Treading on Thick Ice

In reply to Ed Higginbotham: We race here in Minnesota on the hard water but working on your car in 40 below windchill takes a special sort of masochism

Perfect day for ice racing. Smooth ice, very smooth. No snow, temperatures in the mid 20's. Abundant sunshine and a full field of enthusiastic ice racers. They could even have a hot lunch served if they ordered at registration.

Jealous,we're still 2 weeks from our 1st weekend.

Latest planned start in my 20+ yrs

Last year we only got two weekends in. The last one as pretty sloppy.

Whoa,2 weekends isn't worth the effort I put in for car prep.

The worst season we ever had was 4 weekends,normally 6 as scheduled isn't much of a problem.

In reply to iceracer:

I was hoping that you would give us an update today!

I had to work yesterday and my car wasn't quite ready anyway but I'm hoping to make it to the next event.

Do you have any photos or a link to video of yesterday's race?

Perfect weather, very slick ice, race studded cars chewed up the ice for some traction. Getting off the track resulted in a very l-o-n-g slide. Go to www.iceace.com and the message board. You may need to join or log in for the message board. Lots of pictures and videos. A great day was had by all.

Track view from a drone.

That's pretty much the exact track layout we've used for years,we run it each direction on the 2 days each weekend.

We have snowbanks to define it though.

That is just one of the layouts we use on Algonquin. Often we short of follow the shoreline making many different turns. How about a right turn around a small island and then a sharp left turn around a point then down the lake. For this race, with the glass smooth ice we had to stay away from any natural obstacles.

We are good to go this Sunday. Jan. 22.

Same location

Race cancelled. Water on top of 14/15 inches of ice.

In reply to iceracer:

Thank you for the update. My car is ready, but I knew that it was in the mid 40s up there all day. I'm three and a half hours away and I was worried about wasting the trip up.

Fingers crossed for a cold snap!

Out two day weekend at Tupper Lake also is iffy. It is supposed to get below freezing later in the week.

So maybe.

We might possibly be back at Algonquin.

Tupper looks good for this weekend. Confirmation on Friday afternoon after plowing.

Just think, Pits on land. Heated rest rooms. McDonalds and others across the road. NAPA and others open on Sat. Party Saturday evening with food. More racing on Sunday.

For more info: icerace.com

iceracer wrote: Tupper looks good for this weekend. Confirmation on Friday afternoon after plowing. Just think, Pits on land. Heated rest rooms. McDonalds and others across the road. NAPA and others open on Sat. Party Saturday evening with food. More racing on Sunday. For more info: icerace.com

Sounds just like every event we have.

Racing is on for this Sunday 2/5 at Wells on lake Algonquin.

18"of smooth ice, wide track with one foot snow banks.

Two things I miss after moving south from CT to NC - the food and ice racing. Spent a brief time on the ice racing 4 wheelers in the unstudded tire class. Now that was fun !!!!

There are some great ice racing photos of Sundays race on the AMEC message board. icerace.com then click on message board.