Ice Overhang

My cousin and good friend Bob Orton is pictured in this shot, standing with my son Drew on the edge of an ice shelf on Sedar Bay, a wide, shallow indentation in the northern coast of the Keweenaw Peninsula about 30 miles southwest of Copper Harbor. My boys and I visited Bob on December 30 at his house on Sedar Bay and took a walk along the lakeshore in the early evening as the sun was going down -- before 5:00! It's was a very nice evening. Not very cold. No wind to speak of. Take note of the way in which the neverending waves of the calmer periods keep undercutting the ice that the lake builds on shore during the colder, windier periods. These ice formations can build far out on the lake in a long cold-snap, and sometimes can be found miles off the coast. But it was only the immediate shore that was encased in ice this night on Lake Superior in early winter. Drew had no fears of the shelf breaking under his weight, for he doesn't add much to the considerable mass of the ice he's standing on. But it is true that the lake will eventually undercut the ice so much that it will break off and fall of its own weight back into the waves. We found many of these large broken blocks being slowly broken apart into even smaller chunks that evening. You can see a couple of these giant blocks that have broken off in the near distance behind Drew.