Freezing up slowly

Across the road from my front door the Moose River is slowly freezing over. Along the shoreline in Moosonee there is lots of water flow and strong tides so the process takes longer than in some places.

Already, people are posting photographs of the frozen channel between Moose Factory and Charles Island and some of them are brave enough to walk on it.

I don't think any boats have been in the water here since December 1st but there is still plenty of open water here. I went outside around sunrise this morning and grabbed a couple of shots before getting ready for work.

This afternoon, the incoming tide brought lots of ice, some of it in big sheets. That ice piles up further up the river and some of it will stay around while the rest will go back out with the tide. I took a few pictures and a short video. Shooting video with a DSLR, in this case a Canon 5DII, has the potential to produce work of excellent quality. To get that quality, you need to put in a fair amount of work. I am not very serious about video so I only went so far as to use a tripod and an external microphone. The sound track picked up a few camera noises some some wind but mainly passing helicopters and vehicles as well as a raven that flew by. I shot it in high definition which meant that it takes several hours to upload to youtube but also produced a lower quality version (15.0 MB) for easier posting.

Eventually, as the weather stays cold and more and more ice piles up the river will be frozen over. This will likely happen first up the river which is where people from Moose Factory try to come across by snowmobile at first. In a few weeks, the ice will be thick enough for cars and pickups and then heavy vehicles. For a few months, transportation between Moosonee and Moose Factory will be convenient. This is a good because although the two communities are each pretty much self sufficient there are attractions across the river for everyone. For people in Moosonee, Moose Factory Island has a hospital and an excellent store, GG's. GG's is privately owned and tends to have a wide and electic selection of useful and desirable items. People from the island like to come to Moosonee because the Northern Store there is much larger and also to catch the train south.