Thinner than they thought

Twice last weekend people wanting to fish through the ice of Banks Lake found out it was thinner than they'd figured.

On Saturday afternoon and amphibious motor vehicle designed for ice fishing headed out on the ice from Coulee Playland with three men inside.

When they tried to drive the four-wheeled vehicle over the off-shore log boom, the vehicle, a Wilcraft amphibious ice fishing vehicle, high centered on the logs and it broke through the ice at both ends, leaving it unmovable.

But it was built to float, so the men in the car/boat were OK.

"Luckily, or it'd be at the bottom of the lake," said Electric City Volunteer Fire Department Chief Mark Payne, who was on the crew responding to the rescue call.

The mishap occurred 126 yards offshore, said Payne, who'd measured the distance with an optical device and figured he had that much rope back at his house.

After they had the rope, one of the men from the craft walked it out to the craft.

Payne said he wasn't sure how the man had gotten out of the vehicle since it was surrounded by open water.

Payne noted that the volunteer fire department members are not trained or equipped for ice rescues. The nearest such service is in Ephrata or with Okanogan County Search and Rescue.

With the rope attached, the firefighters began to pull the Wilcraft back toward shore using their truck's winch.

Payne said the rope snapped three or four times in the process, but eventually they got it back to safety, leaving a trail of open water cut through the ice.

The next day, the Grand Coulee Ambulance was called out when a fisherman fell through the ice near North Dam.

The man apparently got himself out of the water before rescuers arrived. But two others on the ice also broke through in a shallow area just as they approached the shore, said Gary Skorheim, who works at Coulee Playland. All were OK, and one asked about the possibility of renting a kayak to go back out on the ice to get the items he'd left behind, noted Ben Fox, the new owner of Coulee Playland.