Singing ice at Islet Lake

Cold ear­ly win­ter evening at Islet Lake

Last week I took my cam­era (and my daugh­ter) out to the Cook­ing Lake-Black­foot Nat­ur­al Area, about 30 min east of Edmon­ton, for an after­noon walk while the weath­er was still rel­a­tive­ly mild. There has been just a dust­ing of snow so far this year, so the ice on the lake was bare and exposed to the quick­ly cool­ing air. As the sun moved low­er in the sky and the tem­per­a­ture dropped the ice began to make ter­rif­ic heav­ing, groan­ing and boom­ing sounds. The fre­quen­cy increased until there was near­ly con­stant, resound­ing, echo­ing sound com­ing from the ice. Every­thing else was per­fect­ly still, and the singing of the ice was the per­fect back­ground music while I took this quick photograph–just as the last sun­light made the bare aspen on the far shore glow a warm orange-red, in con­trast to the cool blue of the shad­owed lake ice in the fore­ground.