Winter at YWCA Camp Cavell on Beautiful Lake Huron... 

Lake Huron starts to freeze just about Christmas time. The waves will build up hills along the outer edge. Each time the lake freezes out further, the waves build a new row of hills. Most of the ice mounds you see here are grounded right on the bottom of the lake. The lake does not currently freeze out very far.

Along the edge ice cycles will form from splashing waves. Later the lake will
freeze out further and old edge will be just a ridge on the ice field. The lake
is unusually quite once the ice builds way out and you can no longer hear the
waves breaking.

Usually the outer most edge that is grounded is between 50 -300 feet out. To get an idea of how far that is the lodge is about 100 feet long.

This is a moon rise over the lake in the winter time.  I would have missed this unusually bright one if it hadn't been for a friends urgent email that night telling me to check it out!

Out past this hilly
area about 50 - 100 feet out is open water. Sometimes it will freeze and get a layer of ice on it, but the waves will come and break it up
and throw ice chunks up onto the grounded ice hills.

Sometimes entire sheets of floating ice will move in and scrape along the outermost
hill or edge of grounded ice. It piles up against the hills crunching and cracking as the wind blows it in. The next day if the wind blows the sheet will move off to Canada.

These ice islands form when flat chunks of ice break off a floating piece of ice. They are then gently bumped around by the waves making them round and taller.

These icicles formed in very cold weather.  The color is from the reflection of the sunrise.  These are on the outer edge of the ice you see below.

Here is the ice edge.  It is usually about 50 - 100 feet out from shore and is thick and sitting right on the bottom of where the swim area is in summer.

This is in a cave that formed under the edge of the ice in what we call a ice volcano.  You can see one in the picture above, it is that rounded hill.  The water is only about 1 foot deep and you could see the rocks in the bottom.

This is a ice hill eroded away and then refrozen.  It becomes an ice arch.

This sculpture was created when water sloshed up against the outer edge of the ice bank. It cut itself a trough and the water from the waves hitting it shot up the trough and splashed over the ice. Each time it splashed the water froze
and built up layers of ice into this peak.

In 15 years this is the first time we have seen an ice ball field like this one. These balls must have been formed out in the lake like the islands above and then thrown onto shore in great piles in a storm. The waves built hills up to 15 feet tall as you can see out at the edge of the ice.