.

Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - With warming weather ahead, Yellowknife's fire chief is warning people to stay off the ice.

"Our message is to stay completely off the ice," said Albert Headrick. "With the mild weather we've been having, I can assure you it's best to stay off the ice altogether."

Kuzman Jivkov takes his snowmobile out on the ice at the government wharf in Old Town May 19. - Katherine Roth/NNSL photo

As water starts flowing beneath the ice and currents pick up, the risk of falling through is huge, he added. This time of year is dangerous to people who choose to ignore warnings. The hazard has claimed lives in the past.

Longtime houseboat resident Matthew Grogono said he understands the warnings, but as an owner of three houseboats who commutes across the ice every spring, he said he can tell when the lake's surface is no longer safe for walking.

"I am walking across there at least twice a day," he said last week. "Every day the ice changes, but up until now it has been relatively safe."

During the next three weeks there will be progressive melting and break-up, he said, which most houseboaters are familiar with.

Watching the ice recede from the shoreline to the point of becoming impassable is the first sign the frozen surface is on its way out, he said. The second and third signs involve changes in the ice pan itself. Grogono monitors this with the help of his dogs.

"When you start seeing black patches that creak under your feet, that's when you have to be careful," Grogono said. "When the dogs walk around it, you feel the hairs on the back of your neck going up, and think it's best to just go around it ... Once the dogs start walking around on their tippy toes, you know it's dangerous."

He added one other way to stay safe in transition season is to watch what other people are doing to get their canoes along the ice.

"If they are pulling them out, then it's probably still safe. If they are pushing them, it isn't."

Some people, like houseboater Kuzman Jivkov, was still taking a snowmobile out last week.

"I will probably keep it up for another week," Jivkov said on May 19.

All the same, Grogono said the general warnings for Yellowknifers to stay off the ice should not be ignored.

"It's very good advice for the novice," said Grogono. "But if you have to go home at the end of the day, just take the necessary precautions."