Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

Last week’s warm weather and rain led to a partial reopening of Lake Minnewaska. Up to the rain, the warm days and cool nights created enough ice for people to get portable ice houses on the lake but I didn’t notice any heavier houses on the lake.

We had a similar event back in December of 1982, although it was a little more exciting.

According to the Dec. 2 issue of the Pope County Tribune, Lake Minnewaska had frozen over, opened up and frozen over again enough that there was a picture on the front page of a cluster of ice houses.

Back then ice houses were quite a bit different. Most were home built and fairly light. Not too many had wheels, most just had runners. They had wood frames of 2x2s.

The Ice Castles of today would be much heavier and many must be pulled by a pickup truck versus a four wheeler or snowmobile. It takes a lot more ice for that.

At any rate the Dec. 2 issue showed ice houses on the lake. That paper was printed on Dec. 1 and on Dec. 1 and 2 it rained and it got close to 60 degrees. That put water on the ice and pretty soon some houses started to slip partially or totally through the ice.

People went out to tie ropes to their houses so they could be pulled but it was so slippery with the water on ice that was difficult. The paper reported that some went home and got their golf shoes, that back then had steel spikes. Those worked well.

Jim McMahon brought his tow truck down to the lake by Lakeside and managed to connect to his house with a series of chains, ropes and wires and pull it to shore. He also worked on his brother’s house.

This turned out to be quite a show. There wasn’t a parking place near Lakeside because so many people were by the lake watching the rescue processes.

Something like 17 ice houses went through the ice. The houses that went through didn’t go to the bottom of the lake. They were light and buoyant enough that some only went in a little bit while others probably had 2-3 feet of the top sticking up above the ice.

A week later, after a cold snap, Tribune publisher Jim Kinney and I were having lunch at what was then Torgy’s on Dec. 15 just after we had put the Dec. 16 issue of the paper to bed. It had gotten a lot colder and we could see several ice houses partially submerged in front of Torgy’s.

As we ate lunch two men came by with pry bars and worked several of the houses we could see up and out of the water and moved them over more solid ice. They were quick and efficient, it was quite impressive.

The next year the Dec.1 issue of the Tribune reported the lake had not totally frozen and still had open spots in the middle. Earlier that week the city had received 13” of snow over two days.

In 1998 Lake Minnewaska was not frozen at the Starbuck end on Dec. 12. Starbuck Times publisher Ron Lindquist ran a photo in the Dec. 23 issue of his paper of a person in a sailboat actually sailing on the lake Dec. 12. I’ll bet that was a little nippy!

As of this writing the Weather Channel says we’ll have lows above 10 degrees through Jan. 9 and highs at least in the 20s.

While I’m sure that many of us are thinking of the nice weather meaning less painful heating bills and easier getting around, I imagine the bait shops and ski hills would like to see a more real winter.

We haven’t missed a winter totally in my lifetime, I’m guessing Mother Nature will give us some taste of the cold and snow before spring comes!

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I had a brain blip two weeks ago in my column about 2024 presidential race scenarios. I wrote that if Nikki Haley won the Republican nomination she would be the first woman to head a major party ticket. She would be the first woman to head the Republican ticket. Hillary Clinton headed the Democratic ticket in 2016 making her the first female to head a major party ticket.

My apologies to all.