LOCALadk Magazine

It's the 21st century and yet in the tiny Adirondack community of Raquette Lake it's time for the Ice Job. Every winter when the time is right, a stalwart group of Raquette Lake year-round resi- dents, visitors and local supporters come together to cut the fro- zen lake into huge blocks and transport them into the icehouse. There is no fixed date or set weekend. Mother Nature decides when the ice is just the right thickness, then it's all hands on deck. In 1908, the Raquette Lake Supply Company Store (RLSCS) was relocated from Long Point to its current location in the hamlet. Today it is owned by Jim Dillon and continues to operate as the main commercial complex in Raquette Lake. Ice harvesting on Adirondack lakes was big business in the early 1900s. The ice was transported to cities like Chicago and New York City via the railroad. Raquette Lake started to supply New York City in 1920 after a fire destroyed the icehouse in Forestport. The ice harvest in Febuary 2016 started on a cold but sunny morn- ing. Snow is cleared from a large patch of ice forty or fifty yards from shore, directly in front of the RLSCS. A maniacal looking device resembling a sideways lawn mower with two enormous vertical circular saw blades is needed to cut through the ice. This type of machine was introduced in 1918 and can cut 100 feet of 12 inch thick ice in one minute. After the first cut is made, a ver- tical piece of metal 22 inches away from the saw blades acts as a guide to keep the blocks square. The ice is scored and the result is a huge checkerboard of 22 inch square blocks of ice. Handheld pond ice saws, resembling large toothed cross-cut saws, are then used to cut the squares into smaller rafts. Each raft is two or three blocks wide and six or eight blocks long. A raft this size can support a person. One of the unique and amaz- ing sights of the Ice Job is watching skilled volunteers tranquilly floating on these rafts. They maneuver the rafts with long wood- en pike poles topped with sharp metal picks. Muscling each over to a pre-cut channel leading to the shore. As the rafts move across the open water towards the channel they are then broken into five or six block sticks, using a large metal ice chisel. When the stick nears shore they are broken into individual blocks and cleared of extraneous snow. Blocks are then maneuvered the fi- nal feet toward a powered mechanical conveyor. Waiting at the bottom of the conveyor two Ice Job crew mem- bers push each two hundred pound block onto the conveyor as the operator switches it on and off as needed. The conveyor lifts the blocks from water level up the bank and onto waiting pan- el truck. Two vigorous Ice Job crew members push and slide the blocks, filling the truck bed. The trucks drive up the hill where the ice is unloaded onto a platform outside the ice house. Each block then takes a wild ride down a curved descending slide and is lined up to be pushed onto an industrial elevator system and lowered or lifted into the icehouse. The icehouse is where the Story by Mitchell Edelstein With photos by Kurt Gardner

• Cover