See the Video at the bottom of this page.
This started out with a weekend around Branched Oak Lake, NE. There were a few bald eagles in the area so I went out for a photography outing.
Once out there, I was amazed by the awe inspiring expanse of ice and had a compelling urge to go out on it and explore.
I've never been on a frozen lake before, but there were a number of people ice fishing and even an ATV on the ice so I figured with that many people, it must be safe to just walk on.
I came back out the following day and decided to walk out on to the ice from here. This is where I normally launch my kayak from in warmer months. You can barely see the crack in the ice. I had investigated it the day before and found it was quite thick where the ice had bulged up.
So I set out with a drone, 2 cameras, a GoPro and a various assortment of batteries, tripods and a monopod with the intent of walking close to the shore to stay safe. Haha.
Ice Bulge
I came upon a crack and heard a small creaking noise. I assumed that the ice was the same thickness here, just with water getting splashed up from below due to the overlapping pressure. I thought it'd make for a cool video shot to record the noises of the ice groans. I tried to encourage more while recording by stomping my foot on the crack. Next thing I knew, my foot plunged through and I was in the water.
The moment I realized I was in the water, I thought I'd do like I would when swimming. I'd sink a ways and then push myself off the bottom really hard and climb out. When the water was up to my neck I realized it was too deep to find the bottom here and I was going to have to swim out.
As I said in the video, I tossed the cameras I was holding on the the ice and proceeded to start kicking. With giant sized snow boots, jeans, a coat weighed down by batteries and other equipment and a drone on my back, it was really hard. I tried several times to lift my leg onto the ice, but couldn't get it up so I realized I had to swim harder and faster.
Finally I got enough grip with my arms on the ice to get a leg up and pull myself onto solid ice. I immediately went to my car and started pulling batteries out of my equipment. I grabbed my water resistant Pixel XL 2 phone to go record the hole because I figured, hell, if I had just ruined several thousand dollars worth of gear, I was at least going to get a video of it.
I was really hopeful that the camera I was recording on when I fell in would have saved its video, hoping that a few thousand YouTube views would help offset the loss, but unfortunately the file didn't get saved even partially. I went home and continued drying everything out.
Over the next 2 days my legs began hurting really bad and I noticed this big bruise on the inside of my knee. The bruise came from hitting the ice ledge when I fell. I can only assume my legs were hurting due to breaking the ice while I was kicking and the strain caused from swimming with heavy boots and clothes on.
The final equipment tally ended up being
- 1 $400 Nikon A900
- 2 $50 3DR Solo Drone Batteries
So, fortunately, it didn't end up being as bad as I feared in the video. See all the action below.