Gasholes / Gas Pockets

[BlueSnow]

I was recently looking at heading out to one of the local(ish) lakes for a day and saw that there were posts about Gasholes and while I've seen reference to them in the past and understand that it is a soft spot or an actual hole in the ice I never really understood why.

I looked through the forum and didn't see much, but this link is pretty informative:

http://lakeice.squarespace.com/gas-holes/

If anyone has other information on this topic I'd love to see the details.

Thanks

[river_scum]

interesting.  you mite have answered my ? I posted about this morning. lol

I remember seeing a video on here about gas coming from swamps.  they were lighting the gas like torches! methane in that case I believe.

[Akhardwater]

Methane pockets are what we call them up here.  Basically what happens is when vegetation deteriorates it releases methane gas.  The bubbles released will float to the bottom of the ice and start to melt the ice from underneath.  They can be very dangerous because the ice will be thinner in that spot and depending on how big they are you can step on them and fall through.  They are really fun to light on fire.  Google lighting methane pockets.  Almost burned my eyebrows off last year on a big one. 

[BlueSnow]

Methane pockets are what we call them up here.  Basically what happens is when vegetation deteriorates it releases methane gas.  The bubbles released will float to the bottom of the ice and start to melt the ice from underneath.  They can be very dangerous because the ice will be thinner in that spot and depending on how big they are you can step on them and fall through.  They are really fun to light on fire.  Google lighting methane pockets.  Almost burned my eyebrows off last year on a big one.

This is the type of thing that needs to be documented via youtube....

[Akhardwater]

Oh it is like I said just google it really is a lot of fun.

[Oldbear]

Very interesting.  I've heard of it in swamps but didn't figure it could happen under ice.

[Reginald Bonz III]

pretty cool...

[BlueSnow]

HA HA!  that's awesome.  I love Youtube.  You can watch people do stupid things from a safe distance.  The night ones are fantastic, definitely not the video to show to an enterprising teenager.

[Akhardwater]

So I don’t recommend doing it with a lighter, that’s a good way to melt some flesh.  I like to use a torch of some kind.  Those ones in the video are pretty small, we’ve popped a few that go over 12 feet in the air.