Judy Copeland, the Pastor at the First Congregational Church in Hancock, said she purchased tickets for the fifth annual Ice Out on Norway Pond this year. Copeland used her son’s birthday as a date when the ice will crack beneath the “little church on the pond” and it will submerge into the water.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Copeland said of the annual fundraiser.
Tickets cost $2 for one and $5 for three and can be purchased online, at the Hancock Market, Fiddleheads, The Hancock Inn or from any church member.
Jane Richards-Jones, of Hancock, said the fundraising idea was conceived after she and her husband were at a New Year’s Eve party and heard about a similar event.
“Somebody in Vermont was doing it and we thought, ‘what a great idea,’” Richards-Jones said. “We’ve got this beautiful little pond, why aren’t we taking advantage of it?”
She said the “little church on the pond” quickly developed into a town and church collaborative. A local resident Dick Warner built the structure, and Marc Spinale designed the electronics inside the tiny church. Spinale said the structure includes a solar panel and some high-tech electronics. Conditions from the ice are sent to shore many times per minutes where they’re collected, relayed to a server in Keene, and posted on the fundraiser’s website.
“When the ice-break condition is detected, an email is immediately sent to team members to visually validate the event,” Spinale said. “A red flag is also extended above the church when this occurs.”
The system allows event organizers to detect the exact moment that the ice cracks beneath the structure.
“It’s very hard to guess because the weather is so variable now,” Richards-Jones said adding that she recuses herself from the contest, but if she was pressed to venture a guess she would bet sometime in April.
Richards-Jones said half of the proceeds from the fundraiser are given to the person who guesses the day and time closest, while the other half of the proceeds are going to the Meeting House and the vestry.