Stunning! Watch ‘Otherworldly’ Waves Of Ice Shards On Lake Superior At Sunset

I had heard recently (Friday, February 21) that there had been some ice stacking that had occurred along the Lake Superior shoreline at Brighton Beach on the north end of Duluth.

I decided to grab my camera and go investigate late that morning to see if what I had heard was true. Upon getting there, I did indeed see stacks of piled-up plate ice along the shoreline.

I grabbed the photo below, but decided I'd come back in the evening to try to catch the sunset behind the stacked ice as the sun went down over the hill behind Duluth in the distance.

The issue is that it got pretty breezy during the day, and those breezy conditions cooked up some pretty decent waves that battered the shoreline at Brighton Beach all day, pulverizing the stacked plate ice.

When I first arrived late Friday afternoon, before even getting out of my car, I looked to see it was all gone. Needless to say, I was kind of disappointed. Even then, I decided to head down to the shoreline to see what might be left.

When I got to the shoreline, I was surprised to see that while the stacked ice was gone, what was left behind was still quite beautiful.

The stacked ice had been crushed into shards of ice crystals that varied in size, but were generally around the size of a person's hand (give or take).

As (calmer) waves continued to push onto the shoreline shortly ahead of sunset, the moving water created what looked something kind of otherworldly, or like a sea of crystals... something you'd see in a sci-fi movie.

The waves of ice shards rippling along the shore, catching the last light of the day in the approach to sunset, it was really quite beautiful! The noise of the waves and ice shards in the water was also pretty soothing and almost hypnotic.

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It's just another example of the many ways Lake Superior and the North Shore can provide such photogenic beauty, no matter what time of year it is.

Here's some video footage I caught on my phone of the ice. Make sure you change the quality settings to 4K to really get the most out of the beauty of the scene.

Not what I went there to see, but still very much worth it!