Chris Kane and Ken Lee are known as the icemen at Hillside Park in Clarks Summit.
"I know a lot of people are not crazy about cold winters ... when we see cold temperatures forecast, we get very excited about that," said Lee.
For the past 10 years, Kane and Lee have tended to the frozen surface of Eston Wilson Lake at the park for the community. They’re volunteers who on any winter day can be found on the ice or sharpening the hundreds of pairs of donated skates.
Ice skating has become a community tradition that stretches beyond the Abingtons in
Lackawanna County, where the park is located.
"We get people across the valley, Scranton, Moscow, you know, Pittston, come up here, because it's the one place they know they if we have ice, we'll have good ice for them to skate," said Lee.
And everything is free. The skates are free. And the thermoses of hot chocolate.
Safety is paramount
The skating season starts for Kane and Lee with a drilled hole in the ice.
"Once the temperature has been cold and we can see that there's a sheet of ice, we start doing depth checks," said Kane.
They hook a measuring stick to the bottom of the ice.
"Once it reaches about five to six inches, that's when we open it up for skating," said Kane.
If the ice dips below four inches, they close the rink.
“That is just not safe to walk on to ice, fish on, to cross country ski on, or anything else,” said Kane.
They keep the eager ice skaters informed on the park’s Facebook Page. For example, this weekend skating is closed today, Friday, because of rain.
“The good news is that if the storm stays all rain and we get a hard freeze on Friday night we could have excellent skating this weekend,” the post says.
Maintaining and monitoring the ice is a season-long endeavor. After a decade, they know how the lake freezes. They cone-off areas of slush or near the inlet and outlet of the lake.
Surprisingly, snow is not always good for ice. Unsurprisingly, neither is a warm day.
"It's a big job just keeping the ice maintained in a skating condition so people can use it," said Kane.
Weekend winter warriors
This winter was the first year in a while the lake was open for consistent skating.
Last winter, they didn’t get out on the ice at all. The ice only froze 3 inches thick. The year before, they were skating on Christmas Day, but by New Years Day it was 50 degrees.
As a winter storm moved in on Sunday, Jan. 19, skaters made tracks through the falling snow on the surface. Hockey sticks clacked as pucks slid across the ice. Volunteers, beyond Lee and Kane, shoveled the powder. The fire crackled near the shore as Kane grilled hotdogs near the pavilion. On that day, a local Scouting America Troop donated the dogs and hot chocolate.
"We get a lot of donations of ice skates, hockey skates, and that's really a big draw here, because most people don't have three, four sets of skates sitting in their closet for their kids," said Lee.
Those donations sit in plastic bins on green picnic tables. The skates are marked by size. They also have skating assistants — grey plastic chairs that people of all ages unsure on their blades push around the ice.
The next day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Kane and Lee got to the park early. The sky was clear and blue, but the wind was cold. They cleared the rinks. Kane pushed a snowblower out on the ice.
The two have been working together for the past 10 years.
"We are the Icemen," Kane said.
He would bring his cooped-up sons to the park in the winter. They would shovel out a little area, tie up their own skates and glide around.
"It's something different to do, a reason to get outside and enjoy the fresh air in winter," Kane said. "Hillside Park is a park for all seasons.”
Lee grew up in Sullivan County playing pond hockey and skating on Eagles Mere Lake. He moved to Tunkhannock and started and ran an ice rink by the Susquehanna River.
"Then I eventually ended up in Clark Summit, and I looked around for someplace to start another ice rink," he said. "And they had this beautiful park here and a nice lake here, and I went to the park commission and asked them whether I'd be able to start a community ice skating project here.”
Kane joined him about a year later.
"Without Chris helping me out, this wouldn't be possible, because it's a lot of work and just having another crazy person do it with me keeps me at it," Lee said.
Now, on some weekends, hundreds of people are on the ice.
"When we see the community come out and really enjoy themselves, that's what makes it all worth it. That's what makes the early mornings and the late nights and the text messages and the phone calls and everything else worth it, when we see so many people come out having fun," said Kane.
KEEPING UP WITH KAT: There's a joke in the WVIA newsroom that I find stories that involve some sort of adventure -- hiking, biking, kayaking, driving to Wellsboro. Stories that take me out of the office for hours, sometimes the whole day (or two). There are many trails to climb, outdoor enthusiasts to talk to and history to uncover in our NEPA Neck of Penn's Woods. So keep up with me as I explore the region.
