A Flin Flon family is home, warm and safe after poor weather and snow conditions left them stranded on a lake.
The Berthelots – Paulette, husband Paul, daughter Erika and her boyfriend Shane Enns – headed out to a cabin on Kisseynew Lake on Feb. 4. After an afternoon on the ice, the group decided to head back home before nightfall.
Paulette and Erika were driving one sled off the lake when they became stuck in deep, slushy snow. The others doubled back to help, but were soon bogged down in the mess, their legs and feet falling into the water in the process.
“We pushed the machine out, but every time we pushed the machine out, we were in slush up to our knees. We’re pushing and we’d all fall in the water as the machine would move a little bit,” said Paulette.
Despite the best efforts of the group, both snowmobiles were hopelessly stuck. With the trail heading to their cabin too slushy to walk on and night fast approaching, the Berthelots had to take drastic measures.
“My husband said, ‘This is not going to work, we are in trouble here. We need to get to shore and warm up.’”
The group trudged through about a hundred metres of slush to the shoreline, where they set up camp.
While the task at hand was surviving the night, the group planned to follow their trail back onto the lake the next day, then follow their snow machine tracks back to the shack about 600 metres away and await help.
A lean-to was constructed and a fire was built, using a secret weapon Paul kept in case of emergency.
“My husband’s a bushman. He had these little cotton balls that he dips in Vaseline, he keeps them in plastic bags in all his pockets,” said Paulette.
Paul used the cotton balls to help start a fire on shore, then used an axe and some rope from the snow machines to help build the group’s makeshift camp. Using the fire to keep warm, the Berthelots tried wringing out their wet clothes with little success.
“It wouldn’t dry – all night, we tried and they just wouldn’t dry,” said Paulette.
“We burnt a lot of our clothes because we were getting too close. My husband burnt his boots and stuff like that. We just kept doing that and tried to keep our spirits up. We checked on everybody, saying ‘Are you sure you’re okay? You’re sure your feet are not frozen?’”
By the time the sun rose, the temperature had dropped – minus 36 degrees with wind chill in the morning. The family slept in shifts, taking turns tending to the fire.
Hungry and having had little sleep, the group left their camp the next morning, using a GPS app on Paul’s phone to track down their shack.
“He was saying, ‘It’s only about a hundred paces! We can do this!’”
Instead of following their original plan, the Berthelots made a plan B – follow the shoreline toward the shack, cut through the brush and walk over on more solid ice.
“It was thick brush, but we did it. It was like nothing then,” said Paulette.
The group made it back to the shack, eating fresh-caught fish and hunkering down for heat. At one point, the family broke into a neighbouring shack, which was larger and better equipped.
“He had wood and his shack was insulated – ours isn’t. We stayed in there and we waited,” said Paulette.
Having spent more than 24 hours on the ice, the Berthelots were hoping help would soon be on the way. They had not had an opportunity to call for help – they did not have a satellite phone and cellular reception on Kisseynew is non-existent.
What the Berthelots didn’t know was, back in civilization, concerned friends and family members had already mobilized.
It was the little things that caused concern. Paulette wasn’t able to make it to a fitness class on Monday – something she said she rarely misses. Paul, who was due to head in for surgery, missed a medical appointment. Perhaps the biggest sign something was wrong was that Paul and Paulette had not been able to call a family friend or their youngest daughter, Danielle, on Sunday night.
“She said, ‘Let’s do something to help’. They called the police and their friends and got together a search party,” said Paulette.
Flin Flon RCMP was called. They quickly fanned out, organizing a search party along with the Flin Flon Fire Department and a number of people familiar with Kisseynew Lake.
Fire Chief Chad Cooper said he was first alerted Monday night by a call from an RCMP officer.
“He said there was a family who was overdue coming back from Kisseynew and he asked if we had a few members with snow machines that could help out with the search party,” he said.
Cooper’s response was quick.
“Give me five minutes and I’ll find some guys,” he said.
By 10 pm on Feb. 5, the search party was assembled at Kisseynew and ready to go. Members of the RCMP, fire department – who are trained in ice rescues and search and rescue – and civilians headed on the ice.
“They kind of knew generally where they were out. There was one guy there, a civilian, who knows that lake like the back of his hand. Everybody generally knows where everyone else’s shacks are,” said Cooper.
It took about an hour and a half through the rough terrain before the shack was spotted.
“There’s always a hum coming from our wood stove, but we all heard this. It was a louder hum,” said Paulette.
“I opened my eyes and I saw lights on the wall. I jumped up and I saw the machines coming – a group of nine machines.”
The search party brought all four stranded anglers back home, cold and hungry but otherwise safe and sound.
“They had extra mitts for us, they had food. It was awesome,” said Paulette.
“It’s a small town and people make fun of the small town mentality, but I’m so glad to live in this small town. This is what Flin Flon is about, right?”
The Berthelot’s sleds – as well as a machine belonging to an unfortunate search party member – were left behind. One of the family’s snowmobiles is still stuck in the slush. Efforts to retrieve it will continue this week.
Cooper said that ice rescue calls are rare, but common enough for the department to have plans in place.
“At least once or twice a year we have to go looking for someone,” he said.
“When the ice starts breaking up you might find a few people getting caught out on the ice.”
Paulette said she wasn’t likely returning to the ice, but that the rest of her family would likely keep angling.
“I’ll go fishing in the summer,” she said.
She hopes her family’s ordeal will help people to remember some basic lessons of winter survival.
“This year, we’ve got a tremendous amount of slush because we have so much snow. Take precautions. Tell someone where you’re going and contact them when you get back. We just get so used to it and you get neglecting and don’t do it, but it could have saved us from a night on the ice.”
