I grew up in the Midwest in a spot where, while snowmobiles were king of winter sports, they were routinely used as ways to get to your favorite ice-fishing spot, less the mountain shredding I know and love here in Utah.
But inevitably, each year someone would take their snowmobile out onto a lake or river too early or too late into the season and, you guessed it, fall straight through the ice. Honestly, it almost felt like a right of passage, as you'd just continually read about someone punching through too thin of ice and leaving their sled at the bottom of the lake, installing itself as a new artificial reef.
Yet, through all those news stories, as well as friends and family talking about those icy falls, I never knew how search and rescue actually recovered the snowmobiles. Honestly, I thought some were just left at on the lake bottom, while others had to wait until the ice fully receded.
I, however, was wrong on both counts, as the good folks over in Maine have illuminated the darkness on the retrieval process, which is decidedly lower-tech, and less complicated than I would've thought.
