Elk Lake

Elk is now completely free of snow. Minimum 10" of hard green ice. 98% hard green ice with very few stripes of smooth hard white ice. No snow, no slush !! We have sailed a couple hundred miles in the last week,the warm weather completely melted the snow then the rain smoothed everything now after the freezing temps this is the best this ice has been this season by far.
We sailed all day today,the winds started out high but then fell off in the afternoon.Even when the winds were down to 4-6 mph I still sailed without effort. Skip STauber and I sailed Sunday until the winds fell to 4
Elk Lake is about 20 square miles and all frozen.
We will be sailing it every day...

The lake now has between 1/8"

The lake now has between 1/8" and 1" of light fluffy snow...does not really affect the ability to sail.

Feb 18 2005

Sailed Elk lake yesterday and today. We got snow yesterday and high winds(according to accuweather.com it was 10 mph gusting to 41) which left some spots clear and others with drifts to about 3", but after we woke up this morning and went out to sail we had less clear area, maybe only 10% clear but the snow is spread out more evenly. Most of the snow cover is between 3/4" to 1 1/2 " deep. We had REALLY light winds today (4-7 mph), but still got a couple great runs in before the wind completely died.

Jack

Feb 18th 2005 Elk Lake

As I was typing the report above I looked up and saw the wind meter near shore was showing 4-7 mph again and since that was near shore I figured what the heck maybe there was more out on the lake. So we headed out again . Boy was I glad we did. We had some incredibly great sailing for the next hour and a half until it got dark. The snow is so light and fluffy that with every wind change the conditions change. We had slightly more clean area this evening than we did this morning.

Jack