MADISON, Wis. — Earlier this month Madison hosted the 14th annual Frozen Assets Festival. “When our lakes are frozen, they are truly our greatest asset,” says James Tye, executive director and founder of Clean Lakes Alliance, the nonprofit that organizes the event.
Frozen lakes are part of life here: the city sits on an isthmus between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona, their shores framing the historic downtown. In winter, ice fishing, skating, ice sailing and snowshoeing are common. A long history of ice harvesting once made the lakes a center of commercial winter activity, says Hilary Dugan, a limnologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
But the lakes are changing. “We’ve actually lost about a month of lake ice duration here in Madison,” Dugan says, and the ice that forms is not always reliably safe. Climate-driven winter temperature swings produce unpredictable ice conditions. That unpredictability forced the festival’s on-ice portion to move ashore in 2024 when unseasonably warm conditions made the surface unsafe.
This year, though, Lake Mendota had more than a foot of ice in early February, enough to host the festival’s 1,000-plus attendees. The event featured kite flyers and a skydiver, ice hockey, ice-fishing demonstrations, Indigenous traditional games such as snow snake, and the only 5K that runs entirely on ice.
Participants joined science demonstrations that measured ice thickness and discussed lake ecology and safety. Runners warmed up for and competed in the icy 5K in skates. Children played among a flotilla of fish and owl kites. Skydivers glided over the frozen expanse while ice anglers tended holes on Monona Bay, scooping slush and pulling up bluegill.
The festival is both celebration and reminder: it showcases the cultural, recreational and ecological value of lake ice while underscoring how climate change is shortening winters and complicating long-standing traditions. Organizers and scientists use the gathering to engage the public in stewardship and in conversations about protecting the lakes for future winters.
Photos from the day capture scenes on Lake Mendota and Monona Bay: competitors racing across the ice, families learning about ice safety, Ho-Chunk Nation members teaching snow snake, skaters on a hotel rink, and anglers with their catch. The images, made by Kayla Wolf for NPR, portray a community taking advantage of a thickened but uncertain ice season — enjoying the moment even as the region watches the ice calendar shift later over time.
