Saturday was cold, cloudy and lightly attended at Brule. Pretty much the same at Lake Lucerne.
The snow blowing off the trees during the morning produced local white out conditions on some of the runs.
It was seasonably chilly all weekend. The sweet smell of woodburning stoves scented the cold air as Packer watching men struggled to keep their cabins warm and their heating costs down.
On Sunday we pulled our 34-run sore bodies onto the ice to drill a hole to get a thickness measurement.
It took longer than expected to get down to the lake juice.
It's about 16 inches thick with over 6 inches of snow on top of that.
Last week underwater pictures from the bottom of the ice hole had less ice, snow and clouds blocking the sun light. The picture was "happy" (but trapped in a camera for want of a strange USB cable)..
This weekend's picture was less "happy", centered. The cold and wind also formed a thick ice crust on the underwater housing.
Hopefully we only have 1 or 2 more weekends of the un-dog days of winter. The 20th annual Lake Lucerne Bottle Rocket war is almost upon us. After that there will be only 1 or 2 more downhill skiing weekends and then tree tapping. It's almost as if we are rapidly running out of winter (that is not a problem). The ice-out contest should be up sometime in February.
