How to save your life when you fall through the ice
More Articles Related to SafetyGoing out onto the ice of a pond, lake, or stream is common for those who live and work outdoors in cold regions. Make no mistake, being out on the ice can be one of the most dangerous things you can do. Drowning and hypothermia are two of the most popular ways to loose your life in the wilderness.
Your first step when venturing out onto the ice of a frozen body of water is to ask yourself if you should really be out on the ice in the first place. Then if you must go, follow these guidelines, it could mean survival for you or your companions.
When walking on ice, be sure to wear a floatation device. When you first fall through the ice you may very well take an involuntary gasp as your head submerges beneath the cold water. This could introduce water into your lungs right from the beginning and lead to drowning.
Once your head is above the surface of the water, try to exit the hole close to the point where you were walking when you fell in. This is because it is here the ice was proven strong enough to support your weight, while around the rest of the hole the strength of the ice is unknown.
"Your first step when venturing out onto the ice of a frozen body of water is to ask yourself if you should really be out on the ice in the first place."
Now comes the difficult part - pulling yourself up out of the water and up onto the ice. This is where the picks you always have with you when out on the ice come in. If you do not have picks, perhaps you have a tool such as a screwdriver or even a set of keys. Anything to give you leverage. Digg them into the ice and use them to pull yourself out.
If you do not have some kind of ice pick it will be much more difficult to get yourself out of the water and up onto solid ice. Kick your legs to raise them and lift your entire body so it is level with the surrounding ice. Then you may be able to scrable up onto the ice.
If you become exhausted, reach your hands and arms as far out over the ice as possible and let your clothing freeze to the surface of the ice. This may allow you enough leverage to pull yourself out, or at least hold you fast so that you do not drown as you await rescue.
When you do get yourself back up onto the surface of the ice, distribute your weight on the ice by rolling away from the hole and then crawl to safety. Rolling and crawling will distribute your weight over the ice and minimize your chances of breaking through. It is a mistake to stand up next to the hole as the ice will have been weakened and you may very well fall back into the water.
Fortuneately there is an excellent video on how to rescue yourself from falling through the ice or someone else who has fallen through the ice.
Doctor Gordon Giesbrecht on the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation Studies shows you how to save yourself when you fall through the ice. In the video Dr Giesbrecht actually plunges himself in a hole in the ice on a cold pond and demostrates your options in self rescue or rescuing others in such as survival situation.
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Northern Maine
I went through the ice one december during the blackpowder season in Maine. We had just gotten 12" of fresh snow so i thought I'd try my luck tracking for a change. I was hunting with my father and he went up the ridge on one side of the road and I went down the ridge on the other. I was walking through an area of the woods I'd never been before and came to what I thought was a small meadow because there were alders and such sticking up through the snow the entire way across it. Unfortunately as I got nearly half way across it I fell through the ice and ended up belly button deep in water. My meadow was in fact a small bog. The temperature was about 10F as it was still early morning. I managed to pull myself out of the water by grabbing onto nearby brush but was absolutely horrified by how quickly my body locked up. Even though I was only in water that was waste deep I was basically soaked from the neck down by the time I had managed to crawl out. I wasn't in the water more then 30 seconds but within a minute I was struggling just to walk. I fired three successive rounds from my rifle (my father's and my signal that one of us had shot a deer) in the hopes he would start back this way. I forced myself to keep walking but every step felt like I was stepping on a million tiny needles. Which was another thing that surprised me. The pain that grips your legs after getting soaked like that is unbearable. After about three minutes I fired another 3 rounds in hopes that dad would think that strange and come quickly... which he did. I had only made it back about half way to the truck when he found me (i was hollering as I walked). I stripped naked and He stripped down to his long johns and gave me his dry clothes and basically had to drag me out of the woods. Luckily I wasn't more then a mile from the truck when I broke through the ice or I honestly don't know if I would have made it. That experience really opened my eyes to how quickly hypothermia can set it. I was shaking uncontrollably by the time we made it to the truck and could hardly move a muscle. My leg muscles were so locked up that I could barely walk for a couple days my legs were so sore. I grew up in the big woods of northern maine and thought of myself as being a fairly capable woodsman, an experience like that really humbles you and makes you realize just how important is to to be prepared for anything, even when you only plan on being in the woods for a couple hours.