By Nick Karakis
What an adventure. I
just got back from ice cutting on Wine Lake and everyday was hard work. Nothing came easy this year at all. With only 4 people to do the work of 6 or 7,
we had a hard time getting everything done.
In the end we managed to get lots of things accomplished but only
fishing was not one of them.
We started off on a long drive by hitting several snow
storms. The drive up took over 24 hours
car time but we managed to make it. Once
we arrived we found a muffler had disconnected on one of the rental snowmobiles
so we were left with 2. We made the long
ride into camp and started with the first of our obstacles, our generator got
moisture in it and would not run. After
a couple hours of removing the carburetor and cleaning we got it running about
an hour after dark. When we arrived, the
temps were in the -25 range so it took a long time for the lodge to heat
up. Trust me when I say it was a cold
night and you did not want to come out of your sleeping bag.
The following days we built the ice ramp, shuttled 30
bottles of propane into camp and brought some supplies in for the coming
year. A round trip on the snowmobile
with a sled behind it was 12 miles each way and took about two and a half
hours. Needless to say nothing is easy
in 2 feet of snow and minus 20 temps (even breathing is hard sometimes). During
that time it snowed almost constantly.
For the week we were up we had about 18” of new snow fall so everyday we
had to clean the sleds off, shovel the deck and keep things going.
Ice cutting itself took us 2 full days. The top of the ice had about 7-9 inches of
slush on top of the blue ice. We could
not get the tops to stay on the blocks so they had to be removed before we
could send the blocks up the ramp. The
end result was 17” of perfect blue hard ice bit I believe removing the slush
added 4-6 hours of additional work to the project. We finished putting up the ice Tuesday
evening. Lucky for us, a local named
Marty stopped by and he helped finish the last layer of ice as we were all
drained and did not have much steam left.
Wednesday we decided to take a break and go fishing for the
first time. We headed down Wine and
fished by 10 pound island trying for trout.
I caught 2 walleyes, one being 23” and one 12”. The other guys manage to catch one 18”
walleye and one 20” burbot. At noon we
decided to head to a remote lake to catch some eater walleye for dinner. On the way over I was leading when we went
through a narrow area. The trailing sled
seeing water forming in my tracks veered off to avoid and his sled went through
the ice. I turned around to help but
both riders were of the machine and standing on shore. We discussed how we should proceed and
decided to tie a rope on the front of the sled incase it went all the way
through the ice, and come back to try and get out the next day. What happened next was a little scary. Two of us moved out and tied the rope. As the other guy started to walk back to
shore he fell through the ice up to his waist before he caught himself and
pulled his way to dry land. As I was
watching this happen I turned to get off the ice and it completely went out
from under me. I went all the way in up
to my shoulders. My first attempt at
pulling my self out the ice broke again, but on my second attempt it held and I
was able to make it to shore. At this
point we decided best idea was for the 2 wet guys to drive the 10 miles back to
camp and the other 2 would wait for us to come back to get them. As quickly as I could I drove back to camp
and we changed clothes and warded up.
The two left behind started a fire and enjoyed what was left of the
afternoon until they were picked up. All
in all a bad experience that turned out just fine. We finally got everyone back at dark and
tried to keep warm for the night. The
temp that day was Minus 12. With the wind
I believe it was pushing minus 40.
The next day we got the right equipment and went back and
spent many hours cutting some poles and making a big mat for the sled to get
pulled out on. With the cold overnight
temps all the slush froze so it made it a bit safer but many places we were
still walking on an inch of ice. We used
a very long rope attached to a snow mobile and a couple of come a longs and
were able to free the maching. Believe
it or not it still ran as the motor never went in the water. We drove all the sleds back to camp and were
going to call it a day as we were extremely tired. On our way back right in front of camp we
ended up stuck in 12 inched of what is called slush ice where you have plenty
of frozen ice but water gets trapped in between the ice and snow and makes it
like a slippery mud. After another hour
of getting all the equipment unstuck, we made it back just as the sun was
setting.
We learned a valuable lesson that no ice is safe ice. Even in minus 20 to 30 degree weather you
never know. Always avoid creek channels
and narrow areas when driving on ice. I
know we will definitely be more cautious from now on.
Friday brought sunshine but very cold temps again. It was minus 18 in the morning. We tore down the ice ramp, put sawdust on the
ice and made a trip back to the trailer to get some of our trash and gear
out. At 3 pm all very tired and worn out
we decided to not go fish but finally to sit, relax and enjoy the frozen beauty
that we had been in but did not have time to see. We had lost 2 heaters during the week so it
was colder than usual in the lodge. The
floor of the lodge never got above 23 degrees during the week and the cabin
never got above 60 degrees.
On Saturday morning at minus 22 we drove the 12 miles back
to the truck and trailer and headed home.
We did get to see 3 lynx (mom and two pups) and a couple snowshoe hares
on our way out. Our drive home actually
took longer than the ride up as we had snow covered road about 2/3rds of the
drive, and the last 4 hours were in a full-blown snow storm. One other note we had a wolf follow 2 of our
snowmobiles one night as we saw the tracks on our return trip 20 minutes later
in our tracks we just made.
You never know. Even
though we may feel comfortable, it goes to show Wine Lake continues to be rough
and wild and that is why we all continue to go back to experience the Bush as
it was and still is.
