Outdoor natural skating in your area

[dooobedooo]

FSWer's thread on outdoor rinks made me very nostalgic about outdoor natural skating. In the UK, the climate is generally too mild, but for a few days a year, we do get "fen skating" in the Norfolk Broads. This happens when fields get flooded by autumn rains, and then frozen over naturally. Some of the old farmers turn up to skate with antique handmade skates with spiralled toe picks. With luck, there is enough ice to hold a speed skating championship. Here's a historic pic from 1947:
http://www.topfoto.co.uk/gallery/1947Winter/ppages/ppage28.htm

And a couple of more recent pics:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2002/dec/14/wintersportsholidays.wintersports.unitedkingdom
http://www.saint-ives.org.uk/events/skating/

I know a few people on this board have regular natural outdoor skating every winter. Can you tell us about it? 8-)

[kayskate]

That fen skating looks wonderful! The ice seems very smooth. Winter of 1947 was sure bad. That is not typical of Britain, is it?

Myself, I do not have predictable outdoor skating either.

Kay

[sue123]

I always wanted to skate outdoors on natural ice, but no chance for me to do it. Although we do have a pond on campus. When it was really cold recently, it froze over. I was dying to skate on it, but my friend wouldn't let me do it until it's been at least 4 days of sub freezing temps. She's probably right, but I want to try it so badly.

My dad used to only skate on frozen ponds as a kid. But that was in Russia where it was pretty much a given that you were going to skate on a frozen pond. He did tell me that they got good at avoiding the thin ice, but somebody did fall in once. They managed to pull him out, and then kept playing hockey. The kid was fine, he went home where his mother yelled at him. I think my dad said he was around 10 or 11 when this happened.

[Sessy]

Back in Russia I skated on a pond which was rind behind our apartment block. Well it wasn't a pond - it was a river that had been dammed. You couldn't skate that much, it was basically most of November (when it's already freezing but no snow has fallen yet), and after that just small patches people freed of snow (which hockeyers played on, plus they got all bubbly from the snow).
It kinda sucked.

We also knew not to go onto the ice past january (in february, the ice further south melts, allowing water from ponds and rivers to recede, leaving a pocket of sometimes as much as a yard of air between the ice and the water, if you fall in there, you're doomed.) But there was this Afghani refugee family in the neighborhood who apparently didn't know that, and four of their children drowned this way, trying to save each other. It was really sad, they had fled from all kinds of prosecution and torture, only to have their kids die in an accident that could have so well been prevented. :cry:
That wasn't the only accident that happened, there were a lot of accidents happening there in summer as well, when people went for a swim and were caught in waterplants, or dived into the water and hit objects that were dumped into it (there was a whole car underwater there), or went boating and drowned. So when the dam broke a few years ago after a *very* snowy winter with lots of melting water, they never repaired it.

[Rusty Blades]

I grew up near Lake Erie and a place called Long Point Bay, which was about 4 miles across and 20 or so miles long. On very rare occasions Long Point Bay would freeze in calm weather and we had the most incredible skating rink imaginable! Can you imagine a sheet of smooth blue ice 4x20 miles!!!!!!!

I can remember standing out there (on skates) opening my coat to the breeze and letting the breeze push me like a sailboat to phenomenal speeds! Skaters would come from 10, 20, 60 miles away to skate on the bay and there would be people scattered for as far as the eye could see. Just incredible!

http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t286/diannebest/LPB.jpg

[Isk8NYC]

Where I grew up there were lots of little lakes and ponds that would freeze. The hockey guys usually cleared away the snow for pickup games. Most of us would just go out there in snowboots because very few kids had ice skates. I usually borrowed my big sister's skates, which were three sizes too big so I had to wear extra socks. Needless to say, I didn't really "skate."

When I was in high school, I started skating at an outdoor ice rink and it was a completely different experience - the ice was smooth and I had real skates! The dirt and leaves, etc. combined with the wind made me a very strong skater - lol. That's probably why I skate better on dull blades and crummy ice! I remember being so cold, yet needing just a heavy sweater because I was working so hard to skate. Also, the wind off the nearby lake was so strong, we would have "sailing races" to see who could be pushed the fastest by the wind across the rink!

[Mrs Redboots]

Where I grew up, in the South of England, conditions are very seldom severe enough to allow wild skating. In fact, the last time my father skated was in 1963, which was an incredibly hard winter (the snow came on Boxing Day and was still there in March!), and I remember being taken to slide on the pond then.

Our lake did freeze about ten years ago, but I had flu at the time and wasn't able to profit from the occasion.

[fsk8r]

I went on holiday to Stockholm one winter and was able to benefit from skating on a elementary school ice rink. It was the soccer pitch in summer and ice hockey in winter. Swedish schools are open to everyone so you could just go skating, as long as you avoided the children in sports class. But better than that was being able to skate on Lake Malaren. That was amazing looking up and realising you are miles from land and looking down and seeing air bubbles in the ice. The ice was a bit bobbly from where it had melted in the sun and refrozen over night.
What was really scary was getting the bus back to town and the bus driver asking us about whether we'd been skating on the lake, and hadn't we heard about the skaters the previous rink who'd got stuck on an "ice berg" when the ice around them broke up and had to use a cell phone to call for help. Thankfully it was a lot colder where we were and it wasn't anywhere near where the ice had broken up, but the ice must have been about a foot or two thick.

[Isk8NYC]

I remember skating on a pond once and looking down to see a fish frozen in the ice! It was creepy - I assume it was dead before it got trapped. I avoided that section of the pond for the rest of the winter - it didn't bother the hockey players, though - they made him their center ice! LOL

[Skittl1321]

Doing a bit of research it appears that 3 parks in my city have outdoor skating once it gets cold enough, and that there are 6 parks with outdoor skating in a reasonable distance.

In Ohio where I first skated, there was an outdoor rink that wasn't a pond, and one that was.

I have never had the desire to skate outside. TOO COLD!

But the LTS director told me they used to run the classes outside before the rink was built- and she was telling me what they would do to keep warm! It sounded awful for the instructors.

[Isk8NYC]

Teaching outdoors is brutal, especially the lower-level LTS classes.

[TimDavidSkate]

Teaching outdoors is brutal, especially the lower-level LTS classes.

AMEN!!!! :giveup: my poor coaches

[Bill_S]

I learned to skate on frozen ponds, and didn't see an indoor rink with Zambonied ice until I was about 25 or so. I could see the local pond from my bedroom window. If other skaters were on the pond, I went.

The biggest difference between indoor ice and outdoor ice was in ice quality. When we had cold without rain or snow first, it would freeze glass-smooth but very crystalline, hard and fast. I thought that was normal, and I remember the first time I skated indoors, it felt like I was skating on soft bar soap by comparison.

Smooth ice was valued. If there was a partial thaw, then snow or rain, and a refreeze then the ice was often un-skatable.

There used to be a rule of thumb about ice thickness for safety - one inch stay off, two inches for individual skaters, three inches OK for small groups, four inches all is OK. Take that with a grain of salt - a lot of years have passed by since I read that in a book I used to have.

When the big reservior would freeze, I could skate for miles - and did. You had to be very careful though - if you skated downwind with your coat catching wind like a sail for very far, you had a lot of hard work to get back! Wind resistance outdoors on large open lakes is HUGE!

[wasabi]

We have a large pond that freezes solid enough from January-March each year. I grew up somewhere warmer though, and didn't skate on "natural" ice (though I had skated on artificially frozen outdoor ice) until I had been skating for over 10 years. I got onto the pond, and within 10 minutes had hit a huge rut and landed on my face. I've learned to look out for ruts now, but I still can't figure out how to keep my feet from freezing off!

[dbny]

Teaching outdoors is brutal, especially the lower-level LTS classes.

No kidding! I taught outside for the past 4 years, and there were days when we canceled all our private lessons and subbed for each other so no one would have to teach more than 1/2 hour without an indoor break. The flip side of it is that when the weather is good, it's gorgeous and the most fun ever. Skating in the rain is also fun, unless you fall. I love skating in a snowfall too, except that when the snow covers the ice, you can't see the obstacles that you already know are there - but exactly where?

The outdoor rink near me is not on a lake, but is right next to one in a large park, with no buildings visible or traffic either, so it feels like you are on the lake itself. Last year the weather was so mild that on many mornings, we used to see a great blue heron take off from the marsh behind the rink.

I've never gotten to skate on a natural outdoor surface, but my girls did, about 15 years ago, when NYC had a big ice storm. Our backyard was frozen over, and they went out and skated on it :lol:. We've got video that we look at every once in a while.

[hepcat]

I'm a California girl, but I was recently in Switzerland. A friend of mine from high school lives in Zurich and can take a little funicular up right outside her apartment to a public park with a forest and a huge outdoor rink. It's not natural, but it's seasonal. I could not believe how cold it was. I can't imagine that being my home rink. I thought it was so cool to be that close to a big rink that you could just walk out your door and go skating, but I couldn't take the weather!

I have this dream of skating on natural ice but I'm terrified of the cracked ice stories, so it will probably remain a pipe dream for me.

[SkatingOnClouds]

No outdoor rinks here, though there have been years when it's been cold enough to freeze a lake. I've never had the pleasure of outdoor skating, but my husband has.

He took hockey skates with him when he wintered in Antarctica a couple of times, many years ago. He tells tales of using a husky to pull him along on his skates over the bumpy sea ice. To him, skating is about him, the ice and only the sound of the blades and the wind. Poor darling, no wonder he hates out tiny, dilapidated rink with the pop music blaring.

[Sessy]

I remember skating on a pond once and looking down to see a fish frozen in the ice! It was creepy - I assume it was dead before it got trapped. I avoided that section of the pond for the rest of the winter - it didn't bother the hockey players, though - they made him their center ice! LOL

LOL what nobody cut it out and made it a statue? Hmm back in Moscow there was an ice sculpture exhibit in a park every year, that was loads of fun. Hmm and then of course there were boys making snowmen and snowwomen, pouring water over them to make them ice on the outside and stand longer.

Oh yeah I completely forgot! When I was about 4 years old, there was a *very* large tree before our apartment block that had died and was going to fall over on somebody's balcony. So the men of the building came together, took down that dead tree and all the other dead trees in the area, and built a large sandbox in the middle of the "garden"-ish thing around the apartment block for the kids (they also built some playground utensils and a few benches, all in just a day, that was like WOW, but that's beside the point). In winter however, that became a small ice rink too, mostly for boys without actual hockey skates, just on shoes, playing hockey.
When I went back a couple of years ago, the benches and the playground were gone but the sandbox was still there. Apparently attempts had been made to make it a parking lot, but the apartment block inhabitants just put up the stem of an even bigger tree to block the entrance to it.

[Isk8NYC]

I remember it getting cold enough in NYC for a good skating season on the ponds and lakes. After a good rain or snowfall on frozen ground, the baseball infields would turn into frozen puddles. The Parks Dept and Fire Dept would help out a bit once they saw what had happened. The sand base was perfect for ice and didn't kill the grass at all.

[liz_on_ice]

Once, during an extra bitter winter, I skated on Bellport Bay (Long Island Sound) with my family. I don't remember much, because I was little, but it was special.

[flippet]

I grew up in a subdivision in the Chicago suburbs, and there were plenty of man-made lakes, and some natural ones too. You could drive from town to town and see plenty of pick-up hockey games, and just general ice-sliding fun going on.

My subdivision had two connected lakes, one open and clear, and the other with a small island in the middle of it--the hockey usually happened on that lake. The homeowner's association would actually take a small bulldozer out and clear the ice off when it was thick enough to take the weight. The open lake was practically in my backyard--maybe 1/4 mile as the crow flies. So there were many winters that I'd "skate" around out there. But outdoor ice is usually pretty rough, and it's cold, and it makes it hard to skate, and kind of unpleasant. You really need to be a kid to thoroughly enjoy it! :lol:

I must say, though--I miss the man-made and maintained lakes! I live in Michigan now, and you'd think there would be ponds to skate on, and hills to sled down....but there aren't. The difference is that in subdivisions, there's plenty of 'public' land and space, and the ponds and hills are 'created' due to all the excavation that goes on. In a lot of semi-rural areas, whatever ponds or hills there are are on someone's private land, out of sight, and you'd have to know about them, and have permission to use them. It kind of stinks!

[Mrs Redboots]

I'm a California girl, but I was recently in Switzerland. A friend of mine from high school lives in Zurich and can take a little funicular up right outside her apartment to a public park with a forest and a huge outdoor rink. It's not natural, but it's seasonal. I could not believe how cold it was. I can't imagine that being my home rink. I thought it was so cool to be that close to a big rink that you could just walk out your door and go skating, but I couldn't take the weather!

My daughter worked in Switzerland for a year, and skated at outdoor rinks all the time - it was a matter of layers, I found out when we visited her. And she did demonstrate her spin on the family for whom she was working's tiny fish-pond when it froze!

Here in the UK, each winter there are more and more temporary outdoor rinks, some with real ice, a few just with plastic. They are incredibly popular and fast becoming a Christmas tradition. Most will have closed by mid-January, but right now they are packed all day every day!

[momsk8er]

I skated on plenty of outdoor rinks when I was a girl. We had a pond down the street from my house, and we used to skate on the pond every winter. We would have to bring a broom to sweep off the snow every day. My dad broke his wrist barrel jumping on that pond. And I had to help him take off his skates and walk home. Man was he saying some words I hadn't learned yet!

When my son was playing hockey in elem school he played sometimes on an outdoor rink (actually now he plays in an adult league in Central Park on the outdoor rink). That rink was sometimes so foggy - especially at 6 am - that you couldn't see the kids playing hockey when you were standing at the boards. Sometimes the kids couldn't even see the puck.

Oh, another story from my childhood - I was so excited about my first (and only) program. My coach asked if I wanted to do an exhibition in the neighboring town. I eagerly said yes, but when I got there I found out the ice was a bumpy, cracked frozen pond. That was the worst experience - here I was all set to show off my skills and I couldn't do anything because of all the ruts and bumps. I don't even think they had shoveled well. Obviously they had no clue. They just wanted some skaters to look pretty for a winter celebration.