Thin ice lessons

Slush happens Back in 2009, I started wolf hunting within a half hour ride of my home in Kenora. At the time, I was learning on the fly and doing everything on my own because there weren’t a lot of other people hunting wolves. I’d set up bait sites on some small lakes and beaver ponds and run my little 340cc snowmobile to manage them. Late on a Monday afternoon in January, I left the house to check some trail cameras overlooking a couple of bait sites I’d stocked with deer and moose entrails from the fall hunting season. One site was in the back end of a small, finger-like bay off a bigger lake, and as I approached the pile, I was surprised to hit a couple of heavy slush holes under the snow. Keeping my thumb on the throttle, I made it through and was relieved to hit some hard-packed snow that had been tamped down by wolves and birds visiting the bait. Snowmobile struggle After switching out memory cards in the trail camera, I jumped back on my snow­mobile to head home. It was at this point I made a huge mistake. Distracted by the trail camera and the wolf tracks around my bait, I kicked the machine into gear and was going less than half speed when I ran right into the slush again. I made it about 30 yards — my thumb squeezing the throttle as hard as I could — before I came to an abrupt halt knee deep in wet slush. This wasn’t good. Immediately my boots filled with water and I could do little to propel the machine. The track would spin but it wouldn’t move, despite physical effort that had me stripping down to my sweatshirt. Fortunately, my cellphone worked and I was able to reach a neighbour, my only real shot at contacting somebody who knew exactly where I was. I told him my situation and he offered to come help me get out with his bigger machine. While I waited, I started packing down a 100 yard trail in front of the snowmo­bile. Packing snow into the slush provided that little bit of traction needed to get my machine moving again and eventually it started to freeze up. When my friend arrived, he parked his machine on the hard pack and, for several hours, helped me push and pull