There were horrid ice conditions at Coalpit dam on Friday evening. The good ice from last week was all gone. There was approximately 10 mm of very soft snow ice and a healthy dose of snow pack in the surrounding area, so hopefully that will provide a nice cooling base for more ice formation.

Another excellent report on the Lower Manorburn dam ice surface is available from Chip off the ice block. Not good news unfortunately 🙁
http://chipofftheiceblock.blogspot.com/2011/07/cruising-manorburn.html

The NIWA weather report for Alexandra says it all. A high of over 13° C during the day and as of 3am in the morning, the temperature had still only dropped to 5.5° C.

Alexandra NIWA weather report

The latest Chip off the ice block report indicates that the higher temperatures experienced in Alexandra over the past couple of days did not negatively effect the Lower Manorburn dam and it has in fact improved since yesterday! Things are looking up for the potential of a growing ice pack in Central Otago. Fingers crossed for a few more hard frosts to give us a good solid chunk of ice to skate on at the weekend!

Chip off the ice block Manorburn dam report

Alexandra weather data. The increase in temperatures over the past few days has thankfully not caused a reduction in the ice pack.

Coalpit dam had a good sliver of ice on it yesterday (Sunday) but not enough to skate on. A couple of good hard frosts should get into a good state, but not quite good enough to hold the weight of a skater just yet unfortunately :(I

Ice thickness at Coalpit dam

Dave Young’s latest Chip off the ice block reports are now up:

Chip off the ice block Day 1
Chip off the ice block Day 2

Dave Young at Idaburn dam

At Manorburn today about 30mm needs one or two frosts. Keith.

From Keith Dickson via SMS message.

Very hard ice on shore of the lake. Approx. 20 – 30 mm. caution needed but considerably better than yesterday. Softening in warm 8 deg. C temperatures will cause problems later in the day but conditions were good in the morning.

Updated 8pm 3/6/11. Added more photos.

Very hard ice after cold freeze over night. Ice was skateable at the beginning of the gorge and channel sections but relatively thin at approx. 30 mm. Skate with care. Ice will likely soften in sun so only suitable for mornings.

Temperature was -7 deg. C

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

Conroy’s dam was totally liquid, no sign of ice of any kind.

Dave Patchett staring out onto the expanse of nothing but liquid water.