Snowmachine Outing

 Hey Tribe,

Ever spearfished for pike through the ice?  Until this past weekend, I never had and I'm not sure I can say I have yet.

In the wee hours of the morning, our friends and TheFather and I all met in a dark, snow-filled parking lot and sleepily unloaded snowmachines from trailers and loaded sleds with gear and passengers.  Our destination: a remote frozen lake 17 miles away, accessible only by snowmachine or airplane.  Our mission: spearfish for pike.

But first, we have to fix a broken pull-start.

It took our group roughly an hour to complete the journey.

Perhaps it could have taken less time, but the bumps along the trail caused us to occasionally stop to re-adjust loads.

There's a small human somewhere in that load of gear.

We also re-adjusted passengers.

The kids mutinied and made their dad ride in the sled. 

The sunrise wasn't too bad though.

Our primary objective of spearfishing was hindered by our inexperience, though one pike was indeed speared, and our group ended up catching 9 of our 10 pike via tiny jigging poles brought along as an afterthought.  We pondered methods for improving our spearfishing capabilities while roasting hot dogs over a slightly too smoky bonfire that burned down into the snow, but didn't make much of an impact on the 3 foot thick ice.

TheFavoriteGirl showing off her catch.

In the late afternoon, our return journey was going well and uneventful, until TheFather's snowmachine suddenly lost power and died right in the middle of the trail.  We sat, momentarily locked in motionless silence as our friends left us in their snowdust and became small dots on the horizon.  Then, we checked on the mechanical things that are checked in such cases, but could not persuade the old Tundra to cough back to life.  Happily, luckily, by some miracle, I had cell reception and was able to summon our group back for a rescue mission.

Broken Tundra gets a ride home on top of a sled as part of our "sled train" full of gear and people.

It was a slow journey home.  To make things more interesting, daylight faded quickly and chunky snowflakes began to fall and obscure our vision.  Machines were overloaded with gear and people and several shuttle trips were required to get everyone and everything back to the once again dark parking lot.  But we made it.  Plans for next year's trip are already in the works, because these people are determined to spear themselves some pike.