began snowing rather heavily during the four-hour trip from Toronto and had not yet ceased when we arose the next morning to pack and head off to the lake. Skidoos are vehicles designed to negotiate most snow conditions, but even the best of them quickly lose their efficiency if heavily loaded down and faced with extreme snow depths. Today’s more modern snowmobiles are better equipped to deal with those conditions than the narrow-tracked machines produced in the sport’s infancy.
Mrs. Woolnough of Birch Lodge was well-known for her culinary skills. From The Outdoorsman: Ontario’s Voice of the Outdoors, 1963. Courtesy of Barry Penhale.
With one and sometimes two of the fellows baling out every so often to lighten the load on hills, we managed to negotiate the seven-mile trip up the bush road. This was followed by a three-mile trail across an ancient farm and several frozen swamps that lead right to the edge of the lake. As is our custom when ice fishing, the first objective is to get the holes cut and the tackle set up. While important, but secondary, a spot has to be cleared for the ever-present dinner fire on shore and, accordingly, enough wood gathered to last the day.
On Grants there is a swamp several hundred yards down one side of the lake with a nice stand of dead birch and cedar where enough can easily be knocked down with the Swedish saw to serve our purpose. I had to pay my respects to the bush for a few moments and, by the time I struggled back through the deep snow, the fellows had the holes and tackle organized. It was left up to me to unhook the sled from the Skidoo to lighten the load, then head on down the lake, fell a couple of dead trees, rope them and drag them back to where we were set up on shore.
The holes were cut and the ice-fishing buzzers (Fish O’Buzzer) were set up in short order. I eased the old Skidoo off shore and onto the deep snow on the lake, moving cautiously because occasionally the combination of a severe load of snow with little ice thickness actually depresses the ice, forcing water up through various cracks in the ice. When this happens, the water and snow become slush, a sloppy mess as much as a foot or two thick. A peculiar spinoff of these conditions occurs when there is more water on the lake’s surface than the snow can actually absorb, at which time gravity enables it to locate the lowest point on the surface where a crack has occurred and it trickles back through the ice into the lake. As the water increases and the hole enlarges, like the water in your bathtub or sink back home, it swirls in clockwise fashion while continuing to drain. The swirling action of the water gradually creates an enlarged hole with a continuous whirlpool action as the eddy and hole constantly enlarge.
I’m not certain why, but most ice fisherman refer to these lake surface winter abnormalities as “sump holes” and treat them with the utmost respect as the swirling waters polish and narrow the edges making them precarious should one approach too closely for a better look. As the Skidoo forged its way through and across the deep snow down the side of the lake towards the swamp and dead trees, I could easily see several places where sump holes occurred. These were partially covered with newly fallen snow, which had appropriately darkened as it absorbed the swirling water.
Hearing a whoop of success from the lads back at the end of the lake spurred me into a “haste makes waste” mode. As I scrambled through the deep snow towards the first dead birch, an unseen branch buried in the drifts grabbed my foot, pitching me headfirst into three feet of snow. Shaking it off, I forced a laugh at my carelessness and carefully took down the birch and two slightly smaller dead cedars. The birch has better staying power, but the cedar is great for getting things underway by establishing a good bed of coals for building a fire. One end of the load was fastened with a couple of slip knots to the tow bar. Because the snow is almost always substantially deeper near shore and the machine now also had to contend with a couple of hundred pounds of dead trees to drag, I headed towards the middle of the lake. Oops! A huge mistake!
A rather large and ominous dark spot out there clearly indicated the presence of a sump hole, with the shading emanating from its epicentre four or five feet in all directions, clearly one to be treated with caution. However, the drag of the trees made jockeying the snowmobile from side to side, with my weight on the rear to prevent the skis from digging in, a necessity to avoid becoming bogged down in the deep snow. While wrestling with the machine I kept one eye on the threatening shadow in the centre of the lake.
Progress was slow, but steady until I suddenly discovered that the snow that I had been riding on was only a veneer on top of a foot or two of deep slush. The big machine bogged down. I had cautiously maintained what I felt was a respectful distance from the sump hole in the middle, only to learn that I was now very near to another nasty one, which because of a freshly driven snowdrift was previously undetectable. I slid off the seat and promptly found that the slush and water were well over my boot tops and rapidly wicking their way into my upper clothing.
There are various ploys that can be used to extricate oneself from this situation, such as elevating the skis then rocking the machine gently while pushing from the rear with mild track acceleration, or pulling from the front while another operates the throttle. The suspension, however, was so clogged up with the heavy, now-compacted slush that progress seemed impossible. I ignored the yells from the distant shore, not wishing for them to get completely soaked as well, and believing that somehow I could free myself from the mess without their assistance.
Eventually, after tilting the machine and scooping out handfuls of the heavy slush from the track, I was able to advance a few feet when suddenly I found myself going from the frying pan into the fire. Apparently the movement of the machine disturbed the snow surface sufficiently to cause it to be sucked in to the slush mass as well. The machine and I were helplessly sliding towards another, gaping, newly exposed sump hole. The thing appeared large enough to swallow both the Skidoo and me along with it. Soaked to the skin with freezing water that was rapidly forming a coat of ice on my sopping wet clothing, I could see the guys beginning to head towards me as inextricably I was being drawn towards an unpleasant dunking and, perhaps, worse! Much worse! I screamed at them to follow my initial trail near shore then approach me from the rear where the trees that had been felled were now suddenly serving as anchors, having been sufficiently jammed up in the slush to arrest my forward movement.
Although they could easily see the entire situation and the mess I was in as they approached, because it was the first time that either of the fellows had been up north in these conditions, it seemed necessary to scream to watch out for the sump holes. The Skidoo had come to a halt with the nose of the machine partly underwater, with the tips of the skis resting a foot beneath the surface. It appeared that only the trees anchoring its forward progress were preventing a disaster. The skis, fortunately, had not gone entirely under, or extricating the machine would have been impossible with their being caught beneath the edge of the ice.
By the time Al and Norman made their way to where I was hanging on to the back of the Skidoo, they, too, were soaking wet. Finally, the three of us, using the well-anchored trees for support, managed to drag the machine from the sump hole and a potential watery grave. The suspension was “de-slushed” and when we were safely clear, the trees were unfastened then placed on the fresh undisturbed surface in front of the machine to serve as rails to allow for a quick start. The Skidoo was revved up and we made our escape to shore without further incident.
On shore, the Ski-boose was rehooked and all the gear unceremoniously tossed inside, along with the nice brookie that Al had taken earlier. The three of us now completely ensconced in a layer of ice squeezed onto the Skidoo to begin the trip back to Birch Lodge. Although it sounds ridiculous to say it now, other than our faces and fingertips that were nipped with frostbite, our bodies were warm. The ice that encased us obviously allowed us to retain the substantial body heat that had been generated by all the exertion required in escaping from the sump hole.
However, we were still faced with the forty-five minute ride through the bush and down the back route to our
