I went ice fishing at Wildhorse Res. in Northern NV last Monday, and the ice was about 2 ft thick. The weather has been even colder up there since then, and last night it got down to 30 below zero. It is supposed to get that cold for the rest of this week. I was talking to a friend at work, and we are betting the ice is about 3 ft thick right now, or close to it. My auger will only go to about that depth. He heard somewhere that ice will only go to a certain thickness. Has anybody heard of this before? We are thinking that it could be true, for a couple reasons, like the ice being too thick for cold air to penetrate, thermal layers, etc. What are your guy's thoughts on this subject? Have any of you run into ice that is thicker than this? Just curious because I am planning to go up there again this weekend.

I've fished years on Mille Lacs where our power augers wouldn't reach so we had to get an extention. That was quite a while ago though.

Charlie...
I don't think there is a limit to how thick ice can get. The two variables here would be pressure and temperature. In other words as long as the ice on the surface is not melting, there would be a certain amount of pressure and the ice at the bottom would come in contact with water, and that water would begin to freeze. This would continue to happen causing the ice to get thicker and thicker. Only when the temperature got above 32 and the ice at the surface began to melt, causing less pressure on the ice below, would the thickness of the ice cease. In other words, if the temp stayed at 40 degress below zero for an entire year,the thickness of ice in a deep lake would increase a certain amount every day. Boy, I sure hope this isn't confusing and again theses are only my thoughts!