Smooth ice on High Lake shines in Manitobans' YouTube video

Skating on smooth, glassy, pristine ice for hours without really cold feet? That's what some friends were able to do on High Lake in Manitoba's Whiteshell region this week, and the fun was captured on video.

The two-minute YouTube video shows a group from Falcon Trails Resort and their friends skating and playing hockey Tuesday afternoon on High Lake, which had an exceptionally smooth ice surface.

"The really rare and unusual thing is that we have this really smooth ice right now. And the big reason, obviously, is because we haven't had snowfall," said Caleigh Christie, one of the resident managers at Falcon Trails Resort and Falcon Ridge Ski Slopes.

"There's been enough cold temperatures for it to freeze over, and probably the day that it did freeze over it was super-calm. But since then, no snow has fallen, so it's just like this glassy, glassy lake and you can kind of skate anywhere you want, which was just incredible."

The resort is located between Falcon Lake and High Lake, which straddles the Manitoba-Ontario border.

Christie said she was working on some bookkeeping on Tuesday when, shortly after lunch, her sister Emily "came crashing through the door" and said some friends were coming over to skate on the lake.

One of their friends, Daniel Péloquin-Hopfner, used a GoPro camera and some hockey sticks to shoot the video, which was edited and uploaded to YouTube later that day.

"There's not like a single pebble or thing to catch your skates on and it's fresh ice … waiting to be bitten into by your skate blades," Christie said.

Above-normal temperatures that day were a bonus. The mercury was around 0 C in the Whiteshell on Tuesday afternoon, according to Environment Canada.

"With skating comes super-cold feet, but that didn't happen," she said. "That was pretty cool, too — just skate for three hours straight without feeling sore at all."

'At the mercy of the snow gods'

"In my opinion, [it's] the one upside to not having much snow in early December," Christie said, but added, "I would like that snow, too."

The lack of snow across southern Manitoba so far this season has postponed the ski season at a number of hills, and Falcon Ridge is no exception.

While there is snow on the ground, Christie said there hasn't been enough to open the runs, jumps and trails, plus the temperatures have been too mild for making snow.

The slopes are currently projected to open Dec. 19, but Christie said that may change depending on weather conditions.

"We're at the mercy of the snow gods, really, and the temperature gods, so we're just waiting," she said.

High Lake isn't the only body of water in Manitoba with a glass-like skating surface right now. Clear Lake, in the western part in the province, has become a see-through outdoor skating rink thanks to the mild and relatively snow-free weather.