brooks said.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: ICE TIPS: Emergency workers warn people to be extremely careful on a frozen lake. Don’t walk on ice less than 4-inches thick. Drill a hole to test thickness. Be careful in areas where ice color changes. A blue tint may mean unsafe ice. Foggy ice may be dangerous; the clearer the ice, the better. Ice skate only near the lake edges or in very shallow areas. Bring an adult and a flotation device attached to a rope.