A Princeton Pastime Declines as Temperatures Rise
Lake Carnegie was once safe for skating nearly every winter; it is now safe one out of five
Ice once played a significant role in Princeton life.
A century ago, the town’s average winter temperatures hovered just below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, and the Princeton Ice Co. — which operated a mile northwest of campus, on what is now Mountain Lakes Nature Preserve — harvested hundreds of tons of ice each winter for year-round deliveries. Students, children, and families skated through the winter on Lake Carnegie and held communal bonfires along its banks.
“It was all skating, and everybody skated,” recalled one resident quoted in a 1985 Historical Society of Princeton newsletter article. One spring, two young miscreants surfed a thick slab of ice for two miles down Stony Brook, until an angry father intercepted them. “He had a switch cut and I got a pretty good tanning,” one of the boys recalled, “but it was quite an adventure.”
Yet Princeton’s average winter temperatures have warmed by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit since then, and Lake Carnegie has not frozen deeply enough to meet the municipality’s criteria for safe skating since the winter of 2014–15. That January, geosciences professor Gabriel Vecchi got his first — and, to date, only — taste of Princeton ice.
“It seemed like the whole community was out there,” recalled Vecchi, a skater and youth hockey coach. “There were people walking on the ice, playing pickup hockey games on the ice. Parents with children. Grandparents with grandchildren. For this brief moment, the lake became … of everybody. It was just magical.”
When the lake was unskateable the following winter, and the winter thereafter, Vecchi began to wonder: Was Lake Carnegie freezing as often as it used to?
In the summer of 2020, Grace Liu ’23 — then an intern at the High Meadows Environmental Institute — tackled the question. Advised by Vecchi; Nadir Jeevanjee, a research scientist at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory; and Sirisha Kalidindi, a postdoctoral research associate in Vecchi’s research group, Liu began piecing together the history of Lake Carnegie’s ice.
No scientific record of the lake’s ice conditions existed, so Liu interviewed community members and searched the archives of local papers to determine which years Carnegie had and hadn’t been safe to skate on. Some stories directly mentioned skating, but other references were more oblique. In March 1941, for example, The Daily Princetonian reported that “the thawing waters of Lake Carnegie” had revealed the body of German chemist Erhard Fernholz, whose disappearance the previous December had prompted the FBI to investigate a possible Nazi assassination.
Liu’s resulting data showed that the probability of safe skating on Carnegie started to plummet in the middle of the last century.
“Within a matter of decades,” said Liu, “the probability of safe ice skating on Lake Carnegie has decreased from almost 1 to 0.2.”
In other words: While the lake was once safe for skating nearly every winter, it is now safe one out of five.
This change is partly attributable to stricter safety standards. In response to instances of skaters falling through the ice and drowning, the municipality has, over the past half-century, narrowed its definition of safe skating conditions, increasing the minimum required ice thickness from three, to four, to eventually five inches. Still, when Liu and her advisers compared their findings to data on similar lakes around the world, they found that their results matched a rapid global decline in lake freezing.
“The reduction in lake freeze is related to the warming winters,” explained Vecchi. “And the warming winters are related to the long-term warming of the planet, caused by increasing greenhouse gases.”
Vecchi, who also studies hurricanes and other extreme weather events, is quick to point out that Princeton’s disappearing ice ranks low on the global list of problems caused by anthropogenic climate change. Some residents welcome milder winters, and Princeton offers other places to skate: Baker Rink holds open hours, and in 2019, Palmer Square opened a small rink made of an artificial ice product called Glice.
But Vecchi said skating on the lake is a special experience.
“It’s not the same,” agreed Princeton local John Cook ’63, who first skated on Lake Carnegie during World War II and went on to set the Princeton men’s hockey team’s career goals record, which stood until 2019. “If you want a nice cold winter with outdoor skating, you’ve probably got to move north.”
Members of the past three graduating classes never skated on Lake Carnegie. Liu, a Florida resident, has never skated at all. Vecchi hopes she will get her chance in the coming weeks.
“I really hope Lake Carnegie freezes safely this winter,” said Vecchi. “Selfishly, of course, but I also want Grace to be able to go on Lake Carnegie. It would mean something to me for Grace to get to go out on the lake.”
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11 Responses
Steven Sklar ’80
2 Years AgoToo Cold to Skate
“Skating on the Lake” brought a vivid memory to mind. Sometime in the winter of 1976-77, during my freshman year at Princeton, I borrowed the speed skates my Norwegian-born roommate, Lasse Brautaset ’80, had brought with him to campus and headed down to Lake Carnegie on my bicycle. When I got there, I was surprised to see no one skating, and not even any University personnel monitoring for safety purposes. Just a Zamboni that had obviously been used to clear snow from and smooth some of the ice. Then someone emerged from a vehicle to say that since it was very cold that day, 4°F, he would be watching the ice (and any skaters) from his heated vehicle. So I set out on my own, but skating was difficult. As I understand the physics of it, usually skates melt a thin sliver of ice by virtue of the pressure they and the skater above them apply, and this is what allows the skater to glide. But at 4°F, Lasse’s skates were having none of it. Or was it my mediocre skating skills? I never found out, because there was no one else down there to offer his or her opinion. After a few more minutes, I headed back up the hill, cold but invigorated!
Faith Bahadurian
2 Years AgoI Can Still Taste the Hot Chocolate!
I was lucky to skate on Carnegie Lake — the way I learned to say it — as a child in the 1950s. My father sometimes manned a hot-chocolate stand run as a fundraiser for the Jaycees or Lions (can’t remember which, he belonged to both). It was weak and watery but burning hot so it did the trick!
Joe Sweeney
2 Years AgoOn the Lake and Back to Baker
It struck me when I read long-term Princetonians talk about the unique family skating environment at the lake. Also, I might just add that skating on the lake, with all the uneven, pock-marked surfaces, made skating at Baker Rink a breeze.
Bayard Dodge ’78
2 Years AgoThe Wind at Our Backs
Ben Weissenbach ’20’s article about skating on Lake Carnegie brought a smile to my face. I’m neither an environmental scientist nor a hydrologist, but I know the winter of 1977 was cold, very cold. And the ice on Lake Carnegie was thick and black.
One afternoon, Jane Hewson ’77 and I decided to take a skate. We laced up at the Boathouse and sallied out among the throngs of townspeople, students, and faculty. Looking for more room to pass a puck back and forth, we skated towards Washington Road. Soon there was no throng, just the two of us, and we kept skating and passing, skating and passing. We listened for groans from the ice that might signify thinner ice, but the lake betrayed no weakness.
With the wind at our backs, and without a stop to catch our breath, we passed the puck back and forth and headed towards Kingston and the end of the lake. Jane’s mother lived on Kingston Road, near the viewing stands at the end of the rowing course, and after what seemed a blissful eternity, we headed to shore, removed our blades, and padded up to Mrs. Hewson’s house. She served us hot rum toddies and drove us back to the Boathouse to retrieve our shoes.
The episode has stayed with me for 45 years and remains one of my favorite memories of my years at Princeton.
Jean-Pierre Cauvin ’57 *68
2 Years AgoLakeside Living and Skating
The piece “Skating on the Lake” (On the Campus, January issue) conjured up wonderful memories. My wife, Louisa, and our two young children (one born in Princeton) lived in one of the junior faculty lakeside apartment buildings (Magie and Hibben, now torn down). One winter, circa 1970, we were able to skate on the lake for several days on end, an unforgettable experience. In my youth I had skated in rinks such as Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. In comparison, the virtually limitless expanse of Lake Carnegie offered an unmatched freedom of motion in a natural setting. Not many people other than residents of the lakeside apartments availed themselves of such an exceptional opportunity.
Robert D. Schrock Jr. ’60
2 Years AgoSkating Stories
It must have been a Saturday or Sunday in February 1957 or 1958 when we escaped Firestone Library for black ice on Lake Carnegie. We thought that we could skate to Kingston, but I doubt that we got to the second curve, having left our shoes at the crew house. Most memorable was the full moon that rose as we skated back in time for supper at Upper Eagle.
James (Tim) Carey Jr. k’29
2 Years AgoSkating Days in Princeton
As the son of a 1929 graduate of the University, I grew up in Princeton. I learned to skate at Baker Rink where Richard Vaughn, the University’s hockey coach, coached a fortunate group of players at the Princeton Country Day School. As much fun as that experience was, it did not compare the days when, on an early winter morning, my mother would drive me, skates, stick, and pucks in hand, to the University crew house. Some of my friends would already have arrived, and once we laced up, we began the journey to Kingston. When we arrived at the Harrison Street bridge, we had to check to see if the ice was thick enough for us to skate underneath. Often it was not, and we would skate to the nearest bank, and, on the toes of our skates, make our way up the hill, across the road, and down the other side. Safely back onto the ice, we headed north to Kingston. As we approached, we could see other figures already out on the lake, fully engaged in some sort of game. The Cook family was prominent among that crew — Paula, John, Steve, and Peter, Jr. And, of course, Peter Sr., whose painting of that portion of the lake hangs in our dining room (next to the portrait he did of my mother). For the remainder of the day we played and played and played. At about 3 p.m. we would begin our skate back to Princeton, retracing the path we had taken earlier in the day. I live in Boston now, and even here, well north of New Jersey, only a thin layer of ice spans out to where the swans are swimming in the middle of Jamaica Pond. Oh, “where are the snows of yesteryear?” We lived a golden winter childhood.
Bob Buntrock *67
2 Years AgoSkating from the Boathouse to the Dam
I grew up in Minneapolis, in the ’40s and ’50s, three blocks from a rink, but didn’t skate until age 10. When we moved to Princeton for grad school (Ph.D., chemistry) we brought our skates without much hope of skating. One winter in the mid ’60s, the lake froze clear with no snow. I took my skates to campus, and at lunch walked down to the lake from Old Frick Lab, put on my skates at the Boathouse, and started skating. I’ve never been a good skater, with difficulty turning — and then only to the left. So the possibility of skating in a straight line for a long time was attractive. I skated two miles to within 200 or 300 yards of the dam where the ice looked less safe and returned. I was the only one skating and experienced that wonderful feeling of freedom on skates, and going straight, no necessity to turn (and then the let-down and grounding when you take the skates off). Wonderful experience, never duplicated.
Lambert Heyniger ’53
2 Years AgoA Long Skate on the Canal
Your article about skating on Lake Carnegie reminded me of my grandfather, Charles Chauncey Savage, Princeton Class of 1873, who lived in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania. He once took the train from Philadelphia to Princeton, got off, walked down to the Raritan Canal, and ice skated back to Philadelphia. This story was told to me by my mother, Marion Eyre Heyniger, who was married to my father, Charles Lambert “Lamb” Heyniger 1916. My father was a very large, tall man who used to lead the alumni in singing our alma mater song at Reunions every year.
Robert E. (Bob) Buntrock *67
2 Years AgoSkating from Princeton to Philadelphia
Re Lambert Heyniger ’53’s family story about his grandfather’s skating trek from Princeton to Philadelphia, some facts have to be noted. This would have required that the Raritan Canal froze enough all the way to Trenton. I’m not sure when the Raritan Canal locks to the Delaware River below the falls were removed but they were in modern times (that portion of the canal is now Canal Street and U.S. 1 going up the hill and continuing to Princeton and beyond). The Canal Feeder from further up the Delaware still exists, providing water and canoeing to the canal. He would have had to cross the Delaware on foot at some place and then skated on the presumably frozen Delaware Canal to the point where it empties into the river (I don't remember where) and then walked to a train to get back to Chestnut Hill. Regardless, a monumental feat. When in Princeton, from 1962–67, we canoed the Delaware River from New Hope to above Trenton and kayaked (in portions) the Raritan Canal and Canal Feeder above Trenton and the Delaware Canal above New Hope. Great paddling on the canals, virtually no current.
Bevis Longstreth ’56
2 Years AgoIce Skating During the War Years
In the war years, due, I think, to a fire in the University Gym, Baker Rink was commandeered for basketball. Growing up in Princeton, to use our skates we had no alternative but pond ice and Lake Carnegie. The joy of those years (from around 1941–52) was the fact that ice thick enough to skate on was a constant during the winter months. The Mathey Pond off the Great Road and the Patton Ponds beyond Bayard Lane were sources of skating delight even when Lake Carnegie wasn’t safe. But when it was, the joys of skating on the lake’s ice, often the hard black ice that most thrilled skaters, was a special experience. Going under the overpass was always a special treat. And when the weather got really cold, Stony Brook, to the southwest of the lake, feeding into it, would freeze enough to skate long distances. After getting thoroughly cold and fully exercised, the retreat to The Balt for a hot chocolate with whipped cream would cap a wonderful day of ice skating. These are pleasures now found only in the wooly memories of the ancients, like me.