We had a training flight today that covered a fair bit of the lake.
I’ll lead off with another look at Rat Portage Bay and Safety Bay.
The ice is letting go on Laurenson’s Lake, just right of center in this picture, and further away, the ice on Rat Portage Bay looks weaker, too.
Our second picture looks south east from Bare Point. Lunney’s Island is toward the left, and beyond it is Scotty Island. At the right side of the frame is Town Island.
If you zoom in, you’ll see little patches of water all over the place, but you can’t help but notice there’s a lot of ice out there still.
We went further in this direction, so our third picture is The Manitou.
That’s the western tip of Scotty Island at the lower left corner, and Whiskey Island is the isolated island in the white expanse that is the Manitou. Not so many holes out here; this part of the lake melts late.
Next we swung around to look at the Devil’s Elbow, the biggest patch of water near the Barrier Islands. Mather Island is at the right, Allie Island is near the middle of the picture.
Further south east, it’s all ice from Oliver Island, past Ferrier Island and pretty much all the way to Yellow Girl Bay.
We flew to Sioux Narrows.
This is taken from over Long Point Island, looking at Regina Bay. Mostly ice here.
For our next training exercise, we needed blue sky, so we turned west and headed for this gigantic “sucker hole” in the clouds.
That took us down the western end of Long Bay, so here’s a look at Whitefish Narrows. There are some promising patches of water there.
We climbed up higher, and caught this view as we turned north to stay in our patch of blue sky.
The distinctive island in the foreground is Cintiss Island, with Crescent Island behind it. Beyond that, the span of the Barrier Islands, stretching from Crow Rock Island at the left to East Allie Island at the right.
There is open water at each narrows, but there’s also a lot of ice on the lake.
From our higher vantage point, we could clearly see Shoal Lake to our west.
The little lakes on the Western Peninsula are opening up, but Shoal Lake is deep and shows only tentative signs of opening up along the shores of Carl Bay, near the middle of this picture.
I thought you might like to see some real water, so here’s Big Narrows.
You’re looking east, with Ferris Island at the lower right. There’s open water all the way to Oak Bay, just above the middle of the picture, but Wiley Bay, to the left of it, is all ice.
Here’s a closer look at Wiley.
From here, the only water we see is on the shallow lakes of the Western Peninsula and along its shorelines.
On the home stretch back to Kenora and the airport, we caught this view of Poplar Bay. It’s mostly frozen; the dark patches are cloud shadows. The Tangle is open though.
Chasing patches of blue sky and steering away from aircraft inbound to Kenora set us roaming around today. I don’t often cover so much territory that I need to dig out four or five different marine charts, so I hope you enjoyed the tour.
If you’re in Kenora, it’s easy to form the impression that everything is melting fast, but there’s seventy-odd miles of lake you can’t see from town, and it’s mostly ice. It isn’t all going to melt this weekend.
We are making good progress, so our very late thaw can be upgraded to rather late.
Lake of the Woods Ice Patrol 