The weather has finally warmed up and it's a great weekend to get outside and enjoy the wonderful things winter has to offer in Edmonton.
Many of the city's ice rinks were packed with people out for a skate, Saturday morning.
"I'm skating," said seven-year-old Chanel Chabot who says she loves speed skating, "You get to do, sometimes, games and lots of races."
"We're coming out to enjoy the sunshine and this incredible ice down here at Victoria Park," added her father Jules Chabot.
However, all of the winter fun comes with a warning.
Despite the frigid temperatures we've experienced in the capital region over the past few weeks, some of the city's ice surfaces are still too thin to walk or skate on.
"Under bridge decks, the salt from the road falls onto the ice, melts the ice away. It might look like it's solid to hold your weight but, that's absolutely not the case," warned Ray Agterbos, a training officer with Edmonton Fire Rescue Services.
With the ice as thin as it is right now, Agterbos says it wouldn't take much weight for the ice to crack and someone to fall through and get swept away. It isn't just people Agterbos is worried about. He's warning pet owners to keep an eye on their animals, as well.
"We really recommend that pet owners keep their pets on a leash... so they don't venture out onto the ice. Very often they end up in the water and then we're called."
Agterbos says a fall can happen on any ice surface, and is urging people who want to go skating to stick to the city and community league rinks.
"Certainly don't be skating on the river. Go into areas that are only marked as safe by the city," he said, "The sanctioned, approved skating sites are the places that you should enjoy yourselves."
As of Saturday, five of the seven rinks run by the city were open to the public.
"Hawrelak and Mill Woods are still closed and that's because the ice is still too thin for people to get onto the ice surface. It's just not safe right now," said Mark Torjusen with the City of Edmonton.
With the schedule for opening rinks very much dependant on the weather, Torjusen says it's tough to say when those rinks will be open.
"They need to get the snow cleared off the ice surface," he said, "Then they have to flood it and they just have to keep building up that ice surface until it's thick enough for people to get onto, to be able to skate."
Many of the community league ice rinks in Edmonton are open. For information on hours, contact your local community league.
For more information on the city run ice rinks, you can visit the city's website.
And for those who love tobogganing, all of the city's toboggan hills are open. So be safe, and get out there and enjoy the winter festivities while the nice weather lasts, because in Alberta, you never know when it'll take a turn for the worse.
With files from Shannon Greer.
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