Note 04 · Winter
Into the lake in February: the hole, the ladder, the walk back
The lake freezes hard by the middle of January in most years, and from then until March the hole in the ice is a piece of maintenance rather than an adventure. The adventure part lasts about twenty seconds.
- Written at the pirtis
- 25 January 2026
- Typed up
- 17 February 2026
- Reading
- 7 minutes
- Where
- Ignalina, Utena County
Cutting the hole, and keeping it
I cut nothing until I have drilled and measured, and the number I want is ten centimetres of clear ice before I will walk out, fifteen before anybody else does. Clear ice and white ice are not the same material: the white, bubbly layer on top is worth roughly half what the dark ice beneath it is worth, and in a thaw week it is worth nothing whatever. The middle of the lake and the mouth of the stream on the north side freeze quite differently, and I stay away from the second entirely.
The hole is a rectangle a little over a metre long and eighty centimetres wide, cut with a long-bladed ice saw, the slabs pushed under the downstream edge rather than left beside it to freeze into ankle-breakers. Keeping it open through a cold fortnight is a daily job. Two boards and an old blanket over the top slow the refreezing, and in hard frost I still break the new skin each morning with the flat of an axe. Left for three days, it takes an hour to reopen.
From the card by the stove
- Drill and measure: ten centimetres of clear ice, fifteen with guests
- White bubbly ice counts for about half its thickness
- Never near the stream mouth or a spring
- Cut slabs go under the downstream edge, not onto the ice
- Cover the hole and break the skin daily in hard frost
The ladder, the rope, and the person on the bank
A wooden ladder goes into the water at one end of the hole and is frozen in place by morning, which is exactly the point. Steps you can find with your feet without looking down matter more than anything else out there, because the moment people get into difficulty is the moment they turn round in the water and cannot see how to get out. A rope runs from the ladder to a spike driven into the ice three metres back, and a second rope lies coiled on the bank.
Nobody goes down to the hole alone, myself included, and least of all in the dark at the end of an evening, when the sensible part of a person has been sitting in eighty degrees for two hours. One in the water, one standing on the boards in boots: that is the whole system. Whoever is on the bank holds the towels, counts out loud if asked to, and does not get in until the first one is out and standing up.
From the card by the stove
- Ladder frozen in at one end, steps findable by foot
- Rope from the ladder to a spike three metres back
- One person in, one standing on the boards in boots
- Nobody goes down to the ice after drinking
- Towels and dry boots waiting on the bank
How long, and how you get out
Twenty seconds is a long time in four-degree water and longer still at one degree. I go down the ladder rather than jumping, in to the shoulders, and I count. The first breath is a gasp that arrives whether you are ready for it or not, and it passes in a few seconds if you stand still and let it pass. Heads stay dry, because wet hair on the walk back in a hard frost is genuinely miserable and there is nothing at all to be gained by it.
Getting out is planned before getting in. Hands on the ladder rails, weight on the arms, feet on the steps already found with the toes on the way down, and no hurrying, because the surface around the hole is wet and refreezes within a minute. My first winter I climbed out with both hands full of towel, slipped on the boards and sat down hard on the ice. That is the most dangerous thing that has ever happened at that hole, and it happened above the water.
The walk back, and the round after
The walk back up to the pirtis is thirty metres and it is the best part of the evening. Nobody runs it. By the time I reach the door the cold has stopped being cold and turned into something that sits on the skin like a steady pressure, and that is the sensation people drive out of the city in February to find. Felt boots off at the door, a towel over the shoulders, and a minute on the porch first, because walking straight in makes the room feel like an oven.
The round after the water is shorter than the one before it, and I keep the steam light for it: a splash across the top of the stones, no vanta for the first few minutes, the top bench left to whoever wants it. Twice I have watched somebody come up from the ice and go straight to the top bench, red and grinning, and both times they were out again in three minutes and quiet for the rest of the night. Cold earns nobody extra heat.