5/3/08 – Eight inches of ice remains on Sawbill Lake. It rained all day yesterday followed by 2 inches of fresh snow overnight.
We tried to work inside yesterday, but the day before I saw a parade of wildlife on my daily run. First, a cow moose with her son, both looking pretty ratty as they shed their winter coats. The little bull was reluctant to yield the road, so I got quite close. His antlers are about 4 inch stubs. Just a bit further down the road I saw a sharp shinned hawk and moments later a ruffed grouse in full mating display. The hawk may have been looking to take advantage of the grouse’s bravado.
A mile or so further on, I spotted a fox hunting for mice in the dead grass alongside the road. The wind was blowing toward me and there was water running in a nearby ditch masking the sound of my footsteps. I stood 20 feet away and watched him forage through the grass. He was a beautiful cross-fox with a black belly and feet, a black triangle on his back that accented his black tail. His face was red and his body was mottled grey, red and black. Eventually he turned around, saw me, and was gone in a graceful flash.
Finishing out the wildlife extravaganza was a woodcock performing his spectacular high-flying mating flight.
Don’t let the pictures below scare you too much. As I write this in early afternoon, most of the snow has already melted. The forecast is for one more chilly day and then turning very warm and sunny. I still think the ice will be out by next weekend. – Bill

Just another typical spring-like morning at Sawbill.

This gives me a strong urge to wax my skis.

The snow covered twigs make a beautiful abstract pattern.

5/1/08 – Happy May Day! Today is statistically the mostly likely ice-out date for Sawbill Lake. That is not going to happen this year as the ice is still 10 inches thick and fairly solid. Since we started measuring a little less than two weeks ago, the ice has melted almost exactly an inch a day. If that average holds, the ice would be gone on May 11th. I think it will melt faster than that for a couple of reasons. The sun is a little higher, hotter and shines longer every day. Once the ice gets to 4 or 5 inches, it turns a very dark color which seems to cause it to melt very quickly. Accounting for these adjustments, my best guess is that the ice will depart on the 6th or 7th. It all depends on the weather though, so we’ll have to wait and see. – Bill

Deputy of Outfitter Security, Roy Wonder, eyeballs today’s official ice thickness reading. Roy says 10 inches.

Looking south from the canoe landing. There is quite a bit of open water. The first loon spotted at Sawbill this year is floating and waiting in this picture.

Looking north from the landing. Still pretty solid.

4/28/08 – Yesterday, Cindy heard a loon calling for the first time this year. On my run I saw a flicker, sharp-shinned hawk, a red wing blackbird, and a fox sparrow. The recent storm seems to have blown in the migrating birds. – Bill

Just to show that Lee doesn’t do all the work, I took my turn on the auger today. Although 13″ thick, the ice isn’t completely reliable anymore. Notice my wet left leg.

Today’s measurement. We didn’t get above freezing yesterday….

It doesn’t look promising for this weekend, but we’re still hoping that it will be gone before the opening of fishing on May 10th.

4/27/08 – Northern Minnesota is having trouble shaking winter this year. The latest storm dropped an inch of rain followed by 2.5″ of snow and a low temperature of 19 degrees. The standing water around the edges of the lake have refrozen and every tree is covered with snow. It doesn’t look good for ice out until next week sometime. – Bill

Lee drills yet another hole. I would have used a more original picture, but the camera battery went dead after one picture. The ice was 14.5″ thick today. The ice is floating at least a foot higher than it was three days ago and the streams are all in full flood.

4/23/08 – I missed measuring the ice for a couple of days. It is busy around Sawbill right now as we race to get the pre-season chores done. It was a beautiful 65 degrees and sunny here today, but the forecast is pretty dire. We are under a flood watch with 1 to 3 inches of rain expected tomorrow and the next day, followed by snow – possibly heavy – the following night. With the ground saturated, still mostly frozen, and no vegetation yet, the runoff could be epic. The streams around Sawbill are already nearly at flood level. Here at Sawbill, flooding doesn’t normally do much damage, except a few washouts in the road.
The eagles are back in force and I saw a beautiful red tailed hawk yesterday. – Bill

Lee pulls the auger out of a new hole. The ice “floated up” yesterday, which means that it has separated its connection with the shore and is now floating in a giant cake on the lake. Floating up is a major milestone, usually indicating ice-out in a week or two. We had to use the canoe to bridge across the ice near shore which is weak and covered with two feet of standing water.

15.5 inches of pretty dense ice still remains. It would bear the weight of a car, but I wouldn’t recommend driving on it.

Always fun to strand the unsuspecting out on the floating ice. I relented after taking the picture and sent the canoe back out to him.

4/20/08 – Real progress today. As I was drilling today’s test hole, two male merganser ducks lifted out of the small patch of open water down by Sawbill Creek and flew north. A sure sign of spring. I heard the first robin singing yesterday. – Bill

19″ with only an inch or two of slush. Ice is somewhat degraded through and through.

It is getting pretty sloppy in front of the canoe landing.

A pileated woodpecker has started working on a home in one of the big red pines in our canoe yard. It’s fun to see one of these large, primitive looking woodpeckers close-up, but it’s probably bad news for the pine. The woodpecker may have found some rot and is certainly weakening a tree that we don’t want to fall across a rack of Kevlar canoes!

4/19/08 – The ice thickness keeps growing on Sawbill Lake. Today we measured 24.5″ – up 2″ from yesterday and 4.5″ from the day before! My hunch is that the ice thickness isn’t changing, but it’s clear that The upper 12 – 14″ of ice is much softer and more degraded than it was earlier in the week. So rest assured that progress is being made. This is why it’s so interesting to monitor the ice, because its behavior is a lot more complex than it would appear. – Bill

Taking the measurement with a high tech scientific instrument.

A better picture of Lee. Compare this picture to the one a few posts below to see how the snow cover has changed.

4/18/08 – Today’s ice thickness test actually measured thicker ice than yesterday’s. 22.5″ today and 20″ yesterday. I don’t think this means that the ice is getting thicker (although it did get below freezing last night). Lake ice is not perfectly flat on its bottom surface. I think we just randomly picked a slightly thicker spot to measure. There is 5″ of slush and water on top of the ice. – Bill

4/17/08 – After another day and a half of warmth the ice thickness on Sawbill Lake stands at 20″ of solid ice with another 6″ of slush and water on top.
Soon it will be summer and velvet antlered bull moose will be feeding in bog meadows dotted with wild iris and pitcher plants. Kevin Van Den Hemel from Rochester, Minnesota was kind enough to send this great picture from his canoe trip last season. – Bill

Hard to believe, but this scene will be possible again in less than two months.

4/16/08 – Spring is finally arriving at Sawbill. After two late season snowstorms, the weather has turned very warm. Yesterday we lost 6 – 8″ of snow. The lakes are still white and solid. Starting today, we’ll give a daily ice melting progress report on Sawbill Lake.

Lee Noble, the first Sawbill crew member to arrive this season, drills a test hole in Sawbill Lake.

Ice thickness is 26.5 inches. There is about 8″ of snow and slush on top of the ice.