https://alaskapublic.org/news/public-safety/2025-03-24/3-rescued-from-small-plane-crash-on-tustumena-lake

Really happy those people survived, but it makes me

Is there an informal running assessment of ice conditions on local lakes like there is here in Minnesota? I can pretty well sense the conditions by the observed bravado of ice fishermen here. Or it seems the locals talk about it.

I’ve gathered it was a moderate year up north for snow and ice just from casual conversations with Alaskans I talked to in recent months.

I don’t want to Monday morning quarterback this guy, but as a budding ice pilot myself, I can help but self-project. That one should have been a known quantity, right? Do you think it was deceptive in appearance? Should he have known the ice integrity before trying? I’m gonna guess the ice appeared way more doable when he was out there initially than it does in the rescue photo.

And what am I even looking at? Is the aircraft floating in water? Or mostly submerged in super deep slush and being supported by thicker ice under?

How to not do this?

This has been a really warm winter for Alaska. The Iditarod dog race had to be moved to Fairbanks and we had a Plane go through the I at Lake George on the Knik in January, I had landed with another plane right near that spot a week or so earlier. Unlike Minnesota we don't have people fishing on a lot of the lakes due just due to the size of Alaska. So it is drop stuff or look for tracks from other planes, lots of places only see a few planes a year so ice thickness is really limited to a few well used lakes. Weather will very widely over a 100 mile area Birchwood had grass showing at the end of January 80 miles away Shell lake had lots of snow for one of our members to clean off his wings. But lakes in a local area do tend to get hard around the same time, snow cover will very. So once you see a brave set of tracks you can start considering the area. We will have to wait for the story but I suspect this is a commonly used ski/wheel lake for that area for the winters and it was just softer than he had planned, you can see his tracks in the slush. He could have been running it looking for some hard stuff. Just like a Minnesota lake when you see that row of cars parked on a lake break through when it held fine the weeks before you never really know what is going on under the ice. We just had a fly in this week end 15 miles from Birchwood at Seymour lakes and the it was fine. A remote switch on the ELT and In Reach on person ready to grab on the way out the door are key for getting rescued up here.
DENNY

DENNY wrote: you never really know what is going on under the ice.

On my lake at least, I enjoy tracking the ice conditions, so I drill it periodically with a 2" auger that has inch marks and take note. We had a week long warmup and lost all the snow atop the ice, and that ended up as 2" of slush that refroze and really has no structural value. But underneath the 16" of solid ice has maintained. In years past much deeper snow on thinner ice has made it a crapshoot for sure. Can only imagine the variance and lack of reliable beta for AK lakes.

When lake ice in that part of the world gets exposed to direct sunlight (ie: Snow cover is gone), the ice candles out pretty fast, and that's kind of what that ice looks like. But, it's hard to tell from those photos. That said, this time of year, your skis are splashing.....time to go.

Also, those big lakes can be sneaky. Tustemena is almost 300 meters deep. Those really deep lakes can take a long time to freeze over, and as a consequence, in a mild winter, the ice may not have much chance to get thick.

For a lake like that to freeze, the water column has to "turn over". As the surface water cools, it sinks, and the warmer water under rises, only for it to cool and sink. That process prevents ice from forming often well into winter. Once the lake does freeze, it still takes a while for the ice to thicken.

I can recall about half the winters I spent in Kodiak, Karluk Lake never froze, and I recall flying past Tustemena in December when a lot of it was open.

Interesting physics associated with ice formation in deep lakes.

If you can get lake ice figure out try sea ice is a whole different level of unpredictable. We had a whole section in the COM dedicated to sea ice operations.

No comments on the incident, but the photos seem to show pressure ridges across the surface of the lake, including at the point where the aircraft flipped. In my experience, you have to be careful around ridges, as large puddles of water typically get pushed up and over the ice on one or both sides of the ridge. Under the snow, this manifests as slush/overflow, but with clear ice, you can get shells of clear or aggregate ice forming at night over the puddles, making it difficult to distinguish the hazard.

For pilots thinking about ice operations (or anyone else who has to travel or contend with lake ice, there an excellent resources here: http://lakeice.squarespace.com/

(fwiw, i live on a houseboat on a lake that's frozen 6-7 months of the year, so have become pretty familiar with the various stages of ice formation and melt. Currently, it's awesome - i can park my plane out front, and drive my truck to and from my boat, but it's gonna get a little dodgy by early May as the snow melt happens, and then even more dodgy as the ice begins to rot)

It does not look like it flipped, the rudder is visible at the rear of the plane and no tires sticking up. I think the bumps over the cabin are the kids sitting on top of it.
DENNY

As someone who grew up in rural England ice has always scared me.

I was walking to work across the middle of Green lake in Whistler when a Beaver on skis landed what felt like maybe 40 feet off my right shoulder. Id been walking into a stiff wind and the first I knew was a slight whisper followed by the deafening clattering of skis on glare ice. The entire ice surface began to oscillate up and down. Scared me near to death. Im sure the pilot got a good chuckle.

I would love to land on clear Ice one day, but would need to be convinced it was solid.

Good eyes!

DENNY wrote:It does not look like it flipped, the rudder is visible at the rear of the plane and no tires sticking up. I think the bumps over the cabin are the kids sitting on top of it.
DENNY

Oh, it's upright, for sure.....he just fell through the ice. And, the fact that they're all sitting on the airplane suggests really strongly that they didn't want to try walking around on that ice......a clue.

MTV

An update on the pilot of the PA-12 on the ice at Tustemena Lake: https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2025/ ... cial-says/

mtv wrote:An update on the pilot of the PA-12 on the ice at Tustemena Lake: https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2025/ ... cial-says/

Ouch. Glad those kids are okay, given that context.

Zzz wrote:

mtv wrote:An update on the pilot of the PA-12 on the ice at Tustemena Lake: https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2025/ ... cial-says/

Ouch. Glad those kids are okay, given that context.

They probably aren't okay. I would imagine that it was an extremely traumatic experience.

Thanksgiving dinner is going to be a little awkward for uncle John.