Some more photos of Lake Pepin taken near Lake City Marina Thursday 3/31/2011. Also one photo of the area just south of Central Point taken the same day. As you can see there is still quite a bit of ice, but it is disappearing slowly. The flood level seams to be holding about one half foot below flood stage for now, I saw that the rest stop near Hansen’s Harbor is partially flooded as the water is now over the retaining wall.
Lake City Marina. Click to enlarge.
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Note debris pilied along ice edge out in the Lake. Middle of photo. Click to enlarge.
South of Central Point. Click to enlarge.
The largest concentrations of Eagles along the river Thursday was on Lake Pepin. Almost all of the river was ice free to the La Crosse, WI area and there were only a few birds here and there. I did not get a count this time, but I will estimate that there were at least 50 eagles on Lake Pepin as I drove by. Sorry, no pictures of them.
As I drove by Hansen’s Harbor it appeared to me that the ice in the harbor was very close to being gone as it looked saturated with water. In fact, the ice was the same color as the water. We are still aiming for a May 1st launch date, but we also have much to do in four weeks. Should be very busy if it ever gets above 50 degrees here. As you can see in the above photos the ice in the Lake City Marina still looks mostly white. Not so close to melting yet. Hopefully we all be sailing before we know it. The earths 23 1/2 degree tilt has got to be working in our favor pretty soon, right?
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