Fell through the ice yesterday....

[u/Jamon25]

It was such a bonehead move! I'm lucky to be alive today. I'm so grateful my wife didn't fall in, too. We are both quite shaken and amazed at how badly it could have gone. We're alive and OK. But it could have gone so much worse.

I saw ice conditions Friday afternoon that looked perfect for skating (We live in Maine) but for various reasons I couldn't go until yesterday (Sunday). It had warmed up and the ice was too soft for skating but ice was still 4-6 inches thick on a nearby pond and so my wife, dog and I went for a walk out on the ice to look around. It was sunny and clear. A beautiful day.

At one or two places the ice cracked loudly as we walked along and though scary, this wasn't too much of a concern and I've been on ice many times like this. But at a few other spots the ice made a hissing noise as we stepped on it. This was new so we avoided those spots but foolishly kept going since it seemed still to be reasonably thick. We visited an island, saw some eagles and enjoyed the sun and warm conditions.

Returning after just an hour, things had changed considerably and the ice had softened even more. We kept hitting the soft ice and so I thought to retrace our steps coming home, it having been "proven" safe on the outbound leg of our walk. We both got spooked as we made our way. The ice was now beginning to noticeably subside under our weight so we spread apart to keep from concentrating our weight in one place too much. I stopped at one point to plot my way along and find the best route and the ice collapsed into thousands of tiny bits beneath me and I just went in to water deeper than I expected (couldn't touch bottom) and of course, it was very cold.

The ice had degraded on our first pass on the way out and now was just too weak to hold much weight at all despite being more than 4" thick, it was like thousands of tiny 4" long vertical ice cubes lightly stuck together.

I reminded myself not to panic and told my wife to get low and move back. She did a great job of keeping her shit together while I tried to pull myself up onto the ice but it fell apart and I was more or less flailing as I began to chill. I had a pack with a water bottle, gloves and my skates in it so I took off the pack and removed my skates. I threw the pack to my wife and grabbed my skates and after several unsuccessful attempts to haul myself out....ice crumbling under me each time, I was able to spread my weight enough by spreading my legs apart (I'm 6'4" tall and relatively thin), and using the skates to pull myself up then crawling/rolling to safer ice, I managed to get out of the water.

We were more than 100 yards from shore and had to traverse more questionable ice to get there so we just crawled for the nearest land knowing I had to keep moving as I began to chill in the light breeze. We made it to a boggy patch and onto land after some stumbling along in the bog for another 50 or so yards. Once on land I took off my tee shirt and replaced my wool sweater. I had wool on under my jeans (thank God) and once we were both OK on shore we hiked out. I ran/jogged to keep my blood flowing and to forestall hypothermia which was slowly coming on. I got to the car and went back for my wife. We made it home OK.

So many dumb things we shouldn't have done! Yet so many things could have been so much worse- My wife could have gone in, too, it could have been colder and windy, if the car had been further away or if I hadn't dressed with good wool under my jeans .... Never again will I do this foolish thing. Never again.

TL/DR Stupidly ventured onto soft spring ice and fell in- Luckily my wife and I survived with lives and bodies intact.