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Ice is back, day 3: I’ll stop the compressor and melt with you

Required reading: day 1

When last we left the rink, the ice was looking unusually textured, but it was still white; however, warm temperatures and relentless Zambonis have a way of making ice disappear.

The first picture shows a clear sign of progress: the Zambonis had started to remove the paint layer, thus providing a better look at the sand below the ice.  Most of the sand was visible only through a layer of ice, but in a few places around the rink the ice had melted away entirely, providing an unobstructed look at the very soggy sand.

The rest of the rink was still covered in ice, but as shown by the layer of water on the ice, it was melting rapidly.

If you were wondering where all that paint ends up, the answer is simple: it ends up with the rest of the ice shavings the Zambonis collect.  Normally the snow ends up in a collection tank in the back of the arena, but because the amount of snow was unusually large and patriotic, it ended up on the grass behind the arena.

A few hours later there wasn’t enough ice left for the Zambonis to shave, so the rink was left alone to melt.

The standing water on the surface provided a reflective surface perfect for cool-looking photos that do little to illustrate the ice replacement process.

It wasn’t all appealing: the cracks, which were ugly at the start, became a different sort of ugly as the ice melted, further accentuating the need for the project.

Since the paint freezes when it’s applied, it melts along with the ice and travels with the ice shavings, leaving behind plenty of evidence along its route.

The prevalence of white ice means the work crew also leaves behind plenty of evidence along its route.

If Horatio Caine were around, he’d likely use his suspension-of-disbelief magic to find a tool mark from a murder weapon and the suspect’s reflection in the tread, thereby sealing the case and providing a fine opportunity to dramatically don his trademark sunglasses and utter yet another one-liner.  Fortunately, there was neither a murder to solve nor a painfully melodramatic TV detective to use hilariously improbable (or impossible) methods to solve the murder, so work could continue without unnecessary delay.

At that point, though, there wasn’t much work to continue: after the ice melted, the next step was to let the sand dry out.  Watching sand dry is exactly as fascinating as it sounds, so the next set of photos will be from day 6.

Ice is back, day 1: shave and a haircut

It is an unshakable fact of life that whatever can be built must also be maintained and, on occasion, replaced; since the sheets of ice found in ice arenas are manmade, it stands to reason that they, too, must be maintained and even occasionally replaced.  For the average ice-aware individual, the maintenance and replacement of ice is shrouded in mystery; most people know about the iconic Zamboni ice resurfacing machines, but few know how a sheet of ice is built in the first place, and few get to see the whole ice replacement process from removal to reconstruction.  But by the end of this series, the readers of this blog — and, later, the readers of the Chelsea Standard — no longer will be ignorant of that process: thanks to the crew at Chelsea’s Arctic Coliseum, I have the opportunity to observe and photograph the process from start to finish.  Prepare to be illuminated!

Before I begin with the deconstruction photos, I should mention one important fact that may surprise you: as it is at many local rinks, the ice at Arctic is built on a foundation of sand.  Though that might concern the Biblical scholars among us, it’s not nearly as tenuous as it sounds; in fact, it’s a common method of construction.  You’ll get to see the sand for yourself in future posts, but since this is ice replacement, the whole process starts when there’s still ice in the rink.

You may be wondering: why does the ice need to be replaced?  Is it really that bad?  Well…since they’re spending time and money to replace the ice, the answer is obvious: yes, it is that bad.  The Coliseum’s other rink doesn’t have any serious problems, but this rink had developed large cracks that adversely affected ice quality.

Though the cracks feel smooth on the surface, they’re problematic in at least two ways.  First, they allow sand to work its way up into the ice and, eventually, to the surface, resulting in inferior ice for skaters and dulling the Zamboni blades more quickly; second, as visible above, they also pull the paint out of the ice and reveal the sand beneath the ice, making them uglier than a Matt Millen draft board.  And just as the only way to fix a Millen draft is to replace Millen, the only way to fix cracks in a sheet of ice is to replace the ice.

Naturally, to replace the ice, you must first remove the ice.  The first step is simply to cut the refrigeration and let the room warm up.  What happens when the room warms up?  The ice begins to melt, most visibly at the edge.

But while ice conveniently and predictably melts when it’s not properly refrigerated, it can take a while for that much ice to melt, and it can take even longer for that much water to evaporate.  It doesn’t take long for the edge of the ice — seen at the Zamboni door in the above photo — to look slushy, but the rest of the surface keeps its cool much too well to let it disappear without encouragement.  The good news is that it’s not difficult to encourage an ice surface to disappear.

There’s a misconception that Zambonis do little more than spread water on the ice to fill in its imperfections, but the process is far more complicated than that; in addition to spreading new water on the ice, they also shave off a layer of worn ice and clean the ice before adding a coat of new water.  Those capabilities work together beautifully for resurfacing ice, but when it comes to removing ice, the machine need only channel its inner Norelco and give the ice a close shave.

(In case you were wondering, Arctic Coliseum uses real Zambonis, and not those inferior knockoffs Olympic organizers so foolishly used at the Vancouver Olympics.)

Most of the ice shavings are collected in the snow tank, but some are a bit less cooperative, electing instead to watch the process from a front-row seat near the Zamboni’s blade.

Despite their best efforts, those shavings still end up off the rink.

The remaining ice provides a good reason to appreciate the second and third steps in a Zamboni’s resurfacing process.  Hockey wouldn’t be much fun on ice that had been shaved but not reconditioned:

Though it may not be difficult to remove ice with a Zamboni, it’s certainly time-consuming.  That’s why you’ll still see Zambonis running on day 3.

Speaking of which: come back soon for the day 3 post, in which the ice rink begins to look less like an ice rink!

The west of the story: I lake it — I lake it a lot

As our day in Yellowstone drew to a close, I decided to watch the daylight slip away and night descend over nearby Lake Yellowstone.  As you may recall, our first look at the lake early in the day left us in awe; as you’ll soon see, the extended time I spent at the lake at the end of the day only deepened my awe.

The sun was still descending when I arrived at the lake, but the partly cloudy sky provided a much different look from the one we’d gotten under clear skies earlier in the day.

It didn’t take long for dusk to set in, and that provided an opportunity for yet another look.

After watching the change from daylight to night over the lake, my final goal was to see — and, if all went well, to capture on memory card — the moonrise over Lake Yellowstone.  With the sky becoming noticeably more cloudy, I became concerned that I might not see the moon at all.  Happily, though, the clouds served not to hide the moonrise, but instead to make it even more spectacular than I’d hoped it would be: the cloud cover most courteously left a gap between itself and the horizon, and before long, I found myself gazing at a stunningly gorgeous moonrise.

After a few minutes, the moon began to slip behind the clouds, and that’s when they did their part to make it even more spectacular: the moon itself disappeared, but its light continued to illuminate the distant mountains.

Even after the clouds hid the moon, I didn’t go back to the cabin; I found it too difficult to tear myself away from the vast near-silence of Lake Yellowstone on a calm summer evening.  Though I would return to the park in a heartbeat if given the chance, I knew there was no guarantee I’d ever again have the privilege of visiting Yellowstone, so I wanted to spend every possible minute soaking in the majesty of God’s creation.

Eventually the long day of walk and awe caught up with me, and though I wanted to spend even just another hour or two under the night sky on the shores of Lake Yellowstone, I knew I had to go to bed.  I packed up my camera and reluctantly returned to the cabin, but I did so with an immeasurably valuable new set of memories (and, of course, a few photos).

The west of the story: thy name is mud

Yellowstone’s Mud Volcano is among the most…uh…fragrant areas in the park.  It’s worth the nasal assault, though, because the features fit the park’s secondary theme of weird.  (With its acres and acres of astounding scenery, the park’s primary theme is, of course, wow!.)  And if you’ve ever lived in a house with well water, the scent may be somewhat familiar to you.  Likely a bit stronger than you’ve experienced, but familiar nonetheless.

The mud volcano itself — which apparently isn’t a “real” mud volcano, according to those snooty scientific folks; does that make it a fauxcano? — is among the first features on the area’s relatively short walking path.  Years ago it shot mud into the air and thus actually resembled a small volcano, but eventually it became a victim of its own perpetual rage: one side of the volcano collapsed, leaving it looking more like a hot tub at Pig Pen‘s house.

The sign accompanying the volcano included an amusing account from the first American explorers to encounter the startling sight of mud shooting into the air.  I don’t recall the sign well enough to recount it here, but as you might imagine, they were understandably perplexed: not only had they never seen such a sight, but they’d also never even heard of the possibility of the existence of such a sight.  We have such a muckle of information available to us now that most natural phenomena are widely known or easily discovered, but that wasn’t the case 140 years ago.

As it turns out, the trail through the mud volcano area happens to be one of the better places to get an up close and person experience with a few of the park’s many bison.  We became aware of that little tidbit when we turned a corner and saw two bison lounging near the trail.

They eyed us curious tourists with obvious disdain — just look at the bison’s expression in the first photo! — but fortunately, it was a lazy disdain.  Had they wanted to make trouble, we would have had few escape choices, and all of them would have involved uncomfortably hot pools of mud or water.  But they were content to munch on the grass, we were content to take photos, and the nearest hospital was content not to have patients with severe bison-related injuries.

A few minutes down the trail from the volcano was a cluster of mudpots, which are more features in which you could cook pasta (though you shouldn’t actually try that, and I don’t know why you’d want to).  The first and most prominent was Black Dragon’s Caldron, and it had its own sign recounting its own strange history.

If you can’t read the sign in the photo, it says: “This mudpot roared into existence in 1948, blowing trees out by roots and forever changing this once quiet forested hillside.  A park interpreter named the new feature for its resemblance to a darkly colored ‘demon of the backwoods’.  For several decades, it erupted in explosive 10-20 foot bursts of black mud.  Over the years, it has moved 200′ to the southeast and become relatively quiet.  However as change is constant in Yellowstone, the black dragon may one day roar back to life.”

Further along the trail were a few more mudpots that were considerably more agitated than the currently sedate Black Dragon’s Caldron.

Near the end of the trail was a large pool of reasonably placid water with a set of odoriferous neighbors:

The clouds of steam on the right side are coming from a few of the park’s four thousand fumaroles.  They’re sort of like steaming manhole covers, except you might require medical attention if you walked over the top of a fumarole.  They’re sort of warm in the same way that Yao Ming is sort of tall, Star Wars is sort of popular, and analogies are sort of easy to make.

The area on the near side of that pool of water was covered with dead trees, a most curious fact helpfully explained by another informative sign:

If you can’t read the sign, it says: “Covered by dense forest until 1978, this hillside changed dramatically after a swarm of earthquakes struck the area.  In spite of being jolted again and again, the trees remained standing, but met their demise soon afterward when ground temperatures soared to 200° F or 94° C!

Roots sizzled in the super-heated soil and trees toppled over one by one as steam rose eerily between the branches.  No wonder the hill was dubbed ‘Cooking Hillside.'”

The trail ends back at the parking lot, and adjacent to the parking lot is another pool of piping-hot water.

When we reached the end of the trail, we found that the parking lot itself provided a fine example of the extraordinary heat produced by the park’s thermal features.  The lot had the usual collection of drains to collect rainwater, but the features encroached underneath the pavement and turned one drain into just another vent for its carpet-cleaning steam.  Park rangers placed a traffic cone on top of the drain to prevent visitors from parking or walking on the hot metal, but since the cone was rubber, it wilted under the relentless assault of the intense heat.

Photo of the Now, vol. 218

Dexter High School is nearing the end of much-needed upgrades to its football stadium, including a (LONG LONG LONG OVERDUE) new press box and a new building containing concessions, restrooms and locker rooms.  Much of the construction is finished, but as I discovered while covering Wednesday’s track meet, there are still a few areas off-limits due to ongoing work.  Well…let me amend that statement: there are still a few areas that are off-limits in theory, but not in reality.

Photo of the Now, vol. 217

Rec league baseball games haven’t yet started here in Chelsea — they start next week — but that doesn’t mean the kids haven’t been busy: teams have been hard at work practicing for several weeks now.  On Friday I dropped by the baseball fields at Beach Middle School and photographed a few minutes of one team’s practice.  (The team happened to be sponsored by Arctic Breakaway, a fine restaurant that has consumed more than a few of my hours and my dollars.  You should try it out!)

The west of the story: bison interlude

Of the many curiosities Yellowstone has in abundance, the fuzziest may be the bison.  The iconic animals litter the park’s landscape, and they spend their iconic days munching on grass, stopping traffic and (usually) tolerating the many tourists who sincerely believe it’s a good idea to invade their personal space.  Let me assure you: it’s not a good idea to invade the personal space of a creature that weighs up to 2,200 pounds, runs as fast as 35mph, leaps a three-foot fence, and has two horns that are simply perfect for making a delicious tourist kabob.

Sadly, though it may sound like I’m exaggerating the ignorant boldness of tourists, there are plenty who behave as though the bison are friendly household pets.  Despite the countless extra-large warning signs throughout the park, it’s common to see somebody approaching a bison in order to get that awesome picture to post on facebook; when we stopped at one bison-induced traffic jam, we saw one tourist exit his car and walk to within maybe 20 feet of the animal to take photos.  We also heard the story of a park ranger who arrived just in time to prevent jaw-droppingly stupid parents from placing their young child on top of a bison for a photo.  These are the things that happen despite the ever-present signs that say, in so many words, “Caution: wild animals are wild”; I can’t imagine what would happen without those signs.

We spotted quite a few bison throughout the day, but it wasn’t until the middle of the afternoon when we spotted one where we could stop and get a few photos without causing a traffic jam.  (As indicated in the previous paragraph, many visitors weren’t afraid of stopping traffic to ogle the bison; however, we weren’t inclined to be so discourteous.)

Those two photos make it look like the bison was maxin’ and relaxin’ in a secluded meadow, but that wasn’t quite the case.  Since they’re wild animals, the bison are free to roam wherever they desire, and occasionally they desire to roam in the few populated areas of the park; the bison in the above photos was convenient for us because he’d decided to dine right next to the batch of cabins that included our residence in the park.

Our cabin was somewhere behind the two in the photo, but still: that bison was practically our next-door neighbor.