Debate time: Ice thickness

[Trey]

ok so ive read a few threads on people fishing and all of a sudden some idiot in a truck drives up and asks how thick the ice is. and i read another one on a truck that went thru, and yet another on someone out on ice that was 12" but found a 4' square hole and almost fell in. some scary stuff. obviously safety SHOULD be everyones #1 priority but you cant teach common sense

Now with that being said my question for all of you is....

HOW THICK SHOULD THE ICE BE TO SAFELY: 1) walk onto the ice with you and a few friends. 2) take a quad or snowmobile out onto the ice. 3) and whats a good rule of thumb if someone were to drive their truck out onto the ice. and lets go with a full size 1/2 ton to 3/4 ton truck for example.

now obviously the thicker the better, and after reading about some of the stuff on here i dont think ill ever drive my chev out onto any lake. EVER.

be safe out there guys,

[pikehunter1989]

i usually wait until its around 16-18 inches of solid ice. if im driving more than a couple hundred yards than i wait until its around 2 ft. and i drive a 1/2 ton

[Rumtan]

4" - walk on
6 - 8" - quad
12 - 16 - car & light truck
24" - good to go !

[CeeZee]

3 to 4" to walk on
6- 12" quad
12 and up to 14" is a tough desicion, but depends how well a person knows the lake and currents and springs etc, if driving accross the lake there would need to be alot of good ice, I have driiving on too thin of ice, only about 200 yards to my hut, it cracked but it was fine...... until a guy with a 1 ton dodge diesel drives up :sign0068::scared0018:

[MeYammy]

I always used to drive on at about 12"....I was young and stuupid back then.

Now, I wait until two things happen:

1. It's well over 12" thick, more like 16"
2. Lots of other brave souls have driven on the ice and have not heaved it up or fallen through. I'm never the first one to drive on. And I don't venture onto parts of the lake where either I or someone else has not been. Parked on top of a spring ONCE, managed to get out of there with my Dad's pickup intact (21 years ago when I was 18), and have avoided driving there like the plague ever since.

Thing about springs...if you know where they are and can drive up near them, within walking distance, they often make for some pretty good fishing.

I shouldn't have said that...now some tool is going to fish over a thinner ice spring and fall through and I'll get sued. Dang....

[iliketrout]

My lawyer told me not to post my opinion to avoid any possibility of getting sued:angry3:

Just kiddin.

I wouldn't be driving on with any less than 18". I'll walk until then. I could probably use the exercise. Just my opinion (not a recommendation).

[MeYammy]

By the way...I read all of the posts about the potential for blaming other people's ice reports and getting sued. I've never read such claptrap BS before.

If people are so stupid that they read on here the ice is 16" thick and make a decision to drive on it without drilling test holes or performing some other type of verification, and they bust through, that is entirely, 100% their own damn fault. Period. It's ice people. It's not a road. It's not an engineered highway. It's a frikken frozen body of water. It's subject to running water making the ice thinner. It's subject to springs. Wind affects ice. So does snow cover. It's a "Drive on at your own damn risk no matter what anyone tells you or whatever nonsense you read on a website".

I'm so sick and tired of the human race coddling the stupid and inept.

"Accountability" is a word that belongs in a museum. Sad.

[RedFisher]

ok i'll bite on this one... Well im not saying you should follow in my footsteps but i do push the limits sometime.... for me depending on the lake ...

2-4 inches to walk on
5-8 inches for quad or sled

now this is where alot of you are going to dissagree with me but again i dont drive a truck onto the ice i drive my 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee... alot lighter and gives me all the power i need to break trail...

10-13 inches of ice before i drive on but again this all depends on which lake im going to....

Anything over 22 inches safe for pretty much any personal vehical....

[Trey]

thanks for the input guys. and anyone that is dumb enough to drive anything onto ice without testing it in some way is an idiot, and i started reading that thread about how you guys were gonna sue eachother and such over something that was said on the net, was hilarious...to a point and then it became annoying and i stopped reading

[chubbdarter]

i got the poops from some of the ling recipes.........lucky johnny cochrane is dead

[huntingaddict]

well I quess i'm a dumb one than I was the first to drive on pinehurst last year . this year was marie I drive a 1/2 ton extended cab. The ones I've seen go through were because they were driving to fast. If I'm not sure if I'm crossing a big bay I'll auger out a few wholes on the way.



2 min to walk

4-6 quad

8 min for 1/2

3 ft for everyone else

I have learned a lesson when i put my truck in lake athabasca. Big lakes take longer to freeze. Never drive over ice burms without checking them out first.

[burningfreak]

keep in mind thickness is not the only measure of the strength of ice. Clear ice=strong ice where as cloudy ice is weaker. it has to do with theamount of air trapped in the ice. I took an ice rescue course last winter and heard lots of stories from our instructor about people falling through ice, while walking, that seemed plenty thick to drive on. Then when we went out on our training pond with 2" thick clear ice we couldnt bust through it no matter how hard we jumped (we were wearing insulated drysuits at the time) Just thought I'd throw that caution out there, you cant be certain ice is safe by thickness alone.

[Trey]

i hear ya on the clear dark ice. i seen conditions like that on the bearspaw res. it was even hard to drill thru. but hats off to you guys. i wouldent walk on only 2" of ice no matter what the color. but then again im from vancouver island. and we dont really even get ice out there