Jacoby

I have never ice skated across an alpine lake, and not only because I fear compound fractures, hypothermia and drowning.

Regardless of the order in which they happen.

Also, I do not own ice skates.

And although I am unfamiliar with the typical rental contract, I suspect businesses that offer ice skates would prefer not to have their products end up below 20 feet of frigid water.

Customers, either.

Something unlikely to happen in most skating rinks.

For all that, as I stood on the eastern shore of Van Patten Lake, a place of surpassing beauty in the Elkhorn Mountains northwest of Baker City, I imagined skimming across its frozen surface on a pair of keen steel blades.

I doubt many skating venues could rival the backdrop.

Van Patten, like many of the lakes in the northern Elkhorns, occupies an amphitheater-shaped basin, known as a cirque, that Ice Age glaciers carved in the granitic bedrock that forms this part of the range.

The ridges on three sides rise 1,000 feet or more above the lake, which itself is nearly 7,400 feet above sea level.

The slopes have the classic high-elevation forest of subalpine fir and whitebark pine, although north of the lake the ridge, which faces south and takes in quite a lot more sunshine, harbors scattered clumps of sagebrush, more typically a desert denizen.

Only to the east, where the lake’s outlet stream plunges between boulders on its steep way to its meeting with Dutch Flat Creek to the south, does the land drop away.

The view takes in the North Powder Valley and, filling the eastern horizon, the grand Wallowas.

My wife, Lisa, and I, and our daughter, Olivia, hiked to Van Patten late on the morning of Nov. 26.

I’m no diarist and thus have to rely on my increasingly untrustworthy memory, but I don’t recall making this trip, without snowshoes, so late in the year.

But this was a peculiar November.

After a couple of storms brought significant snow to the Elkhorns and Wallowas in late October, the weather has been either dry or too warm for snow except on the tallest peaks.

Disappointing for skiers and snowmobilers, to be sure.

(Anthony Lakes Mountain Resort ski area is just a few miles west of Van Patten.)

But winter’s tardiness extends the hiking season, making it possible to reach places such as Van Patten Lake with relative ease.

Which isn’t to say it’s easy.

Snow or no, the topography presents a physical challenge.

Although the hike is relatively short — about 3 miles round trip — the route, which follows an old road for the first half or so, gains about 1,000 feet of elevation.

I didn’t expect much snow.

And there wasn’t — maybe 3 inches at most, although in places the wind had scoured almost all of the snow away. Bare ground is a rare sight at such lofty places with December less than a week away.

I worried, though, about ice.

The road and the trail, which climbs the final half mile or so to the lake, cross steep slopes where a patch of ice could lead to a nasty fall.

(Most falls are nasty, to be sure, but the prospect of tumbling for a prolonged period until you fetch up against a boulder or a tree trunk is particularly troubling.)

But except for one place within sight of the trailhead, where water always seeps through the porous granitic sand, ice was conspicuous by its absence, and the footing was gratifyingly stable.

The day was about as fine as I have enjoyed in late November — a cloudless sky and an appropriately chilly temperature (21 degrees when we parked).

But the most notable meteorological detail was what was missing.

Wind.

We had endured incessant frigid gusts the previous two days down in the valley, an onslaught that left my yard, which I had only recently cleared of leaves, littered with willow limbs. The blustery period was the product of a strong pressure gradient following the passage of a low-pressure system that, rather than proceeding promptly into the Midwest as such storms are supposed to do, perversely settled in southern Idaho, rather like an uncouth Thanksgiving guest who drains the gravy boat and then lounges on the sofa watching football and spilling beer on the cushions.

During our hike in the mountains, however, where you pretty much expect to be buffeted, we barely detected the gentlest zephyrs.

Despite the air temperature it was pleasantly warm, standing there in the sunshine on the lakeshore.

The sensation was no doubt illusory. I suspect the chill would descend rapidly as soon as the sun dipped behind the bulk of Van Patten Butte.

The lake, which typically is covered with at least a couple feet of snow by the last week of November, was instead bare ice, with just a skim of snow in a few spots.

Olivia asked how thick I thought the ice was.

I heaved a couple of softball-size chunks of granite as high as I can muster, and their impact barely chipped the surface.

I said it was likely thick enough to walk on safely, an assessment I had no intention of testing.

But I did briefly ponder what it would be like to lace up a pair of skates and glide out to the middle of the lake. It would be a memorable experience, I suspect. Van Patten, at 16.5 acres, is the fifth-largest lake in the Elkhorns.

(The top four: Rock Creek, 24 acres; Anthony, 22; Pine Creek Reservoir, 18; and Summit; 17.)

Even in its winter-diminished state — Van Patten supplies irrigation water to valley farms, and shrinks considerably by summer’s end — the long, narrow lake has plenty of space for skating.

But lacking a Zamboni to clean the ice — or anyone to shovel the snow — the lake’s suitability for skating is short-lived.

Indeed, the storm that swept into Eastern Oregon late this week, ending the period of stagnant weather, has, I’m sure, buried the ice.

And so it will remain, probably until June, when the lake again has open water.

The temptation then is to leap from the cliffs of modest height on the north shore, beneath which the water is of ample depth for safe jumping.

Not for me, though.

I fear the frigid water of an alpine lake even more than I do the ice.

I understand that the ice, even though I don’t venture onto it, probably would hold.

But I know beyond any doubt that the water, when I broke the surface, would instantly chill my blood and leave me gasping and splashing, like a man who has gone overboard in the open sea.

If You Go

Drive toward Anthony Lakes Ski Area.The well-marked turnoff to Van Patten Lake trail is about 3 miles down the mountain (east) from the ski area. Follow the gravel road a few hundred yards to the trail, which starts on the left. You’ll need an Oregon Sno-Park permit.