While frozen over, the canal this morning seemed less than ideal. The first sign of 'trouble' being the first step onto the ice was the scene above with slush and broken ice being your welcome. The way down wasn't terrible. The skier's have been out it would seem and lots of folks taking the path down to Lock 7 stamping the way down. The issue being the path is near solid and I hope you've got some serious grip on the sole of your shoes/boots! I nearly busted my back end a few times just getting down the first time. I took the snow over the path from then on out.
It's frozen over pretty well, with all of the areas that were frozen the last shinny weekend frozen over this time as well. There seems to be a bit more debris this time though, and a lot more unevenness to the ice surface. Not a lot that a few scrapes with a shovel wouldn't get rid of, and a dozen or so bodies with skates strapped on carving would do wonders to level it off a bit.
In the close up above you can see the frost that was settled over near all of the ice surface. It's nothing major and I'm sure would clean up nice, but the ice under felt choppy and crunchy in most spots as I walked out a bit. It felt solid enough though and would likely support a good amount of weight to the middle.
Take this all with a grain of salt though, as the temps warmed up to the 40's by the end of the day, though they seemed to have settled down a bit now for this latest bit of snow.
I headed back up to the Jeep and went to Kettler for a bit of gear sizing and to pick up a few things since I was in the area. On the way home I couldn't help but wonder if anyone else had been down to the ice or was looking around for others as I did. The community really needs someone in the Cabin John area to hook us up with some solid intel on the canal every winter from here on out!
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