Comments on: Unless you really know what you are doing stay off the ice!

By: Irene

Irene — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 17:04:04 +0000

After the last few days, I suspect the ice is think in Minnesota.

By: Jim Thomerson

Jim Thomerson — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 01:21:41 +0000

One year, when I lived in Illinois, we had a quality ice storm. Almost impossible to walk or drive on, and emergency rooms overflowing with folks with broken bones from falling. Few days later, ice still on the ground, another ice story, and then a third. By the third we were skipping across the ice, and driving with abandon. No one fell and there were no accidents (exaggeration for dramatic effect?). We had adapted to the condition and dealt with it as the new normal.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 03:34:01 +0000

But you are very young. This event happened in the 1970s. After that, maybe, they stated doing the stash thing, though I’ve not seen that in Minnesota.

Of course, it is true that Minnesota has two major rivers running through it: The Mississippi and DeNile.

By: Domestigoth

Domestigoth — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 03:15:52 +0000

What’s most amazing about this story is that there wasn’t any safety equipment stored around for just this sort of situation. I grew up skating and ice fishing on lakes, and every lake would have a stash of stuff at one end (usually near wherever people would park their cars). Old fence boards, a few blankets, a first aid kit, some rope, maybe even an old sled. All the people using the lake would know where those things were, and even as kids we were taught about how if someone went through the ice you had to tie a rope around your waist (so that other people could haul you back from a distance), slide out on a board or two to distribute your weight, always send at least one person running for help immediately and if you’re the only person there, run for help instead of running out onto the ice, etc. Not that people actually went through very often (except for some idiot tourists and snowmobile drivers), because we also knew all about testing ice depth with a drill and a ruler.

By: Calli Arcale

Calli Arcale — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 22:11:50 +0000

MadScientist — well, I have heard of someone whose throat was slashed by an ice skate, but that’s sort of a freak accident. Of course, add hockey to the mix and you get a whole suite of bodily injuries that can transpire — even before you add the element of “pond hockey on an unready pond”.

Snowmobilers and skiers also fall through into unready lakes. An additional complication there is the sport of riding a snowmobile across open water. It does work — if you keep going fast, you will stay afloat. But it doesn’t take much of a mistake to start sinking, and it all goes rather quickly from there. There’s usually at least one each winter.

By: MadScientist

MadScientist — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 06:38:40 +0000

@greg: No walleye in the basketball courts. Ice fishers are beyond help though – they’re like rock fishers. It’s a dangerous activity but it can be done without too many incidents, but people have to know the ice. I see it as being like hunting; given the large population of part-time suburban hunters the really stupid accidents are hardly surprising. How do skating accidents compare with ice fishing accidents though?

By: Luther

Luther — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 05:59:54 +0000

When I was young and dumb, one time I went ice skating on the Des Plaines river when the ice was so rotten my equally dumb partner and I had to keep moving because the ice would break under us as we skated along, leaving behind us a trail of cracked ice.
When I was 26 (a few decades ago) a girl with whom I had much in common–worked at the same place, same age, lived in the same city–went out on thin ice on lake Michigan with her boyfriend. The boyfriend was found drowned immediately, but the girl not for a couple of months. I don’t have any survivor guilt or anything, but it is an odd feeling to have someone with so much in common getting croaked at such an early age. Hey, the good die young!

By: gwen

gwen — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 05:25:34 +0000

Great story, great writing. You should publish!

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 03:16:15 +0000

MikeN, did you get out alive?

By: MikeN

MikeN — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 02:18:29 +0000

Recalls my days of working seismic in Northern Canada in the winter; after three straight months in the bush, driving out at the end of March, and facing the prospect of either an hour drive straight across Slave Lake or 14 to 16 hours of banging around it on torn-up bush roads.

I took the direct route, but out in the middle of that lake, miles from land, feeling the ice sag beneath a 3/4 ton pick0up while meltid water hissed around the tires….