Today I visited the area of beaver activity about which I posted a few days ago to see how the severe cold that has settled in has changed the ice. What I found was a complete surprise!
The water in the vicinity of the beaver’s activities has frozen into ice so thick that I was able to jump on it: that I expected. What I didn’t expect was what has appeared on the surface.
This photo shows where the little stream enters the river. Notice the lumpy appearance of the ice in the foreground. There is 2 to 5 feet of water beneath that ice.
This photo provides a little closer look at those lumps which at first glance look a little like big spiders, at second glance, like white ferns growing there.
The rest of the photos are close-ups of individual lumps, which are two to four inches across and at most a half inch in height. When I touched several very gently with my fingertip, they disintegrated completely into “ice dust”, resembling fine snowflakes. I could feel no resistance to my touch and there was no organic material inside them, just very, very fine ice crystals.
Montana Outdoors 