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12th Annual Lake Lucerne Bottle Rocket War

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January 9th through 12th

Bottle Rocket War Weekend featured plenty of cold and little snow. Fort construction went generally well. On the second day the device used to tamp the snow (a 6X6 with handles) was replaced by Krispa. This turned out to be a mistake in that Krispa had little to no interest in proper snow packing. The tippy walls that resulted shamed us all. Dean's fort did freeze before falling and was accentuated by a special firing port. Mr. & Mrs. Nemo's fort featured ice buttresses and red ice orbs resulting in a structure both stunning and functional. The ice buttresses were poured the night before in special molds and lifted into place after wall fabrication. Jeff's fort had interesting little snow things on the top. They were equally spaced and of uniform size for the most part. There were 9 of them. The second one from the left was struck during the war. Jim's fort was donated. He was busy on Saturday afternoon and could not participate in fort construction. It's main accent was walls.<hr>The war began on Saturday, January 11th at 7:00 PM. The next pictures were taken with a remote 35mm camera setup to take 3 minute exposures (50mm,f 1.4,400 ASA). Jim came out strong. His mighty start was attributed to his lack of fatigue (he was busy taking a test during the fort construction process). Krispa's roman candle attack was overshadowed by large rockets from a rogue power near the dock. His attack would have still been spectacular if only he did not have tippy walls. The brilliant moon helped in keeping the volume of fire high during the entire 90 minutes of the event. Evidence of a rogue force near the dock is clear on the left of this picture. The temperature started at 10°F and fell during the battle to 6°F. A shorter exposure was taken in our fort later during the war. The sky cleared and the stars were visible despite a bright waxing moon. The morning after was crisp and cold. This did not help in the great stick pickup that follows the war. Much of the ordnance landed in such a way as to be an effective sundial. We all had watches so we picked them all up anyway. The last thing to do was to drill a hole to measure the thickness of the ice. The ice is almost 16 inches thick. It will be thicker the next time we come up.<br><br><br>-Nemo

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