Community ice skating rink is located at Thumper Pond parking lot

By Tucker Henderson

Reporter

The residents of Ottertail and the surrounding community recently gained a new feature to an already novel skating experience located at Thumper Pond Resort. The Ottertail Rod and Gun Club and the Ottertail Lions Club joined together in sponsoring a warming house for the skating rink there.

Ottertail Mayor, Ron Grobeck, said that the city had been working on this project for several years now and was excited to see it finally come to fruition after some trial and error. While the skating rink was originally slated to be located at the Smokin’ Iron track next to the water tower, that idea didn’t gain enough traction as a permanent site for the ice rink.

“We worked real hard to get that to happen, but for a lot of reasons we couldn’t get volunteers to help do the ice and things like that with the city’s involvement,” said Grobeck. “So we put it on the back burner for a while. Then when the new owners came in at Thumper Pond they were real interested in seeing a skating rink and snowmobiles, so they bought a whole bunch of snowmobiles and put together this nice outdoor skating rink.”

Grobeck said that the work began on the project this past summer and after a few setbacks, they were able to work with Dakota Sheds out of Milbank, S.D. and before long, they had a 10 feet by 16 feet warming shed available to the public which opened about a month ago.

“We found Dakota Sheds and they specialized in sheds, and in our case a warming house out of a shed, so we negotiated a deal with them several months ago,” said Grobeck. “The Ottertail Lions and the Ottertail Rod and Gun Club split the cost of the project.

“Thumper Pond was willing to put that skating rink together,” he continued. “Now they’re going to put benches in there and they’re going to put a rubber mat between the house and the rink so that your skates don’t get all messed up when you’re walking to get out on the ice.”

Thumper Pond also retrofitted a golf cart to act as a makeshift Zamboni that smooths the ice. The ingenious machine works with a tank that sprays hot water onto a flap of carpet which then moves over the ice and smooths the ice rink. This Zamboni cart is operated by the maintenance staff who are able to focus their energy on these types of projects in the wintertime, while the golf course portion of the resort is closed.

“Getting volunteers to maintain it with the city involvement was always something we worried about,” said Grobeck. “It’s really a perfect marriage. The rink is nice and big, you can go out and kids can shoot pucks and play hockey and stuff like that. I think it’s going to be a really good deal for the community.

“Everybody loves to ice skate,” he continued. “If you live on a lake, it’s hard to go down and you have to groom it, you almost need a heating element. When Thumper Pond made this available, it opened up a whole new arena. The nice thing is it’s open to the public, it’s free. There’s a lot of skaters around here and not a lot of ice time, so it definitely benefits the community. We’re just very glad that Thumper Pond was willing to put this together and make it available for the citizens of Ottertail and the surrounding community and we hope and think that it’s going to get good use and people will be able to go out and have a lot of fun on the ice.”