Hemlock's Ice

Two days ago I took my first hike for 2007. Now I know the first thing you're going to be guessing is how big of adventure I went on this time. Well, it was actually only a mile and a quarter. Not much you might say but I went looking for something in particular this time....giant icicles. I went to Hemlock Cliffs in Crawford County, Indiana, which is only about 15 minutes from where I live. The icicles there come in the large economy size there. These in this first picture are actually pretty small coming from under the root system of a large tree. On the rock wall behind them, however, some much larger ones grow.

The ice at Hemlock comes in all shapes and sizes. As I was walking in I saw what amounted to glob ice with the same kind of formation like you would see lava in at a Hawaiian volcano. Other ice just seems to flow from some of the rocks at Hemlock.

Without doing a lot of talking this time what I'm going to do is just let you see what I saw Wednesday. I've put myself in some of the pictures to show some scale as to just how big some of the icicles and ice masses were. The ice will get even better this week too. Temperatures are supposed to get in the single digits next week and possibly even below zero during the night. That means the icicles will get longer and harder. Some of the cicles in these pictures are 15 feet long. By next week, if all goes as forecast there will be icicles in the 20-25 foot range and as wide as 2 feet or more, weighing in at several hundred pounds for each one hanging off the cliffs. On one cliff that has a comtinuous stream of water, if it stays cold enough, 0 to single digits, for at least a week a giant ice pillar forms. That one has been known to get 80 feet high, 30 feet wide across the base and 6 feet wide in the middle. We'll have to see if Mother Nature allows that one to form or not. But anyway here are some pictures from Wednesday. I'll be going back next week to see how much more ice is there. I'm expecting quite a show.

This particular bit of ice was on a small stream that runs through the gorge. I found this bit at a crossing with several stones to step around. While some of the ice was more soft and smoothe looking this crystalized ice had the look of something that would take your hand off if you reached down into the water. The ice was very brittle, however, and easily broke off if you touched it. If the much colder weather holds like it's supposed to it will be interesting to see how this looks after temps in the single digits.