Ice

[quixoticgeek]

Temperatures have dropped to below 0°C, and I'm noticing ice starting to form on some of the canals. If the ice gets thick enough, I'm pondering utilising this to get access to some areas I wouldn't normally be able to, in order to bag some veloviewer tiles. The question is: How thick does ice need to be to support the weight of a cyclist? How does a cyclist's ground pressure compare to a skater, or walker?

Any ideas?

J

[hubner]

http://www.integralhse.co.uk/ice-safety/

I'd go for 75mm minimum according to the above, although I've read 100mm as a min for walking on from other sites.

You'd need to drill holes in the ice, and carry an ice pick, rope, tape measure, wear a life-jacket etc.

[Chris S]

Don't do it. Unless you are accessing somewhere like the The Washes in Cambridgeshire (and in your part of the world, you may well be) - where the water floods over fields and is only ever a few inches deep, so when the conditions are right - you end up with hectares and hectares of safe, skateable (rideable with studs) ice. Like this:



I wouldn't trust frozen deep water south of a line roughly consistent with the Arctic Circle. Actually these days, it seems to struggle North of there too 

ETA: If you're thinking along the lines of that video by Lucas Brunelle (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oSiWo-m93s) ISTR reading that it had taken weeks of sub -10c to get it to that point.

[Peter]

At what point does obsessive behaviour become self-indulgent stupidity.....?!

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Write off the possibility of doing it.
https://dutchreview.com/culture/society/why-the-netherlands-will-never-have-an-elfstedentocht-eleven-cities-tour-again/

[Jurek]

Write off the possibility of doing it.
https://dutchreview.com/culture/society/why-the-netherlands-will-never-have-an-elfstedentocht-eleven-cities-tour-again/

I've always fancied the idea of doing that - I didn't realise that it is open only to those resident in one of the 11 cities.

[Zed43]

You don't have to be a resident, you have to be a member of the association (same as being a member of AudaxUK).

There's also the 11-cities-cycle-tour, visiting the same cities. Also very popular (limited to about 25k riders) and it's being organised every year.

As to the thickness of ice: I would only dare it if I see a number of people on the ice and the ice not making those creaking noises.

[quixoticgeek]

Last March there were skaters on central Amsterdam canals when the beast from the east hit. I remember inadvertently cycling onto a lake in January 2016, in the dark, on a Brompton with studded tyres. But the last time I remember actual proper widespread skating in .NL was Jan 2009.



This was the first time I'd ever walked on Natural ice.

75mm-100mm. I'll keep an eye out.

Thanks

J

[mzjo]

So now we know why there are so many bicycles in canals! They haven't been dumped, it was just the ice wasn't thick enough

Was 2009 the last year there was that long skating race on the frozen canals. It got a mention on french news but I forget the year.

If you really want to cycle on ice I would have thought a trip to Finland was called for, they have roads and even light railways when the ice is thick enough. Is this a response to not finding sufficient ice on your recent german adventure?

[andrew_s]

When I used to work in the Antarctic, we used a "bog chisel" to assess how strong the ice was, the bog chisel basically being a broom handle with a 4-5 cm wide (not very sharp) chisel on the end. If you could get through with one blow, the ice wasn't strong enough (or at least when not wearing a wetsuit); if you couldn't get through with 5 or 6 blows, it was strong enough for a skidoo.

If you were wearing a wetsuit, you could go on ice that you could jab the chisel through from about a foot, and see the ice flexing underneath as you moved.
At one of the other bases (Signy Is), they used to have an annual thin ice race, across the bay and back, wearing wetsuits. This involved dirty tricks, like sneaking up behind someone and kicking the ice under their feet to break it.

P.S.
don't rely on freshwater ice being the same as the saltwater ice we were on.

[zigzag]

in order to drive cars on the lakes we used to consider it safe if the ice was 15cm or more. 15cm can safely support a (medium-size) tractor, which was used to plough the snow and create a safe racing track - lotsa fun!

[Jaded]

I've skated on The Fens. 

Just thought you'd like to know that. 

[Diver300]

I've skated on The Fens. 

Just thought you'd like to know that. 

In a lot of places the fens are 20 cm deep, so they freeze faster, and the risk of dying by falling though is somewhat reduced.

[Jurek]

When I used to work in the Antarctic, we used a "bog chisel" to assess how strong the ice was, the bog chisel basically being a broom handle with a 4-5 cm wide (not very sharp) chisel on the end. If you could get through with one blow, the ice wasn't strong enough (or at least when not wearing a wetsuit); if you couldn't get through with 5 or 6 blows, it was strong enough for a skidoo.

If you were wearing a wetsuit, you could go on ice that you could jab the chisel through from about a foot, and see the ice flexing underneath as you moved.
At one of the other bases (Signy Is), they used to have an annual thin ice race, across the bay and back, wearing wetsuits. This involved dirty tricks, like sneaking up behind someone and kicking the ice under their feet to break it.

P.S.
don't rely on freshwater ice being the same as the saltwater ice we were on.

I love yacf.
Where else could you get information like this?

[Brucey]

there's a Wikipedia page....

https://www.wikihow.com/Know-When-Ice-is-Safe

a little snippet I would contribute is that any body of water, whilst it might have ice on it, can (until the ground is frozen solid too, which takes a very long time)  still have flow beneath the surface, including inflowing tributaries. These transport heat from the ground into the body of water and the ice can be locally a lot thinner than you might expect.  One winter I visited a lake in a high valley in the Alps and the ice was very thick indeed. Folk used to drive on it regularly. However the lake was very long and some tributaries still flowed into it, long after everything appeared to be frozen. This meant that there were several places in the lake which -invisibly- could have very thin ice indeed.  Accidents of the worst kind were not unheard of.

cheers

[CrazyEnglishTriathlete]

It was subzero in Den Haag for about 3 weeks last Feb-Mar, and I asked the locals about the 11 cities.  The problem with the canals is that there are often hidden outflows/inflows where they are pumping water.  Around these areas (and underneath bridges) there tends to be thin/weak/absent points. 

Local knowledge is the real asset.  There were certainly people skating on lakes on the dunes.

[Ham]

there's a Wikipedia page....

https://www.wikihow.com/Know-When-Ice-is-Safe

a little snippet I would contribute is that any body of water, whilst it might have ice on it, can (until the ground is frozen solid too, which takes a very long time)  still have flow beneath the surface, including inflowing tributaries. These transport heat from the ground into the body of water and the ice can be locally a lot thinner than you might expect.  One winter I visited a lake in a high valley in the Alps and the ice was very thick indeed. Folk used to drive on it regularly. However the lake was very long and some tributaries still flowed into it, long after everything appeared to be frozen. This meant that there were several places in the lake which -invisibly- could have very thin ice indeed.  Accidents of the worst kind were not unheard of.

cheers

That's an interesting resource but I see they got an answer wrong

I want to take my 3150 kg Hummer ice fishing. What would be a good minimum blue ice thickness?
wikiHow Contributor
Community Answer
About 12-18 inches would be good, but it is not recommended.

Should have been, anything from 3" should be absolutely fine.

[Wowbagger]

The village pond across the road from my primary school comfortably bore the weight of about 30 children almost every evening throughout January 1963. Despite all that exposure to a lovely large flat sheet of ice, I was so useless I never had the confidence to slide as the other kids did.

When we were at college in the early 1970s, Mrs. Wow went on a biology fiend trop* to Grizedale. One of her group walked out onto the tarn and sat on his shooting stick. The ice groaned loudly but he didn't go through, but he didn't hang around once he heard it. I think the daytime temperature was below -10°C all the time they were up there. Jan told me that the nightly minimum for the 4 or 5 days they were there was -23°C.

*I liked it so much I didn't bother to correct it

[fimm]

Several years (but less than a decade) ago there was a very snowy winter in Scotland and our local canal froze so that people could walk on it. I did walk on it and it felt very odd. Other people also cycled on it. IIRC the snow started falling onto an unfrozen or thinly frozen canal so a big layer of frozen ice/snow developed. Also that canal is not that deep.
Towards the end of the cold snap some idiot decided to drive his car along the canal; he got on fine until he got to a bridge. Underneath the bridge the ice was thinner and the car went through. He driver was prosecuted for something; dangerous driving I think. I could probably find a news report if I could be bothered.

[FifeingEejit]

This
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/jan/12/men-arrested-after-driving-frozen-canal

Although the Indy had a better picture

[mark]

in order to drive cars on the lakes we used to consider it safe if the ice was 15cm or more. 15cm can safely support a (medium-size) tractor, which was used to plough the snow and create a safe racing track - lotsa fun!

The local ice racing club (Georgetown, CO) requires that the ice be 12 inches (30 cm) thick before they will hold races.

[JonJo]

Seem to remember someone falling through very thick ice on a Scottish loch. The water level was controlled by a dam as part of a hydro electric scheme and had been drawn down leaving a gap between the ice and the surface of the water. Under those conditions even the thickest ice isn't safe.

[mark]

The ice racing club I referred to does in fact use a small reservoir, part of a pumped storage hydroelectric system. Maybe that's why they insist that the ice be 30 cm instead of 15 as zigzag said.

[zigzag]

yes, we used to race(skid) on standard natural lakes with no artificial heat sources nearby

[ElyDave]

I've skated on The Fens. 

Just thought you'd like to know that. 

In a lot of places the fens are 20 cm deep, so they freeze faster, and the risk of dying by falling though is somewhat reduced.

I've been here for 14 years and I've never seen the Fen Skating happen, that must have been a while ago?