  This paper establishes the local-in-time well-posedness of solutions to an
approximating system constructed by mildly regularizing the dynamical sea ice
model of {\it W.D. Hibler, Journal of Physical Oceanography, 1979}. Our choice
of regularization has been carefully designed, prompted by physical
considerations, to retain the original coupled hyperbolic-parabolic character
of Hibler's model. Various regularized versions of this model have been used
widely for the numerical simulation of the circulation and thickness of the
Arctic ice cover. However, due to the singularity in the ice rheology, the
notion of solutions to the original model is unclear. Instead, an approximating
system, which captures current numerical study, is proposed. The well-posedness
theory of such a system provides a first-step groundwork in both numerical
study and future analytical study.
