NGL, wasn't expecting those ages.

Per WCAX 2-10-23

> GRAND ISLE, Vt. (WCAX) - Police say a Grand Isle man has died after he fell through the ice on Lake Champlain Thursday.

> Vermont State Police say rescue crews found Wayne Alexander, 62, of Grand Isle, in the water Thursday night at about 9:30 p.m. in a flotation suit.

> He was rushed to the hospital in Burlington where police say he died.

> An autopsy is planned to determine the cause and manner of death but investigators say Alexander’s death appears to be an accident and is not considered suspicious at this time.

> A family member called the police at about 8:30 p.m. Thursday after finding Alexander’s truck parked at the Grand Isle State Park when he failed to return home after a day of ice fishing.

A second pair fell through this morning and at least one of them passed away as well. Grand Isle sheriffs “suggesting” that ice fishing derbies be cancelled and urging folks to get off the ice.

There’s no safe ice on champlain this year folks. Just face it. I see people saying “there’s a foot in keelers bay!” - may be true but that foot of ice wasn’t strong enough twice in the last 48hrs.

Honestly, I’m kinda not surprised. The last several incidents like this I remember hearing about all involved elderly people in vehicles who couldn’t exit

I was thinking more like they'd have the experience to know unsafe ice. But also two of them on one vehicle struck me as odd. You don't see too many septa/octogenarians zipping around on machines, one riding on the back. At least I don't?

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Incredibly sad, we drive by a pond daily and see people out on the ice every day this week. Why are people still sitting on the ice with the conditions so dangerous this year?

Yeah I don’t get that part either. Sounds like they were in a side by side, like a RZR, so they would both be sitting in an open cockpit

Ah, that would make more sense.

Both men died.

That’s 3 people within 48hrs

He had a flotation suit? Does that do anything for the cold?

Mid February and the ice isn't safe, what the world/weather is now. :/

It is 42 degrees this weekend if you're stupid enough to get on the ice, you deserve what you get. Jesus Christ common sense is at an all time low I swear

No

The climate is perfectly stable, nothing to see here, folks!

No.

They provide additional boyancy to keep you from going under for a limited period of time (normally about 2hrs). That protects you from the immediate danger (drowning) which gives time to self rescue (using ice picks to crawl out) or be rescued.

You still need to dry off and heat up as soon as possible.

The conditions on Champlain are not indicative of the conditions on other smaller lakes and ponds.

Ice fishing is going to become a rarity here, I remember whole villages on the lakes of Vermont when I was a kid, and I don’t see them anymore 😔

But isn’t the weather an indication of it’s status?

I’ve never understood the allure of ice fishing - for this exact reason. What a terrible way to die.

Yea weather, average temperature, wind speed, wind direction, size of the body of water, amount of water moving through the area under the ice, how much ice is already there, amount of water on top of the ice, quality of the ice are just some of the factors. Ice can be dangerous but just because Champlain is unsafe doesn’t mean that other ponds with different factors are. Never assume the spot 15’ ahead of you has the same amount of ice as the spot you’re standing on, let alone the ice across town.

The other pond also has a warning associated with it and a huge crack. Yet people are treating it like a fun spot to chill. We can calculate the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow or just use some common sense and not play on ice when the conditions aren’t safe.

It’s actually alot of fun. There’s a real inner peace to being out there first thing in the morning when the world isn’t awake yet. Plus fresh perch through the ice is one of the tastiest fish you can have. But you really need to know and understand the ice conditions. Not everyone enjoys it.

No one deserves to die. Don’t be a jerk.

Or you can use an auger and a spud bar to continuously check the ice instead of guessing based on conditions.

I’m not really surprised actually. Old guys have memories of being able to drive cars out there, and think that things are still the same. Their mobility is restricted too. So they resort to mechanical means to get around. I’ve met a lot of old timers out there that believe climate change is bullshit. I remember being able to fish from around Christmas to Saint Patrick’s day. But that hasn’t happened in at least ten years now.

It's been unseasonably warm this past week. I feel sorry for this person's family.

Was driving South on 89 the other day and noticed a skater out on the river (south of Colchester) and thought to myself that can’t be safe. The next day it warmed up and the same section of river was wide open. Skaters be safe too!

What’s happening under the ice is also a factor of how safe it is. Such as current and amount of vegetation. If there is a lot of grass it emits oxygen which will rot the ice from underneath. Same with current. When the weather is warm, feeder streams run higher with runoff which will also deteriorate the ice from underneath.

I absolutely would enjoy the fishing part but can’t get over the terror of being on ice.

My dad and I would drive his truck out a mile or so on Shelburne bay at like 3:30/4 on a weekend. He would drill a hole close enough to each door that we could sit in the truck. Bud heavy for him and root beer or Mountain Dew for me. In less than an hour we would catch enough HUGE perch for the whole family to have a fish fry.

Nowadays so many things about this would just not happen. It’s rarely safe enough to drive a truck out onto Shelburne bay these days, drinking and driving is no longer in vogue (probably a good thing), if you DO get out there it will take you all day to catch a few dinky perch….

and this wasn’t even that long ago. 20-25 years. I now have a son of my own and I’m afraid he will never experience ice fishing to any meaningful degree.

I can understand that. Very similar fear as to climbing a ladder. I used to hate it as a kid because I couldn’t catch anything. When I got older and learned to fish better, I could make money selling perch, and fill my freezer too. It’s easy to catch the fever and cast away common sense to get out there and try to fill a bucket. Humans are a complicated species.

I grew up in shelburne as well and I can remember so many people out there in the bay. It’s just sad. At 37 years old to see everything we had as kids go to shit.

I'm no expert on ice but I see people fishing at our local small lake when it has not been really very cold (plenty deep to not be able to stand ) and wonder what they are thinking.. The water under the ice on this lake is moving by the way . i would imagine that makes it less stable.

How stupid do you have to be

Lmao fr. Like, it's been the hottest winter on record, why would you go on the ice of the states biggest lake. It's like those people who wander up mount washington in running shoes and leggings in the middle of winter. What do you expect?

People often don’t pay attention to much of anything, this time of year should be perfectly safe to go out on ice but it’s been about 30° warmer than it should be most days for the last month. Others are just stubborn, others don’t understand that bad things can happen to them.

I remember driving out to the breakwater - THE BREAKWATER, routinely with my dads truck. Never in a million years would I do that now.

Yea no. I also remember out in the bay by rozzis the people out there the car races the snowmobile races the fishing driving and playing on the ice was something that we just did as a normal kid.

Yup. Every weekend we were out there either walking or skating by ourselves, on my dad’s snowmobile, in someone’s shanty watching tip ups, launching model rockets, just generally having a blast.

Good point, also doesn't mean it's a foot everywhere. Could be one foot thick in one spot and less in others.

Damn.

I’ve had the ice pull away from the shoreline from the time I went out to the time I went back to get off. Luckily there was another spot to get off.

Someone was saying in keelers bay specifically it was about a foot until 100 yards out or so, and then drastically went to 3-4”

It's how I'd want to go TBH. If you get to live to that age and your choices were to go out doing what you love or be bed ridden and wither away slowly, give me the former. Not that I'd purposely neglect safety to go out, but people do make mistakes.

Same here. I watched my father wither away in a hospital bed not knowing who he was anymore because of the toxins in his brain from kidney failure.

Shelburne bay in early March used to always produce big slabbers.

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We used to drive on from the boat launch in Malletts Bay and come off at the Sandbar. The only problem was if there was too much snow on the ice. Neither of which is an issue anymore.

Born in March and my dad always talks about nailing huge yellow bellied in the days leading up to my birth.

Their experience is probably not with the weather we have now with 50 degrees change from one week to the next with rain in between

The booming of ice flexing when it’s cold is so awesome

A foot of rotten ice isn’t as safe as 4” of good dark ice.

There were still ice shanties on the river in Brattleboro last weekend. I couldn’t believe it with how thin the ice looks.

I’d like to point out people are often wrong about those things.

Like I remember my parents dating there was always snow of Christmas. While where they were from in the 70s it was snowy 7-10 Christmases they had a white Christmas once in the 1980s. If you look at the stats.

So when people say “we used to ice fish on Christmas” they really mean “ice ice fishes on Christmas before”

Not sure about Vermont but I know Concird, Worcester and Boston the 2010s was the snowiest decade on record. But old folk will say it was snowier when they were kids. When it wasn’t

So what you’re telling me is that you remember my experience better than I do. My memory isn’t that short. I would consistently ice fish out in front of Eagle Mountain in Milton every year when I lived in Georgia around Christmas time. This was the mid-1990s. I lived there for 10 years. I remember because I would always have fish for New Year’s Eve. Thanks for your input.