Ice damage to shoreline

[shinde]

Looking for any help or suggestions from others who've dealt with this. Normal shoreline is about 2 1/2' above lake, but ice pushed it up and back where it buckled and is now about 2.5' high ridge, and heaved shoreline to about 2' back. Ripped it up pretty good. It's a medium firm bottom, not sand, not muck, somewhere in between.

Pushed the rock rip-rap back as well, wondering if the rock contributes to the problem? The water is about 2' deep, relatively shallow (3'-4')out to about 200 yards.

Don't want to go thru rebuilding shoreline every year, heavier equipment is going to tear the grass up pretty good.

Any suggestions much appreciated.

[Nutty Fisherman]

I hate to say it but you will have that problem more times then not. I don't have any ideas other then the equipment you said. If not to bad maybe a bobcat with tracks would work.

[DEADhead]

that's why you see a lot of these lake associations getting permits from the DNR to install aeration systems over the winter. Whether they really work or not is another issue. Ice heaving is part of the deal with owning lake shore property. I doubt the rocks are causing any of the problem.

[tunrevir]

Depending on the amount of heaving at the waters edge there is one thing that has worked for my parents. If you know someone in the masonary feild or have a local rental shop, use a gas powered tamper to smash the heaved area back into place. Usually you can pound down about a 2-21/2' hump. Roll your rip rap back into the water and tamp away. Less messy then bobcats and the like and you can top dress it and seed right after you are done in the low areas. Doesn't beat up the grass too much and less bull work with a shovel. Hope this helps.

Tunrevir~

[Macgyver55]

I'm not saying not to do anything, but be careful what you do and when.... the DNR gets real touchy about messing with shoreline because of erosion. A guy on my lake got a fairly good fine several years ago for doing some unapproved work, but it did involve some extra fill, not just packing what was already there.

[Mike89]

enjoy your lake like we have done.it's part of the ownership the way I see it. It's flustrating but it's a small thing as far I'm thinging. Of course one could move to the other side of the lake too!! Good luck!!

[shinde]

Thanks for the suggestions so far, appreciate the help. Don't know if anything I can do will help prevent this in the future, that's part of what I'm trying to determine.

Don't want to fight nature every year. If, after cleaning up a bit, I leave it relatively as is, wondering if that will lessen the liklihood of future problems, since it's already pushed back from the waters edge, or if it will just continue to grow higher?

Or, is there something I need to do in my restoration that will lessen the liklihood of future damage.

Any other advice appreciated!

[Mark Christianson]

Contact your area fisheries office and see what they have to offer for advice. They will have some things to say and will surely have other avenues to pursue as well.

Trust the experts.

[hanson]

Growing up as a kid at my parents lake place in NW MN, we always had to deal with the lake. I wanted a nice sand swimming beach and no matter how hard we tried, we lost, every time. And it wasn't necessarily from winter either. For 2 to 3 years, we would have the nicest beach on the lake. We had beach sand hauled in, dumped on the beach, and raked out so it looked like Mexico. 2 months later, mother nature decided to rain for weeks on end and all of our nice beach sand was washed into the lake and was now washing up on the neighbors property. Good for him, bad for us. So we are at it again until mother nature's cycle rolls around a couple years later. We got sick and tired of the sand washing away so we decided to bring in some rock, they were about the size of basketballs and form a barrier between the water & the sand. Well, since the water has come up again, I haven't seen those rocks in over 10 years. The water hasn't receeded since then. The beach is all gone and the landscaped shoreline is under water. What to do???

My basic opinion is to let you shoreline do what it wants to do unless you want to put the effort into it. I don't think you will ever have a "maintenance free" shoreline!! Thats a part of owning lakefront property. In 5 years, the ice may never touch the rocks you are so concerned about right now. You don't know. In 5 years, the water may cover those rocks and you'll never see them again.

Just food for thought before you go and invest alot of money into something you can't control.

[hawkeye43]

A beach is like owning a second house, its alot of work. Last year we had the same problem, we raked and shoveled, layed sod. this year the ice never pushed up at all.

[JoeTC]

Well for my entire life we have delt with shoreline problems at our cabin in northern MN. I do remember a time when we had a nice sandy beach but those days are long gone but could still come back again. Over the last 20 years I'd say we've lost about 10 ft of shoreline due to ice and high water. After a few years of nice beach we had a few years of high water and our shoreline got eaten away for many years and we finally decides to riprap our shoreline. This completely stopped our shore from deteriorating in the summer but when the ice came there was no stopping it, ice will do what it wants to do and there is no stopping it. We tried fixing the heaves but moving around boulders takes a lot of work so it ended up being half heaved up for a year or two until one year it heaved up about 6 feet in the air and about 6 feet back. We then had a skid loader come in and push it all down and redo the rocks and we had everything back to normal but of course it heaved some again the next year and insted of fixing the rocks again we just decided that it was easier to fix sand than rocks and now we are just trying to get some vegetation to take hold which is a lot easier that messing with rocks. And of course all the years we mess with our shoreline down the road where the shorlines are covered with much more vegetation they have done nothing and have lost less than us.

So in conclusion, after all my rambling, your best bet is to rely on natural vegetaion to hold your shoreline together. Not only do I think its the most effective way but its also the most lake friendly way. You might also get lucky and one year instead of the ice heaving your shore up it might push a bunch of nice sand up onto your beach. That is how the nice beach we had for a few years came about.

Good Luck,

Joe