Far North Friday #49: Slush

Far North Friday (long post): Slush: In the south, we tolerate messy road slush. In the north, lake slush is a different animal. My first experience with slush on a northern lake was scary, but interesting.

Our winter morning started well. We loaded our snowshoes onto our snow machines and headed off to mark a location of future bush work. There had been a lot of snow that winter and we had a long commute across Rollo Lake. I noticed that my snow machine slowed down when I got into deeper snow close to the shore, but thought nothing of it. We stopped part way to confirm our destination. The snow in our foot prints was wet and brown coloured. Odd. We jumped back on our snow machines, and started off across the bay. This time, the snow machines really struggled, but they slowly moved along.

I made a mistake. I slowed right down and before I could count to 5, my snow machine stopped. I could see water in the track behind me. I put one foot onto the snow and “freaked”. Water came up almost over the top of my boot. That was interesting. Thin ice? Open water? Am I seconds away from disappearing into the lake? Panic.

I tried to move the snow machine. Quarter throttle. Nothing. Half throttle. Nothing but loud noise. Full throttle. Nothing but blue smoke and the smell of the rubber clutch belt. Lots of panic. I shut down the machine.

My experienced partner had reached the shore. He saw I was not with him and yelled “Don’t stop. There is a lot of slush”.

Don’t stop? That was helpful. Not only was I stopped, I was very stuck. He started up his snow machine and flew back towards me. He stayed away from me, but yelled “bad slush. Dig a path in front of you with your snowshoe. Then lift the back end up and down to clear out the slush. Stand beside your machine. Accelerate and push. When the snow machine moves, gun it and jump on. Don’t stop. Don’t let the slush freeze.”

Sounds straight forward - right?

I was standing in about 4 inches of water. The snow machine was quite content to do nothing on my first attempt. Clear a deeper and longer track, I thought. The snow was heavy and a snowshoe is not the best shovel. That time it worked. The snow machine struggled forward. I gunned it. Jumped on like a cowboy onto a horse, and headed toward the track created by my partner. His first track just cut the outside edge of the bad slush. I made it to shore.

At days end, back at our snow machines, we planned a different way back. Pack a trail in front of us with our snowshoes, like a runway. Take off. Head out towards the centre of the lake where the snow was thinner. Then connect with the morning track. Off we flew, safely reaching the frozen morning track. The trip back was uneventful. I confess, I was nervous, but we made it.

Like many first encounters, that first encounter with lake slush encounter was scary, but interesting.

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Jan. 1, 2021 (Facebook Jan. 1/21)