(Report by Jim)
Ice as far as the eye can see from our perch on the clay cliffs North of Leland. Thank you, Neal Cory for allowing us to photograph from his stairs. It looks like you can walk out to the islands, but I don’t think it is all solid ice. Empire Beach showed quite a bit of open water several hundred yards offshore. In 2014, Bob Sutherland, Andrew Pritchard, Andrew Moore, and Tom Bisbee completed the hazardous trek from Pyramid Point to Manitou Island visiting the Crib on the way. You can read about that amazing trip here. Lake Leelanau is pretty safe, with several ice fishing shanties dotting the lake. See note below about the Snow Gauge contest.
Ran into Sheen Watkins out on the ice castles yesterday. @swnaturephoto on instagram. She had the right footwear btw, my sneakers were “sketchy”. I don’t recommend going out without spikes or chains.
Our Snow Gauge contest is still on! On April 30th we take the final tally and will announce winners at the beginning of May. We are using the County Road Commission Snow Totals on this page as reference:Â https://www.gtcrc.org/237/Snowfall-Data
Our new first prize is an assortment of goodies donated by Fishtown Preservation and the Leelanau History Museum. If you entered the contest, you will get an email with the details.
Please continue to send us images from wherever you are in the Michigans. We can always use them. And don’t forget about Follower Friday on Instagram. Just tag your photos with #thelelandreport
or email them to support @ lelandreport.com
Jim has a new Focus Trek article “12 Months 12 Photos in 2018” up at:
https://lelandreport.com/portfolio/focus-trek-16-12-months-12-photos-in-2018/
[…] (Jim’s note): I met Sheen on Van’s Beach above when the ice was piled high in March 2018, she was in that day’s Leland Report. https://lelandreport.com/2019/03/vol-xviii-326-lake-michigan-ice/ […]