`ICE-OUT' ON LAKES TELLS MAINE RESIDENTS SPRING HAS SPRUNG.

Byline: Sara Rimer The New York Times

It was 32 degrees here the morning of May 2. There was still snow on the ground. The trees were bare. Everyone was waiting for ``ice-out.''

Henry Gilbert and Clifton Kealiher were standing around the gas pumps at Porter's Garage that Friday afternoon, speculating about when it might occur on Moosehead Lake. The 40-mile-long lake, surrounded by spruce and fir, with Greenville at its southern tip, was getting patchy, with black and gray ice.

Gilbert, the 38-year-old proprietor of Jamieson's Market, deferred to Kealiher, who is 82 and a legendary wilderness guide.

``Oh, about 10 days,'' said Kealiher, who was wearing thick woolen pants. ``I was over to Dexter yesterday, and the ice was out on Lake Wassookeag. Moosehead always goes 10 days after that.''

Gilbert, still in polar fleece, nodded. ``It's a rule of thumb.''

Kealiher hedged, ``It all depends on the wind and weather.''

Waiting for ice-out is a rite of spring in Maine, just as the first robin, or the crocuses, are in other places.

People bet on the date, and the time, down to the second. Stores, clubs and chambers of commerce organize contests around it. The Maine Exiles Web site is running a Moosehead Lake ice-out contest, with entries from as far away as England. The prize: a gallon of lake water.

Technically, ice-out is when enough of the ice has vanished so that a lake or pond can be crossed by boat, end to end. But a lot of people think of ice-out as that moment when the ice has vanished from the lakes and ponds.

``It's `ice-gone' more than it really is `ice-out,' '' said Chandler Woodcock, a fishing guide from Farmington.

It happens a lot earlier in southern Maine. Sebago Lake, the state's second-largest lake after Moosehead, went out April 14, 10 days earlier than the previous year.

Winters are long in northern Maine. Moosehead froze over at the end of December, and some smaller lakes were frozen by November. People are restless - fishermen especially.

``I have sources at each pond where I intend to be fishing,'' Woodcock said. ``They call me when the ice is about to go out so I can be there. After you've been around awhile, you can tell. Once the ice gets real black, you don't have much time left.''

The call he waits for most eagerly is the one from Ken Copeland, who lives on Quimby Pond, in the mountains of western Maine. Quimby, which does not allow motors, is prized by fly fishermen.

``He'll call and say, Chan, tomorrow,'' said Woodcock, who watches the ice and listens to it.

``When you have a nice, windy day and it's kind of cool with maybe a heavy rain, that will make the ice disappear in a hurry,'' he said. ``If you sat there and listened, it would sound like you dropped a million icicles in a water barrel. It tinkles.''

At Beaver Cove Marina in Greenville, the boats were being readied for launching. ``Ice-out should hurry up,'' said Gilbert's brother, Mark, a co-owner of the marina.

Dave Lockwood, from Abbot, pulled up in his pickup, ready to claim the Barbalita Too. ``Our ice went out at 10:30 a.m.,'' he said. ``It doesn't even matter if you use your boat. You have to have it by ice-out.''

Some people here do not long for ice-out the way they did in the old days - before Greenville, population 2,000, with its vast network of carefully maintained trails, became a snowmobiler's paradise.

``Now, with snowmobiling, I don't care if the ice is out,'' said Kealiher, who has put 20,000 miles on his machine since he bought it in 1990.

Meticulous records are kept of ice-out. The log at the Moosehead Lake Region Chamber of Commerce goes back to 1848, when ice-out occurred relatively early, on April 30. The earliest ice-out for Moosehead was April 14, in 1945; the latest was May 29, in 1878, with the average sometime in early May.

For the fifth year in a row, Gilbert, the head of the local snowmobile club, drove one out onto the lake at the end of April and left it there, tied to a buoy.

Customers at Jamieson's placed $1 bets on when the snowmobile would sink - a sort of pre-ice-out contest.

``I took the engine out,'' Gilbert explained to a visitor.

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Photo

Photo: The sinking of a snowmobile on Moosehead Lake heralds spring.

The New York Times