Frozen River

One of my volunteer jobs is to monitor the water of the Rum River on the Pleasant Street Bridge and Coon Creek on the Coon Hollow Bridge.  Coon Creek is swollen to the tops of the banks and the ice has been out for about 5 days.  To my daily astonishment, the Rum is still covered in ice.  I can't monitor the river until the river is liquid again.  The east bank has some open water showing.  More open water can be found at the bends of the river compared to the straighter sections.  Basically the river is still frozen.  The ice is dark in color. I can see the water level has risen.  That alone must loosen the grip the ice has on the banks.  After all these 50 degree days, why hasn't the ice slipped off yet?  Why hasn't the ice started moving toward the dam?  I would love to be there when all the ice lets go.  I remember one spring, when the kids were small, we went down to the dam and watches plates of ice float over the dam.  Some sections of ice were still attached to the sides of the river.  We pushed the plates of river ice with sticks to set them free.  We cheered when we got a big section loose and it went over the dam. That is a fun memory.

PS I have about two gallons of sap now.  The sap must be sweet because it gets my fingers sticky when I touch it.  I have to traverse big banks of snow to get to the trees.  In some spots the snow is so deep that when my foot goes through, I get snow up to my knees.  In other spots grass is showing and I see a lot of snow mold - white, webby strands laying on the old grass.