One fisherman ended up biting off a little more than he could chew when he went camping on an icy lake overnight. He woke up early Saturday to find that the ice had broken and that he drifted away.
The incident happened at Ocean Lake in Fremont County. The stranded fisherman was hundreds of yards away from the shore.
"The funny thing is, I got there in the morning, and he didn't even know he'd floated away. I called him and I was like, 'Dude, you floated away,'" Jake David of Riverton told Cowboy State Daily. David had gone camping with the fisherman, his friend "Zack," but decided to leave. He said, "It felt weird out there."
The ice cracked and his friend floated more than 300 feet away from the shore.
"And the funny thing was, the ice was really thick. It seemed OK," David said. Riverton Search and Rescue had to get involved to save the fisherman and bring him to safety.
Fisherman Camping On Ice Lake
David and his friend have camped out at the lake before. But for some reason, David got a sense of danger and decided to abandon overnight camping. But his friend stayed and "was still hauling in the fish."
David said that it took him a while to hike back to his vehicle when it should have been a straight shot. "I didn't think too much of it. I thought well, maybe I'd gotten off track because it was dark," David said. He wonders if the ice was already shifting.
David and his son were shocked when they arrived the next morning.
"My son looked out at the tent, out across all that open water and said, 'Ummm, how are we supposed to get out there?'" he said.
David said he's "thankful that all my gear didn't end up at the bottom of the lake." As you can imagine, things could have ended up far worse. The ice could have broke under the fisherman's tent, and he could have drowned.
"I hope this serves as a reminder for everybody to be safe out there," he said.
