Dave Patchett, Dave Young and Ryan Hellyer drove through to Central Otago at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning. Travelling past Mahinerangi revealed no ice to be seen. A good frost travelling through Fruitlands looked promising.

From there, we hoped a trip through to the Lower Manorburn dam would provide some skateable ice, but alas the weather gods were not with us and only 10 – 15 mm of softish ice was present. Some warm’ish temperatures overnight hadn’t helped the ice conditions at all unfortunately. The best ice was found in the gorge just before the neck, but still not sufficient for safe skating.

Dave Patchett testing the extremely thin ice at the Lower Manorburn dam

From the Lower Manorburn we decided to check out Poolburn dam on the assumption that all hope was lost and we weren’t going to get a skate in today. However it turned out that at Poolburn although not great, was acceptable to skate on close to the shoreline – sort of. An ice thickness of around 15 mm was okay to skate on so long as two feet were kept planted permanently on the ice surface. A wetsuit is highly recommended for skating away from the shoreline as the potential to fall through is reasonably high – video footage of such an event coming soon 🙂

Dave Young skating along the shoreline at Poolburn

An attempt to find skateable ice close to the dam face was unsuccessful. The best ice was found further back from the dam, closer to where the main road from Omakau into Poolburn meets at the dam.

Dave Young inspecting the ice towards the dam

The Poolburn dam face