Starting today, Saturday 1/28/23, we are once again allowing vehicles with single-axle wheel houses on through our access! We checked areas off the road to see how the layered ice is healing. It has gotten much better in the past 2 days. It’s not perfect, however. There will be plenty of locations scattered everywhere that will still have a top, thinner sheet of snow-covered ice, then water, and then the main ice sheet. We need more time and cold for it to completely heal. Thankfully with the driving wind on Friday, the snow was packed down to allow the cold to penetrate further and lessen that water gap, and in some cases fused the ice sheets together.
The access and road from the marina is in great shape and heads past Waconia Bay, out towards Center Reef and then to Pillsbury Reef connecting up with the system of paths created by others. The banks on the edge of the road are extremely hard and will not have healed as much underneath. There will be water, slush and likely potholes where you create a new path through the road bank. For those reasons, we are currently not plowing off-shoots to get off the road as we usually do.
What does that mean if you are planning on bringing out a single-axle wheel house? Scout ahead of yourself without your house by chiseling or drilling to get a sense for how layered the ice is. Be prepared with a 4-wheel drive vehicle, shovels, a tow strap, chains or sand for traction and a friend with another 4-wheel drive vehicle if you’re planning on going anywhere that hasn’t been used by anglers yet. If you’re heading to a spot that has had lots of activity this year, you’ll likely deal with rutted, bumpy ice, but less of a chance to have layered ice. If this year has told us anything, nothing is uniform on the lake.
Keep in mind we are a pay access and our fees are for access use only. We are not a tow service.
We’ll see you on the ice!
