Iggy being St. Ignace, Michigan. Immediately north of the Big Mac bridge.

Iggy is where the GG is staying the next two nights (with a trip to Tahquamenon in between). There is Pond Hockey this year! Pond Hockey is scheduled every winter but it doesn’t always happen. Ice always forms on the Great Lakes, at least in places. Whether or not the ice is safe to walk/snowmobile/drive on, is a whole ‘nother story. And it varies according to where you are and how much water movement is going on under the ice.

Mackinac Island is a short ferry ride from the mainland most of the year. If the ferries aren’t running (because ice), it can be difficult to travel back and forth. It is possible to snowmobile (or walk or drive) across the ice but the recommended way to go is to fly back and forth from Iggy (a seven minute flight).

A lot of people think driving their snowmobiles across the ice to the island is a kind of “bucket list” thing. Problem? A lot of the folks who try this are not *from* the area and have NO CLUE about whether the ice is safe or not. Heck, even a lot of people *from* the area probably have no clue. So people go down and when they go down, they go down fast and then quickly drift away from where they went down. UNDER THE ICE. Pretty hard to rescue someone if they don’t have time to call for help and pretty hard to recover their bodies when it’s almost impossible to do an underwater search.

Area folks used to line the ice path on both sides with discarded xmas trees but they aren’t doing that any more, probably so as not to call attention to the path.

Winter can feel like forever in the upper great lakes but the ice isn’t always safe for a very long time, especially in locations like this.

Now. Pond Hockey ice is as safe as it gets. For one thing, it is near shore in a lee-side bay where the ice gets a chance to set up unimpeded by high winds and rough water. And the event sponsors check the ice thickness regularly throughout the winter. If it doesn’t get thick enough, Pond Hockey gets canceled. Sad but better to be safe than sorry.

It wasn’t canceled this year and the GG is there and he walked around on the ice and took some pics.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2026 at 7:08 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.