Today I got to See an Ice Wall that was Created by an Ice Tsunami

I'm not usually one to follow the crowds but every once and a while, something will make the news and intrigue me enough to go check it out.  So when my dad called and asked if I would like to go for a drive to Irish Vale to see the Ice Wall, I jumped at the opportunity.

Now you are probably wondering "what is the Ice Wall".  If you live anywhere in Atlantic Canada, you probably heard about this phenomena on the evening news.  If you live anywhere else, you might have no idea what I'm talking about.

The Ice wall is basically....an ice wall.  It's a wall along the shore made up of ice that piled up.  At one point, the bay was frozen but a fluctuation in temperatures caused it to melt and break up and this, combined with some high winds and surf, pushed that ice to the shore where it piled up.  Actually it piled up to an impressive height as you can see in the pictures.

We arrived mid-afternoon expecting to see a few people there as it was a sunny, mild Sunday.  I was quite surprised to see that there was quite a lot of people.  Possibly close to a hundred or more.  Cars were lined up all along the highway.  We parked further down and found a path leading down onto the shoreline.  The well-beaten path in the snow was an indication of just how many people had gone through there in the week or so since the ice appeared.

Many of these people tere were parents with small children who were excitedly climbing the giant ice wall.  At one point dad asked me to climb to the top so he could get a picture.  I had good hiking boots on so I figured "why not, the kids are climbing up there just fine, so I can do it".  Not a chance.  While the ice looks like giant chunks of hard snow, it is in fact chunks of pure, slipper ice.  One step up was enough before I nearly fell.  I have no idea how those kids were running and jumping around without falling. 

We walked the entire length of the wall, which was more impressive in person than in the pictures I had been seeing on Facebook and Twitter all week.  Was it worth the drive?  It definitely was in my opinion.  Not only do I love a Sunday drive in the country, I love to see and experience new things I can take pictures of and write about.  If you don't get the chance to visit to ice wall this time around, apparently, it has happened before in that area.  About 20 years ago, an ice tsunami, which is what the media calls this phenomena, pushed ice on shore to form a wall just like the one that is in Irish Vale now.