GEORGETOWN — “Watch what happens when we turn into the wind,” says Lionel Steppe, yanking on the line connected to a wind-filled sail as he lowers the face shield on his helmet.
The bladed steel sled suddenly rockets across the ice of Lake Georgetown, chattering toward shore. Steering with his feet, Steppe turns a blade on the front of his home-welded sled and carves a high-G arc across the ice. The sled tips on edge, not unlike a sailboat standing on its keel.
“Pretty amazing right?” Steppe hollers over the scraping blades. “You know you can build these things for pocket change. Especially compared to how much fun you can have.”
It’s ice season in Colorado. That means it’s go-time for niche enthusiasts who drill holes for fishing and hike to remote ponds for wild-ice skating. For a handful of hardy land-locked wind-chasers, the frozen waterscapes are venues for ice sailing.
“I almost forgot how fun this is between the land and the ice season,” says Rick Hype, a Loveland X-ray technician who spends his weekends sailing homemade sleds. In the summer, he’s got wheels for high desert plains and in the winter he switches out the rubber for sharp steel.
Rick Hypes ice sails at the Georgetown Lake in Georgetown on Dec. 21, 2024. (Jason Connolly, Special to The Colorado Sun)When the cold settles in, Hypes and his wind-watching ilk stalk online ice-fishing forums, waiting for anglers to report a safe thickness. Ice fisherman may stretch the truth about the size of their fish, but never about ice, he says.
“Ice is like a living creature,” he says, nibbling a bar on the icy shore of Lake Georgetown, where he’s parked his insulated Ford panel truck equipped with a bunk, microwave and just about every spare part he might need for ice sailing. “It’s born, it ages and it dies.”
Rick Hypes poses for a portrait at the Georgetown Lake in Georgetown on Dec. 21, 2024. Hypes has been ice sailing for over 30 years and tries to sail more than 10 days a winter. (Jason Connolly, Special to The Colorado Sun)It’s the first day of the ice sailing season. As Steppe and another pal, Joel McGuire, arrive, Hypes tells them he went out on the wind-buffed lake with his drill and ice is “about this thick.” His gloved fingers are about 3 inches apart. Steppe and McGuire don’t seem too concerned.
“You don’t weigh much when you just went by,” Steppe says, zipping a parka over a sweatshirt that reads “Ahoy wind pirates, sharpen ye blades.”
Hypes’ windisfun.com website has been gathering Colorado’s dirt and ice sailors since the 1990s. There’s a few dozen year-round sail-yankers who rally for summer races on dry lake beds in Wyoming and Nevada.
Steppe pulls out his phone to show his land-sailing craft. It’s long and sleek with fat tires and a giant sail.
“Let me tell ya that thing is scary as hell when it hits 60 miles an hour,” he says.
A set of homemade blades used by Rick Hypes for ice sailing are seen on Dec. 21, 2024 at the Georgetown Lake in Georgetown. Hypes’ windisfun.com website is a gathering spot for land and ice sailors. (Jason Connolly, Special to The Colorado Sun)Come December, they switch to blades and scrape across Eleven Mile Reservoir, Lake Georgetown and Lake Hattie and Granite Reservoir up in Wyoming. If the ice forms right, most of the lakes in Northern Colorado can work for the hard-water sailors.
Conditions can vary from winter to winter, with ice sailors needing a perfect combination of cold temperatures to both create and sustain smooth ice and wind to keep the snow from accumulating too deep. A mid-winter warm spell can dapple surfaces, making it inhospitable to blades. A lack of wind can leave impenetrable stretches of snow.
Rick Hypes poses for a portrait at the Georgetown Lake in Georgetown on Dec. 21, 2024. (Jason Connolly, Special to The Colorado Sun)They call themselves “combat sailors.” They have broken through thin ice before. Their equipment breaks all the time. Just about every craft is hand-built with thick steel bars, unlike the wooden crafts used by speedy iceboaters on the frozen lakes of Minnesota.
Rick Hypes ice sails at the Georgetown Lake in Georgetown on Dec. 21, 2024. (Jason Connolly, Special to The Colorado Sun)Colorado is a challenge for sailors. The wind is gusty here and rarely steady.
“Colorado is more about doing this anyway that works for you,” says McGuire, a Denver sailor who modified a wind surfing set-up for his rig and sometimes uses a kite, not a sail, to scoot his sled across ice. “But if you can sail in Colorado, you can sail anywhere.”
They are always tinkering with their ice-sailing designs. Their sleds are wider and longer than they were even a decade ago.
“I don’t know about making them more stable, but certainly they are faster,” says Hypes, strapping on his helmet for a few more laps. “That shore really comes up quick doesn’t it? It’s a different kind of addiction we have.”
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