When I travel for work to the South or Southeast, I enjoy asking my Uber driver if they’ve ever driven on a frozen lake. I have yet to meet one who has ever walked on a frozen lake, let alone driven a vehicle on one. And it’s difficult to convince them that the ice could ever be thick enough to support a car or truck. (I’ve lived in Minnesota my entire life and am an avid ice fisherman.)
Those Uber drivers would certainly be shaking their heads if they watched the 14-minute YouTube video below. It shows diver Charlie DeGroot (above left), who dresses in a dry suit and dry gloves to stay somewhat warm while diving below the ice. The air temperature on this February afternoon is 17 degrees, and when you factor in the wind, the feel-like temp (wind-chill) was probably 8 or 9-ish.
DeGroot is assisting Justin Kohn and his recovery crew in bringing up a Ford F150 that fell through the ice on Little Green Lake. This 462-acre lake is located in Green Lake County (southeast Wisconsin), and has a maximum depth of 28 feet.
Kohn is a full-time fishing guide in Wisconsin — open water and ice fishing — and also has the knowledge, skill and gear needed to remove vehicles that have fallen through the ice. Wisconsin law requires that vehicles must be removed from the lake in no more than 30 days; fines would likely follow for every day that passes beyond 30 days. The reason for the tight timeline is the state doesn’t want all the vehicle fluids (gasoline, oil, anti-freeze, transmission fluid, power steering fluid, grease and battery acid) to pollute the water.
I think that this lake’s max depth info is interesting because the unfortunate driver of this pickup crashed through the ice in about 20 feet, obviously in one of the deepest portions of the lake. (The driver and his two passengers escaped the truck before it sank.) As you’ll see, the depth makes it much more difficult for DeGroot to do his job of getting chains attached to the truck’s hitch and rear axle.
While the ice was thick enough on the vast majority of this lake to support a full-size pickup, there is a spring in the area, which resulted in less ice. In fact, DeGroot wrote in the YouTube comments: “I was expecting 35 degree water temp . . . but it was only 40 in that area . . . thinking that must be from the springs.”
He continued: “The ice was way thicker where we removed it. That is why we dragged it 70 feet first, to get it away from the spring so the ice was stronger.”
P.S. The cost to pull a vehicle out of the ice could be upwards of $10,000. This price includes the cost of scuba divers, specialized heavy equipment and the staff who operates it, and a tow truck driver. A person’s auto insurance might help with these recovery costs. As for the vehicle itself, it will almost always be considered a total loss (i.e. totaled) by an insurance company.
