Ice, ice everywhere, with nary a safe place to step!
Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.
-Robert Frost
And the ice wars go on…
What became a half-inch slab of cold, hard ice was buried in a couple inches of snow. Things stayed cold and then another snowstorm, leaving another two inches came and went. At the end of that storm, things warmed up a bit and there was freezing rain. A single-digit-temperature hard freeze followed, lasting for a bit more than a week, and the ground became covered in an Oreo-cookie blanket of ice/snow/ice. The top layer is about one-half inch thick, but it’s only supported by soft snow, so I can, usually, break through it if I stand on it. Waldo isn’t heavy enough to do that, though, so he walks around on a sheet of ice everywhere he goes, except where I’ve first broken trail.
It was so slick out there, that I decided, on Waldo’s poop and pee walks, to keep to the sidewalks and parking lot, which the groundskeepers keep salted and free of ice. After the last snow storm, I waited for a couple of days before going to the rail trail. The city was busy cleaning other, more essential, parts of town and I thought that would give them time to plow the path. Waldo and I then ventured down to the sentier ferroviaire (I used Google translator to translate rail trail into French and that’s what came up – that shows that the conversion of railroad beds to walking paths is international and not just American!) and I was right. It was plowed, sort of.
Apparently, the plows couldn’t do the job thoroughly. When Waldo and I got to the start of the trail, we found a solid sheet of half-inch, or thicker, cold, hard ice running all the way across the tarmac. It looked like the plow was able to scrape off the upper cookie and the cream filling, but not the bottom cookie. The remaining chunk was welded firmly to the ground and wasn’t moving for no stinking plow. In places, there were, along one side or the other of the trail, areas where the top cookie still existed. It was broken up into clumps, about the size of a coffee table picture book, that I could walk on without too much trouble – but it was a lot of work. Even Waldo, with his low-slung, studded (with claws), four-paw drive, judiciously chose to walk where the broken upper cookie ice could be found. We only slid a half-mile down the trail and I decided to turn around and try it again another day, with cleats on the bottoms of my boots. I may be intrepid, but I’m not totally stupid.
The problem with cleats is that clear, dry asphalt destroys them, especially when you’re walking 6 miles or more. At my age, it’s pretty much impossible to put the things on, or take them off, without taking my boots off. So, I usually don’t use them unless there is a lot of ice out there. Well, there is a lot of ice out there, so I’m using cleats.
I had an old pair, that I haven’t used for a couple of years. I put them on the boots I wear when I take Waldo out for a poop and pee. They worked great! Except they fell apart quickly. I think they got all rusted up, just laying around, waiting to be used. So, I had to order a new set from Amazon, next day delivery. They arrived, I put them on my boots, and today we’re finally ready to go.
The temps haven’t gotten above freezing, but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been any snow melting. The cream filling is white because there’s a lot of air in there. Light can go through the clear ice on top, but it doesn’t get through the white stuff onto the ground. That’s why you can’t see the ground. The air scatters the light and it gets reflected back into the atmosphere without being absorbed. End result, the sun will melt some of the ice on the surface of the Oreo, but just enough to thicken the outer cookie with the next hard freeze. The Oreo remains.
Today, Waldo and I are going for our full trek, the whole six miles. Waldo is all over the place. He’s slip-sliding on the ice on the trail and on the outer cookie on the side of the trail. He seems to prefer the disordered chunks of ice where someone has walked and broken it, but that can’t always be found. Even so, he does pretty well on the slick stuff, as long as it isn’t on the side of a hill. A few flailing steps here and there and he’s prancing along as if what he’s walking on isn’t ice at all.
Me, I’m doing really well myself, with the cleats. The trail is about 80% ice and the 20% that’s clear lies in short spurts, here and there. I keep to the ice on the edge of any clear spot I come to and I’m making pretty good time. I’m not doing any power walking, but I’m not taking baby steps to keep from falling either. I seldom feel my feet sliding at all, but I’m not pushing it either.
Then we come to Hudson. Hudson is all Oreo except where someone has walked and broken through the outer cookie. The Oreo is thick enough so it takes a lot of effort to walk there, but the broken cookie is uneven enough that it takes a lot of work to walk there too. Soon, I’m sweating, even though it’s windy and the temperature is around 12℉. I’ll be glad when all this slippery hard stuff is gone.
Good news? Next week is going to be in the forties. All week. But it’s going to take most of that week to melt all this ice. At some point, I’m going to have to leave the cleats behind, to preserve them, and take my chances with finding a cleatless way to go around the worst of the ice that’s left.
I don’t need spring, but a clear path to walk would sure be nice.
Because they never plow in Hudson, the ice there has an entirely different character.