How not to.....

[Gary_C]

....clear snow from around your ice fishing house.

http://www.crookstontimes.com/news/x1621227131/County-owned-front-end-loader-breaks-through-ice-on-river

Crookston, Minn. -
A Polk County employee escaped injury very early this morning when the front-end loader he was driving on the frozen Red Lake River adjacent to Central Park broke through the ice.
   
After several attempts, the loader was successfully pulled from the river shortly before noon today.
   
Mike Raymond, who's worked for the county for 27 years, was not supposed to have the loader on the ice, said Polk County Highway Engineer Rich Sanders. Raymond was cleaning snow from county-owned lots in town and made a detour to the public boat launch in Central Park. According to some bystanders watching attempts to pull the loader from the river, Raymond's plan was to clear snow from around his ice-fishing house when the ice gave way.

Sanders, also observing the scene in the park today, said Raymond had been "sent home," but wouldn't comment further on the incident or any punishment. He said the John Deer loader was purchased by the county in 2007. He estimated that, when new, it cost around $250,000. It was still idling when it was pulled from the river, but its not yet known how much damage is sustained.
   


And you think you are having a tough winter pushing snow!   :D :D :D

[sawguy21]

 :D That may be an expensive repair bill. At least the engine did not ingest water.

[beenthere]

Bummer of a deal.  A bit embarrassing to get caught too.  :

Some great pics at that site, of the removal.

I ran across some YouTube vids on removing vehicles from icy graves. Some of pickups and SUV's. Pretty interesting vids.

Now these Crookston fishermen are concerned about messing up their ramp onto the ice, with all those big ice chunks left. They have their priorities.   

[stonebroke]

Back in the seventies, A friend was going to college in NH and the college was cleaning a pond off so the students could go skating, One UniMog going to the bottom.

Stonebroke

[RSteiner]

I had an experience with that a number of years ago.  There is a small pond next to our properity that the kids would skate on.  We had at least a foot of snow fall in one storm.  The ice was over a foot thick, where I checked it. 

I was making my last push with the Ford 8N tractor I had which had a snow plow rigged to the front loader.  All of a sudden the ice gave way, I had gotten too close to where the water flowed into the pond ahere the ice was thinner.

The tractor sat in about 2 feet of water still running but I could not move.  I was only about 6 feet from where I drove onto the pond.  Fortunately there was a man in town 3 miles away with a huge bucket loader.  He had this long I-beam boom for the front which reached out over the tractor.  We chained the tractor to the boom and he was able to pluck it out of the water.  I drained the transmission fluids right away and replaced them before moving the tractor. 

I get this funny feeling when ever I think of driving on the ice again, once is enough.

Randy

[Jeff]

They showed some video of that extraction on our local nightly news last night.

[SwampDonkey]

One winter, somebody decided to take a snow groomer across the Saint John River near where a smaller stream dumps in. It was early in the season and that is usually not a safe idea. It broke through anyway and was lost to the abyss.  :-\

[Warbird]

The comments from various folks are very entertaining...

ya can't fix stupid

...while I do feel sorry for the guy, that made me .  Since no water got into the engine, I'd say damages to the loader will be minimal.  However, the cost of extracting the thing, what with the emergency divers, fire dept, 2 other pieces of heavy equipment, etc, will be HUGE.

I imagine that the operator of the loader went from one form of "pucker factor" to another.