So here is the story of what this pair of idiots did for fun on the weekend. Idiot number one is my brother, and idiot number two is yours truly. My brother decided he wanted to go to my cabin for the weekend, and invited myself to go along, mostly because its not smart to go out in the bush alone. The weather forcast was not too bad, highs of -22 to -24 C, cold but bearable. We managed to get on the road by Thursday afternoon, its about an hour and a half drive, then snowmobile from there. I had heard that the trail I would normally take was pounded out very bad, so we chose an alternate route that I'm slightly unfamiliar with. We arrived at the trail head, fired up the machines (no problem, loaded up and hit the trail).
Now, like i said, I was unfamiliar with this route, long story short, we took a wrong turn ( every Cutline in the area is packed and being prepped for plowing ). We went a few miles out of our way before I figured out where I went wrong. No problem, we backtracked and made our way to the cabin. It was much colder than we were expecting though. Made a fire, warmed the cabin and hunkered down for the night.
Friday morning, it was about -34, cold but the forecast said it would warm up. Neither sled would fire up. The Yam Phazer with electric start finally fired with help from a Booster Pack, the Bombi Sumit 800 needed some heat, I put a trouble light under the hood and wrapped it in an old Hudson Bay blanket I had. Was almost noon before we got both machines fired up.
So, off we went to find some fish, drilled a number of locations fairly close to the cabin, just looking for structure, finally after consulting a bottom contour map i decided on a spot. We shoveled a spot for the Ice Hut 6'x12', it was beautiful smooth ice. Drilled our holes and the freeckin lake puked up enough water to float a boat, we ended up standing in 3-4" of water (CRAP
). So we moved and shoveled another spot fairly close to where I wanted to be, no overflow but also not quite the structure I wanted. We caught a couple fish, Pike and Walleye, nothing special. It was getting colder, we fired the sleds up every 1-2 hrs. Packed up for the night at about 10:00, headed for the cabin, not satisfied with our spot. Whipped up some speed burgers for supper then jumped into the Fart Sacks for a little sleep.
Saturday morning, still very cold ( cold, as in, I put a propane heater inside the outhouse to make it possible to sit down without sticking down
). Same procedures with the sleds to get them running. Still not happy with our Ice Hut location. We eventually got mobile, poked around our ice hut for an hour or so, finally came to the brilliant conclusion that the fish must be on the other side of the lake. Brother was game for anything, so we packed everything up and made another move. (Have any of you tried to fold up a 6 man pop-up shelter when its less that -30 outside? Ya, its not going back in the travel bag....)
So, its 5-6 miles straight across the lake, I have a spot in mind. About 1/3rd of the way across, I feel my machine break the snow crust and drop into some overflow, my heart starts racing, I grab a mitt full of whatever left on the throttle. I kept it moving, not as fast as I would have liked, brother said it "looked cool", a crap storm of snow, ice, slush and water roostering up behind me. We hit a few large patches of overflow on the way across, but its all good, nobody died.
We shoveled over a spot I had marked on a summer trip as "Rockbed1", looked good, 4' of water under the ice, no overflow when we drilled. Spent the rest of the day and evening there. Again, we caught a few Walleye and Pike. Decided to wrap it up early, about 9:00, it was really freaking cold, -34, we had 2 propane heaters running in the shelter, a 10,000 and 3,500 btu units, just enough heat to make it bearable. I was feeling some concerns about getting back to the cabin, it was a full moon but cloudy and pitch black outside. We left everything in the shelter, warmed the sleds, and then followed our track home. Pretty sure that was the coldest ride of my life, little bit of frost bite under my right eye and numb fingers but I wasn't willing to slow down too much on the lake, I was defiantly not stopping.
Sunday, the forecast was for -22C and we woke up to -37C (You lie Weather Network
). Again, same startup procedure on sleds. I finally get the Phazer running, I'm looking towards my brother (he pulled the recoil cord on his Sumit and the cord just stayed out, no recoil, very cold), the Phazer idled up beside me, quite a bit.... I glanced at the gauge cluster and an oil alarm was flagged up. Shut the Phazer off, start checking it out and find that there is an oil icicle running from under the skid plate, down to the snow. (Well that sucks). Now, I don't know much about 4 stroke snowmobile engines, but I do know they need oil, so I check the level. Not a drop of oil on the dipstick???? WTF. Started digging around my shed and found some 5W30 Synthetic. It was so cold I had to stand the oil bottle in a pot of hot water on the stove to warm it up enough to pour. Had to put 3/4 liter of oil into sled engine just to get level up to mid checkers on dip stick. Fired the Phazer back up and watched it for a while. Brother still fighting with his Sumit, has light under hood for heat and exhaust from generator directed under the blanket that's wrapped around his hood. Some oil is dripping from under Phazer skid plate as it continues to warm up. After another hour of messing around, we get the Sumit to start up. The Phazer stopped dripping oil, but I'm looking at it cross wise, as I still don't know why it was leaking at all to begin with. Its about noon now and I'm ready to throw in the towel and just head for the truck, the Ice Hut and most of what's in it belongs to my brother, it can stay right where it is as far as I'm concerned.... But, of course, brother wants to get his stuff. Im a little uncomfortable with this idea, as I'm not sure if there is an actual problem with the Phazer or not and I sure as heck don't want to blow an engine in a patch of overflow crossing the lake... That would pretty much be a death sentence at these temps. Brother convinces me to take a couple test runs with the Phazer, I cant find anything wrong with it so off we go. The blast across the lake was uneventfull, thankfully, although I did bring another warmed up bottle of oil with me inside my jacket. We fired up the heaters, warmed up, packed up the camp and made one last blast across the lake back to the cabin. No F's were given on my part, the slay was heavy and I wasn't stopping. Since you're reading this you are safe to assume we made it. Warmed up in the cabin again, repacked all our gear and headed for the truck. Nothing of note happened on the trail out, just a whole lot of bumpy trail. The truck actually started and we headed home.
The lower yellow dot is the truck. The upper yellow dot is the part we had to backtrack to find the correct branch leading to my cabin. The blue line low and to the left is the summer trail we had to link up to.
Cold Ice Fishing Trip
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