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Sea Kayak Trips Bulletin Board
Trip Report: Flathead Lake, Montana
Posted By: Shawn Baker
Date: Sunday, 14 February 1999, at 7:02 p.m.
I posted a few weeks back that Flathead Lake in Northwestern Montana is my favorite spot for a day trip in the summer. Well, I started thinking about it last week and thought, "Why not a winter day trip or overnighter?"
I hadn't been up in that area since early December, but a guy I work with has relatives in the area and said that it wasn't iced over 2 weeks ago. He said that actually, the lake is so large (and gets enough occasional strong winds) that it only ices over completely 1 year in 10.
I talked my good buddy Jason into going up and paddling to one of the islands that was owned by the state and camping out. Well, as luck would have it, he had pressing business over the weekend and couldn't spare the time to overnight it. It was now about 4:30 pm on Friday, the 12th, and daylight was fast decreasing. I called him back and said, "Hey, how about a little evening paddle?" Well, I convinced him and 5:15 saw us heading up the road.
We got to Polson, on the south side of Flathead Lake at 6:30, just as the sun was setting. We threw some extra clothes in the boats, put on our headlamps, and launched our kayaks just as the twilight was beginning to fade. The lake was _really_ shallow in the area by the boat launch where we put in. In fact, the lake was about 10' below normal fill, because it is lowered every fall in anticipation of spring runoff. We started paddling in the cold water and the drips from our paddles froze in surreal shiny bumps on our decks and sprayskirts.
CRACKLE! CRASH! Loud grating sounds swept us away from our starlit paddle as our boats crunched through some 1/8" thick ice. With no moonlight, and our night vision shot from the sodium vapor street lights of Polson, we hadn't seen the sheets of ice in our paths. Luckily, it was thin enough for our bows to pass through easily, and thin enough to crack into to stroke with our paddles.
Once we got about 200 yards from shore, the water was totally liquid again. We paddled around a small point and began to paddle toward a bridge where the Flathead River began and the water flowed toward the dam. We saw more ice in the current between us and the bridge and didn't think anything of it. This stuff, though, was about 1/2" thick; thick enough for the bow to crack, but too strong for a paddle stroke. I began to get a little nervous, knowing that the current was pushing us (and the ice) around, and without the ability to paddle, I was at the mercy of the solid and liquid water. I knew that should I capsize and fall out of my boat, I'd have a very hard time swimming up under that ice! Jason was even more nervous, as he can't roll, so a capsize would certainly mean a dangerous swim. Fortunately, he was behind me, and the ice spread after I passed through it, and he was able to paddle back against the small current and get out of the ice. I found that I could find cracks between the sheets of ice to put my paddle in, and we got behind the ice packs. About a minute later, we looked up and the ice was completely gone. We had stayed in relatively the same position looking at a sleeping carp on the bottom about 5' below us, and the ice had silently flowed on, making only quiet cracks as random pieces brushed against the bridge abutments.
We paddled back out into the body of the lake and marveled at the Milky Way, and wished that we had put in farther North, where the lights from town would have less power over the starry night. After a slow mile's paddle back to the boat launch, we found that the ice had frozen up since we had left and was now about 1/4" thick. We had to chop with our paddles as we stroked to get a grip in the water locked under the ice.
We drove the 67 miles back home, hoping that some wind would come up and break up the ice, so we can go again next weekend.
Shawn
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