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Winter Lake Ice Failure - HG Towing
By Bill Cummings.
Some pilots have told stories to me about being scared while hang gliding. By far the most terrifying times I have had did not occur in flight but on the way to attempt aviation.
My dad would never take his car out on the frozen lakes of Minnesota. To go ice fishing we would park on the shoreline and walk out onto the ice. Due to his compulsive nature he had us both wearing a length of yarn in one sleeve and out the other. On each end of the length of yarn would not be mittens but big spikes.
“You need some heavy duty ice picks,” he would say, “to drag yourself out of the water and back up onto the ice!” In bed, the night before an ice fishing trip, a young child’s imagination had a way of expanding quite an elaborate tragedy around a statement like that. It was his way of instilling, in me, his healthy respect for the danger of being on a frozen lake.
Almost every year before the ice was thick enough some young boys, that hadn’t the same “respect” for the ice that I had, would break through and drown themselves. Dad would look at me and point at the TV news as if to say, “They should have had along some yarn and spikes.” At this point dad had my phobia about breaking through the ice securely installed.
Now that I have grown up (Physically speaking.) being on a frozen lake had become a necessary evil to deal with if one wants to hang glide during the winter in Minnesota.
My hang gliding partner, Don Ray, talked me into taking his Jeep International out onto the ice with him to do some static towing with our mutually owned hang glider. Don told me he knew exactly where the safety limit was when it came to ice thickness. While trapping he had broken through the river ice and, “Had to break ice to get to shore hundreds of times!”
We started out onto the lake since I was assured that he is thee ice expert.
My dad was parked at the landing and he said, “You’re not going out there are you?” -- “You know that they are letting water into the lake at the diversion works don’t you?”
We have to have some airtime so off we go in spite of dads warning.
We go to the far side of the lake to string the 2,000’ tow line between the glider and the Jeep.
Once I was ready on the glider end I was wondering why Don hadn’t radioed me that he was ready at the Jeep end of the tow line.
EPIPHANY! ---Just a doggone minute here. How much can a trapper really know about the strength of ice if he has broken through “HUNDREDS” of times?
As serious doubt floods into my heart, after finding it lodged in my throat, the radio crackles to life. It was Don and he said, “---Ah--Billy?” I said, Yes Don.” Don radios back, “Say---ah --I just dropped a wheel through the ice. Can you walk out here and give me a hand?”
In the background through a fog of panicked consciousness I was hearing a high pitched whining noise. (Me.) I tried to think of some excuse as to why going over there would be completely impossible. (Next week was looking better.)
I couldn’t see or think straight with my life flashing before my eyes and the thought of not having along any yarn or spikes actually made my mouth go dry.
Would there be an open casket ceremony or ---Oh man--if I just had my casket here three days early maybe it would float and I could use it as a live preserver. I looked toward the landing. Daddy was still there! Maybe he could save me somehow.
I started walking down the shortest 2,000’ towline on the planet. When I reached the Jeep end of the towline, way ahead of my ETA, the water was on top of the ice in a 30’ diameter pool around the Jeep. Could the ice actually be sagging, I thought.
Just how close was this situation to the KERR-SPLASH factor?
Don was trying to jack the back of the Jeep up but the jack slipped out several times until both back wheels were through the ice.
I said, “Don, It’s going to go!! --Can’t we just take off the license plates?”
“What good would that do?” Don wanted to know.
“Well, I said, the Department of Natural Resources, divers won’t know who’s Jeep it is!”
Don said, “Not a good idea, Bill, and by the way that high pitched whining is starting to get on my nerves.”
After the Jeep twisted off of the bumper jack several more times the holes that the back wheels were through were getting bigger.
The snap, crackle, pop, noise that the ice was making as the fracture lines frequently shot out from under the Jeep made it extremely difficult to concentrate.
My winter boots were soaked clear through.
Then came the dreaded KERR-SPLASH noise!---
A shriek escaped my lips! Things went into slow motion. Forgetting completely about the laws of physics and how they apply to acceleration, inertia, and friction I slipped and fell on my butt while trying to put some distance between myself and the descending Jeep. The bumper jack had just punched its own hole through the ice.
The Jeep, amazingly, was still with us. I was sitting in two inches of water that now was a fifty foot diameter pool around the Jeep.
No other two fellows could possibly break ice faster than we were. All of which was counterproductive.
Through my dads binoculars it must have looked like our plan was to quickly sink the jeep before the authorities found out it was even once on the surface of the lake.
I talked Don into waiting until I returned with some planks to place under the back wheels and he agreed.
At the landing my dad couldn’t resist “rubbing it in” a little. He had a way of pursing his lip together to suppress a smile before it took complete control of his face. (Irksome at this point.) A little too innocently he said, “You look all wet. Are you having a little trouble out there?”
I said, “Trouble??????--Oh, you mean the Jeep. --Nah, it’s just another normal day of trying to get into the air.”
Dad responded, “You two have a lot of normal days whenever you get together.”
Stupidly, I asked dad, “What do you mean by that?”
I will spare you the entire list but about mid list, just before I interrupted him he was reciting, --and, “Like the summer you draped the wet tow line across the power lines back there by the picnic area and the time you landed in the boat by mistake and---”
“Hold it Pops!” I said, “I haven’t got time for this.!”
Dad looked at his watch and said, “Your right, it’s only five hours until sunset. You had better go get some planks and don’t forget to get your food off of the floor when you’re finished.”
(What?)
I’m wondering what he meant about the, “food off of the floor,” comment but I know eventually I’ll figure it out. Dad was always ten steps ahead of where fate was leading me.
Dad had me prepared for every eventuality. He had a gift (Mom called it a curse.) for foreseeing anything that could possibly go wrong and made sure that we all had taken the proper precautions.
At dads direction I had a year supply of canned food, in their cardboard cases, sitting on each of the two planks in my basement. The planks were sitting on several chopping blocks from the wood room in case the basement would flood.
You need a wood room.
“You have to have heating back-up plan in Minnesota,” dad would say, “because the electric company can’t be trusted to keep you from freezing to death in the dark.” The year supply of food was there, “in case of a truckers strike or a depression, or a nuclear attack, or at the very least to put a price freeze on your groceries."
I took the cases of canned food off of the planks and loaded the planks onto the van.
On the way back to the landing I was trying to look on the bright side of things.
Maybe I would get hit by a logging truck and after waking from a six months coma I would find out that the Jeep problem had resolved itself. No such luck.
We finally got the planks under the back wheels and Don drove the Jeep onto better ice and we knocked down the glider. We eased back toward the landing.
Don assured me that I would be more comfortable and that the Jeep would be no heaver if I rested my feet on the floor boards of the Jeep.
It was long past supper time and we still had to unload the planks, glider, rope, and harness bag. Usually we were at square one at the end of a day of continuous failure. The next day I would finish up hauling the planks to the basement, setting them on the chopping blocks, and then get the food boxes off of the floo--------
OH--THAT’S what dad was talking about.
