Third ice driving experience at Yachiho Lake

3rd ice driving experience

My first experience driving on ice was in 2023. Ice driving is when you drive a car on a frozen lake.

From there, I had the opportunity to experience driving on ice for the second time in 2024, and now for the third time, again at Yachiho Lake.

Since I have snow tires stored for my BMW M3, I will be competing with snow tires on my M3 again this time.

When I first heard about the idea of "driving a car on a frozen lake," I was filled with fear, thinking, "What? That's scary! It's impossible! What if the ice breaks and I fall into the cold lake?" However, when I actually tried it, the fun outweighed any worries I might have.

Of course, there are still risks involved, so we always listen carefully to the instructions and follow the rules as instructed.

This year again, we left Tokyo early in the morning and headed for Yachiho Lake.

As we had been told, there was almost no snow on the road to Yachiho Lake this year, and as we had been told, there was absolutely no snow right up to the entrance to Yachiho Lake.

This is the entrance to Yachiho Lake. It looks like the snow has finally started to come out.

Even so, the lake was completely frozen, and the view before my eyes was beautiful.

Because the weather was warm, the ice around the lake (near the edges) was thin and there wasn't much snow on the lake itself.

Therefore, we were unable to make the snow ducks that we were able to make the first year (although there was snow around the lake, the ice was thin and it was dangerous to get too close).

As mentioned above, my family (my husband and I) will be attending in a BMW M3.

A lot of cars will gather.

Porsche 911 on ice in the Dakar

Of all those cars, the one I was most interested in seeing running on the ice was the Porsche 911 Dakar.

I mean, I mean, an ice race like this would definitely suit the Dakar and look really cool!!

The Dakar on ice was as cool as I imagined.

Since it wasn't a public road, they even installed roof lights, which made it look even cooler.

As for how my husband and I felt when driving the BMW M3... on the first lap I was completely useless (I barely made any skids and had to drive safely), but gradually I remembered and understood and was able to make it skid.

On ice, it's amazing to experience being able to slide even at such a low speed, and drift around corners even at such a low speed.

On ice, you can learn a lot because you can understand the behavior of the car very well. It's a lesson that will definitely be useful when something happens during normal driving.

Of course, there were other people on the ice that day who were also participating in the Dakar with their Porsches, and they looked really cool.

There were also cars that looked like twins.

I also check the navigation every time I come onto the ice.

Because the car is literally "on the lake", the car's position is also displayed on the map, so it's hard not to want to miss this view.

This year was also a warm one, so when I parked my car and got out I heard a cracking or creaking noise, and when I looked down I was startled to see cracks in the ice like this.

It was cloudy and cold in the morning, but...

The weather got very nice in the afternoon and the frozen lake became increasingly smoother.

The ice conditions were completely different between the morning and afternoon, and it was really slippery in the afternoon.

It was nearing the end and I thought maybe I could only do two more laps.

Several people pointed at our car and asked for something. I thought, "What? What's there?", and lo and behold!

There was a tire directly under the car!!!

This is the situation (lol)

What was strange was that even though my husband was driving and I was in the passenger seat, we had no idea when or where the tire got caught in the car.

I would have noticed if I had run over snow or been hit by a tire, but that didn't happen, and even though I was so stuck in, I really didn't realize when this happened. How did it go in without any jolts?!

I thought it would be difficult to remove the tire, but someone who had already experienced a similar situation told me, "If you climb up the hill there, you can get it," so I tried climbing the hill and was able to remove it easily.

Such wisdom. Thank you!

So, although we did have an incident at the very end where we got our tires caught in the ice, this year's driving on the ice was a lot of fun.

I'm so grateful to everyone who participates every year.

Thank you very much!

Related article:
◆Experience driving on ice at Yachiho Lake again
◆After the snow ducks of Yachiho Lake
◆First ice driving experience in my life: Driving on Yachiho Lake ice with BMW M3