I was just telling my wife the other day that most of the bad snowmobiling accidents happen on lakes, not trails, because of the speed at which people travel. I was reassuring her about the trip I was about to take to Crane Lake by snowmobile from Duluth to go ice fishing. “Speed is what kills” I told her, “and I don’t drive fast on the lakes!”
The 200+ mile trip (mostly trail) went off without a hitch and we reached our destination with a few hours of daylight left to go fishing. We had to follow a guy out about 10 miles across a few lakes from where we were staying because he was showing us where to fish.
This guy was flying, and I didn’t want to lose him. So I blindly followed his taillight through a cloud of snowdust. Unfortunately, he flew around a pressure ridge or something, and I nailed it. As any good pilot will tell you, it’s not the flying that kills you, it’s the abrubt landing. I got really lucky. I sprained both wrists on impact (the right more severely as you can see in the picture below) and then rolled and sprained my ankle, and bruised about every muscle in my body.
I looked at my Boot and it had pulled off and twisted 180 degrees, but it was still tucked into my bibs. I thought for sure I was in shock and was going to have to get life flighted out of there. I was very lucky not to do more damage than I did and I hope this article saves someone out there the pain I am in right now.
