Lost Lagoon Freezing Over

Over the past little bit here in Vancouver, our temperatures have been dipping below the freezing mark. Yes, I do understand that -1 or -2 Celsius isn’t as low as some of the other places around Canada and I am not complaining about our weather.

If you walk around Lost Lagoon during this time of season you will probably notice that it is slowly icing over, in fact there are some parts where the ice is at least 4-inches thick! Still, I am not sure how thick it should be to support an average human, but the Vancouver Parks Board has put out the DANGER – THIN ICE signs all along the perimeter of the lagoon. You can also see ice ladders and various other safety measures too.

So, what is this post about? Mainly about an odd sight I saw while coming around the southern end of the lagoon, near the tennis courts and day care centre.

Yup, there is a man an his son out on the ice. I think they only reason why they were heading back to shore was there was a Lifeguard yelling at them to get off the ice. I wonder why the man and child were doing out on the ice in the first place.

It might be a bit hard to see, but the little child has a crossbow in his hand. Granted it doesn’t look very dangerous, and it was plastic, but why does he have it? There are a ton of birds and such out on the ice. Was the using them as target practice? Why would the adult (I am assuming it’s his father) ignore the signs and venture out onto the ice? I didn’t get to hear their conversation, the Lifeguard is the guy in the red jacket in the above photo.

I did notice a few human foot prints in various areas of the lagoon that went out over onto the ice. Some places the ice broke, others it was still intact.

What would be cool though, is if the Lagoon froze to a good thickness and they opened up a portion for public skating. Is there anywhere in the Lower Mainland where you can go skating on a lake/lagoon/pond? It reminds me of the time we used to go into the back farm fields and skate on the ponds that formed and froze over in the Winter.