They’ll be cutting ice on Squam Lake this winter as always, but don’t ask when.
“We’re not allowing any spectators on the ice – keeping distance,” said Lucy Moore, administrator for the Rockywold Deephaven Cabins.
The Holderness camp, which dates back to 1897, has made the annual ice harvest a tradition that draws hundreds of people. Volunteers and camp staff act as “ice wranglers,” using power saws and lots of muscle to cut 110-pound blocks of ice, up to 3,600 of them.
The blocks get stored in the camp’s ice house, packed in sawdust, and all summer long blocks cool food and drinks in some 60 cabins and rooms at the camp.
Each block of ice is lifted with tongs and placed in the upper compartment of a room’s “ice box” – still the term used for refrigerators in some parts of the country. Cold air sinks down into the insulated compartment below while water from the melting ice is collected in a pan. The next day, the ice is replaced with a fresh block.
It’s a long-standing tradition, just like the ice cutting. But that was before COVID-19.
Last summer Rockywold Deephaven Cabins didn’t open for the first time in 123 years. The ice that had been cut that winter and stored has melted away.
Rockywold Deephaven Cabins plans to reopen this summer, within whatever limits are in place because of the pandemic. That will require more ice, although when it will be collected has yet to be determined.
Although the camp isn’t inviting observers this year, it says it will post photos on its blog as well as Facebook and Instagram.
The camp is waiting on ice to get the right thickness, which usually happens some time this month – although so far, this winter has been warmer than normal. Ice needs to be at least 12 inches thick to hold up a truck but less than 15 inches, which makes the blocks so heavy they’re hard to move.
Harvesting ice from ponds and lakes was a huge industry in New England before electricity and refrigeration came along. At the peak of the ice-harvesting era, an estimated 10 million tons were cut into blocks and shipped as far away as the Caribbean and India. It continued to some extent until the 1930’s but now is almost entirely done for demonstration or historical re-enactment by places like Stonewall Farm in Keene.
(David Brooks can be reached at 369-3313 or dbrooks@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @GraniteGeek.)
