He did not, but neither did he go slowly there either. In short, lakes appear solid but this is changing daily. Fringes of lakes are starting to show water, one of the first signs of winter's loss of grip on a lake. Rivers are a tad different this spring. The January floods threw a lot of ice every which way.
Many rivers never refroze.
From what I've seen, generally speaking, only small streams refroze. Larger ones and the major rivers never got a second coating of ice so are generally freer of ice than normal for this time of year. BUT, the key thing to remember here is that river ice is unpredictable now. Some streams have fairly thick ice, some none, some a mixture of the two. Those are some quick observations of a general nature.