\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/alost-map.jpg\")
<\/center> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I’ll come back to this map in a moment, but for now let’s just say that “green”
\nrepresents the intended path. The “red” lines indicate my best guess at the path
\nI actually followed across the lake.<\/p>\n
Let me preface this blog by saying that it’s me, Brian, writing this blog so
\nthat you know that everyone is alive and well. I brought my mountain bike
\nwith me on our trip to see family up here in the Northwoods of Wisconsin.
\nOur first stop on the trip was Platteville, Wisconsin where temperatures
\nat one point reached the coldest temperature I have ever felt: 9 below zero.<\/p>\n
(See my previous blogs: Leaving Alabama<\/a> and Temperatures had taken a big swing upward all the way to the lower 40’s, though, I was not happy about temperatures in the 40’s as I had been looking Riding through quite a bit of slush to reach the lake, however, did not help my confidence. So I decided to play it safe and stick close to the shore and head to the part of the lake that usually freezes first — the South Bay. Let’s return to the map at the top of this blog. The green line indicates this nice safe, intended path. The numbers on the map indicate the locations where the following five pictures were taken. I will use these pictures to help tell the rest of the story.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n First, note that it is VERY foggy in this picture as I begin my journey. Note also that there is free standing puddles of water (not open water) from ice melt. I was following snowmobile and four-wheeler tracks, so this helped somewhat in rationalizing that what I was doing wasn’t completely insane. Nevertheless, seeing large puddles on a frozen lake isn’t necessarily a good thing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n As I was biking down to the spot on the lake where I took this picture, there was <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I made it to the South Landing marked on the map at the top of this blog <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I started out by following the track I had made earlier. I didn’t realize it was the island until I started crossing pressure <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n This picture was taken after the scariest part of my trek across the lake. The snow mobile track I was following A few minutes after having these realizations and confessing that I believed Imagine someone on a mountain bike coming Moments of panic:<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ll come back to this map in a moment, but for now let’s just say that “green” represents the intended path. The “red” lines indicate my best guess at the path I actually followed across the lake. Let me preface this blog by saying that it’s me, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkzLf-2k","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3186,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions\/3186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFrozen and Not So Frozen<\/a>.)<\/p>\n
\nby the time we drove five hours farther north to Shell Lake, Wisconsin to stay
\nwith Kristine’s parents for a week.<\/p>\n
\nforward pretty much all year to riding my bike across a usually quite frozen
\nShell Lake.
\nThe average ice depth reported here was just under 7 inches. Six inches is usually safe to drive a car onto the lake. I decided
\nthat armed with this information, it would probably be safe to bike across the lake.<\/p>\n
\n1: getting my feet wet – real ice skating<\/span><\/b>
\n![](\"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/1-iceskate.jpg\")
<\/center> <\/p>\n
\n2: island in the fog<\/span><\/b>
\n![](\"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/2-fogisland.jpg\")
<\/center> <\/p>\n
\na couple times that I lost site of the shore because of the heavy fog. This didn’t
\nworry me so much as I was following the marks left by quite a few snow mobilers
\nand four-wheelers — and I knew that I was heading in the right direction. When
\nI just barely could make out Scout Island to my left, I knew exactly where I was.
\nAt this moment, I can remember thinking that it sure would be easy to get lost in
\nthis heavy fog since the island less than 200 yards away would normally have been
\neasily visible.<\/p>\n
\n3: the south landing<\/span><\/b>
\n![](\"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/3-southlanding.jpg\")
<\/center> <\/p>\n
\nwith a three. Here you can see a truck and a sport utility vehicle parked
\non the ice, with the headlights of a third vehicle coming onto the lake
\nvia a landing where I went kayaking with Kristine after only knowing
\nher for two months! At this point I actually exited the lake thinking that
\nI would just bike the couple miles back to the house via the roads.
\nI decided that with all the slush on the roads and low visibility it would
\nbe better to just turn around and head back the same way I came via the lake.
\nBesides, there were numerous cars on the lake, and three drove right
\nby where I was standing when I took this picture. I thought I had nothing to
\nworry about. Big mistake.<\/p>\n
\n4: pressure ridge and merry men<\/span><\/b>
\n![](\"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/4-pressure.jpg\")
<\/center> <\/p>\n
\nThen I decided that on my way out I had stayed closer to the shore than I
\nwanted to because I remembered last year that the ice would crack really bad near the shore. So as you can tell from the red line, I veered to
\nthe right … a little bit too far to the right! When I passed by the island,
\nI thought I was heading due north and passing by the airport shore somewhere
\nnear or along the green line.<\/p>\n
\nridges like the one in this picture, which I had not seen on my way down
\nto the south landing. Suddenly, I came across a three foot high pressure ridge
\nand two men on four wheelers pausing for a drink. They confirmed my suspicion that I had come around on the wrong side of the island. They warned me that
\nI had best turn around and come back the way I came as they had heard
\nthat there were open areas of water still on the lake. I turned down the
\ndrink they offered me in a flask — “one for the road” — which may
\nhave turned out to be the best decision I could have made as impaired
\njudgment could have led to a story with a not so happy ending.
\nSee “moments of panic” after the next picture. I turned
\naround and headed back the way I came.<\/p>\n
\n5: through the fog, the north landing<\/span><\/b>
\n![](\"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/5-northlanding.jpg\")
<\/center> <\/p>\n
\nNine out of the ten moments of panic listed below all happened after I left
\nthe “merry” ATV men. I’m not exactly sure how to explain what happened
\nsince I don’t know myself, but I got quite lost and disoriented in the
\nfog with near-zero visibility. As you can tell from the red line on the map,
\nI did successfully make it around the island, but when I was attempting
\nto find a good track to lead me back to Shell Lake, I picked the wrong
\ntrack, lost my bearing and headed out across the longest part of the
\nlake, which is exactly where any open water (if there was any) would be.
\nI of course did not know this at the time.<\/p>\n
\nwas a very good, straight one so I decided that I would just stick with
\nit and follow it. The track initially had other tracks crisscrossing
\nit, but eventually it became the only track visible. The fog kept getting
\nthicker and thicker leading to moment of panic #1, which was certainly
\nthe scariest moment — when the fog was thick and the snow had been blown
\nenough that for a moment (probably less than a second) I lost complete
\nsight of the track I was following. During that moment, several realizations
\nhappened:<\/p>\n\n
\nidea where I was. <\/li>\n
\nsign of land at all. I realized I was probably heading in the wrong direction, but I had no idea which direction I was heading. In fact, I was thinking that I might be heading south or southeast across the lake and at any moment would hit the south shore somewhere directly below the 4 on the map. This was in fact quite the opposite of the direction I was heading. <\/li>\n
\nthat Jesus was my savior both here on earth and for the life to come … not
\nsure which of the two ways He was going to choose to save me today … I saw
\na garbage can. My immediate thought was that I had taken a direct route to the
\ntown landing and that it was a garbage can from the city park. Unfortunately,
\nI quickly realized that it was just a garbage can from where an ice fisherman
\nhad been. I keep biking and about 100 yards later a car came into view. I biked
\nup to about 25 yards to the side of the car and called out to the man who was
\nin the car with the window down asking him which way was the nearest shore.
\nI told him that I had gotten lost on the lake and had absolutely no
\nidea where I was. He responded that I was only about 100 yards away from the north landing.
\nHe went on to say that he was so surprised when he saw me and said to himself: “There’s something you don’t see everyday…<\/p>\n
\ninto view from out of a thick fog in the direction of the middle of the lake. It
\nmight have actually freaked him out a bit. This last picture above is
\na picture I took looking back after I made it to the north landing. You can
\nsee that visibility is probably less than 25-50 yards. The tire tracks are
\nfrom the car driven by the man I talked to. Notice that his car, less than 100 yards
\nfrom the shore is not even close to being visible. Even after making it to shore, I was a good 2 miles from home, and I wasn’t entirely sure where I was or which road
\nI was on to get home. I’ll let Kristine comment or write
\nher own blog about the search and rescue party that she and her father conducted
\nto try to find me. I was gone for almost two and a half hours — more than an hour and a half longer than anyone (including me) was expecting. I had probably ridden close to 15-20 miles in the snow and ice on the lake and on the roads by the time I made it home. Kristine was still out looking for me when I got home.<\/p>\n\n
\nto see anything. <\/li>\n