Colorado’s ice sailing culture all about experimentation, luck

By Steve Graham

Rick Hypes built his first boat when he was 12, but never intended to use it on a lake, unless it was frozen.

Decades later, he is still building ice sailing “rigs” as part of a small but enthusiastic Colorado ice sailing community. The sailors mostly build their own boats and get together on the ice whenever they can find the right wind and ice conditions, which are increasingly rare.

“Here in Colorado, ice and wind can change minute by minute, going from a dead calm to gale force in no time at all, making hard water sailing in Colorado pretty sketchy for someone not accustomed to conditions here,” said longtime Colorado ice sailor Scott Frank.

Hypes once checked out a “kids’ guide to building crap” from the library, and found directions for making an ice boat out of wood.

Like most ice vessels, it also doubled as a land sailing boat. It was a simple boat rigged with lawnmower tires and it only “sailed” downwind, so he tested it out in his neighborhood.

“It was the first time I got pulled over by the cops because I was sailing it down the street,” Hypes said. “He said, ‘you can’t sail it down the street. Nobody will see you.’”

Hypes dropped the hobby for many years, but returned to ice sailing about 20 years ago after a serious search for a fellow enthusiast.

In Michigan and other Midwest states, ice sailing regattas and clubs draw plenty of sailors, many of whom use pricey commercial vessels. Colorado has smaller lakes, less favorable conditions and ever-shifting wind, so the sport draws fewer participants, and virtually no organized clubs, competitions or outfitters.

Hypes found a fellow sailor by calling a company that makes specialty epoxy for ice sailing boats, and asking for Colorado customers. He was connected with a Fort Collins engineer who lived across from a lake. That engineer took Hypes out for his first ice boat ride, and he was hooked, even though he quickly learned ice sailing can be a fickle sport in Colorado.

“If he got to go one time a year, he considered it a good year,” Hypes said.

Since then, Hypes has built about 25 ice sailing boats, mostly with some like-minded friends.

He currently has four rigs, one for his wife, one spare and one tandem option that can be attached to the back of his boat. Even if the conditions never allow for ice sailing, he can take out the same rigs in warm weather to cruise across dry lake beds and other smooth land-sailing surfaces.

The boat frames and masts are welded together, and he finds used windsurfing sails on Craigslist or at swapmeets. The first few projects brought a lot of trial and error and snapped masts. But he said that is one of the great lessons of ice sailing.

“I just take it for granted that you can try and fail,” Hypes said. “If you think about all the great inventors, they failed lots of times. Not that I am any great inventor or anything, but failure is an option.”

Particularly with climate change, Colorado ice sailing opportunities can be few and far between. The ice needs to be at least three inches thick, but mostly clear of snow.

“We want nice smooth ice like a tabletop. The worst thing that happens is that we get a few inches of snow and then the sun comes out and melts the top of it and it crusts, so that we can’t sail through it,” Hypes said.

The sun can also warm the water under the ice, causing the ice to melt around the edges of the lake.

“I saw one lake in one day go from 80 percent covered to 40 percent covered,” Hypes said.

Shifting conditions, particularly in Colorado, make it a sport that can be honed over a lifetime.

“It’s an easy sport to learn, but you’ll never master it,” Hypes said. “We consider ourselves to be lifelong students.”

He is also eager to draw in new students.

“We love to take somebody out and put them on a rig and watch them struggle that first few times and then they sort of get it and we see them come back with a huge grin on their face because they’re having a blast,” Hypes said. “We joke about being drug dealers and that they got their first taste for free.”

Frank said most ice sailors get hooked on the rush of flying across ice sitting inches off the ground.

“Most of us were driven by the need for speed, and chasing the true intravenous infusion of adrenaline,” said Frank. “Our other motivator is the science of the sport and trying techniques to tune your boat for the conditions at hand.”

Steve Graham is a freelance writer and former newspaper editor who likes taking his two young boys biking, hiking and brewery-hopping in northern Colorado.