Local Video
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| Northfielder helps save man in daring rescue |
By: SUZANNE ROOK, Managing Editor
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Posted: Saturday, February 28, 2009 12:27 am
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NORTHFIELD — It’s the kind of headline you expect to see on TV or the cover of grocery aisle magazines: “Minnesota fishermen rescue man from subzero waters.”
It’s certainly not the kind of story Mark Rinas and Jason Trout planned to come home from Montana with.
Fishing and decoy carving brought Rinas, from Northfield, and Trout, of Pine River near Brainerd, together. In the last five years, Rinas said, the men — and their wives — have become more than fishing buddies. Rinas calls Trout “the little brother I never had.”
It’s that friendship, that trust, Rinas said, that allowed him follow Trout’s lead, crawling face down on an icy Montana lake and plucking a man they know only as “Kelly from Wyoming” from the frigid water.
A little more than two weeks after the rescue, Rinas is still coming to terms with what he happened on Fort Peck Reservoir. “I just happened to be there,” said a reflective Rinas, 44.
Cry for help
It was the first of four days of ice fishing for Rinas, Trout and four others. In 20-degree weather, the two left their friends in search of good fishing. With an auger and a depth finder, they read the lake’s shore, looking for a shallow where for fish would cluster, and drilled through the 30-inch ice.
But as experienced ice fishermen know, any lake can have thin spots.
Anywhere from 14 to 18 miles from the Hell Creek Marina, the two pulled their auger from the ice and heard a noise they both thought was a cow. That far out, Trout said, you don’t see many people, so it took a minute before they realized the sound was a cry for help. About a quarter mile away, a man was in the water, hanging on for dear life to the tires of his upside down ATV.
The men said they grabbed their gear, hopped on their ATVs and headed for the man they later found out was named Kelly.
Trout, a volunteer firefighter who has had ice rescue training, took the lead. He got down on his belly to distribute the weight of his 6’4”, 220-pound frame, crawled as close the open water as he dared and reached out for Kelly, but the man was too far out.
Trout encouraged Kelly, now shivering and slurring his words, to swim toward them. Fearing his friend would also fall into the lake, Rinas grabbed Trout’s ankles, prepared to pull him back to safety if necessary. It was then Kelly’s head slipped under the water.
Back to safety
Somehow — neither Rinas nor Trout can explain how — Trout was able to reach into the water and snatch the floundering man, pulling him up to where he could rest his elbows on the ice. From there, Trout and Rinas tied a rope around Kelly’s waist and pulled him to safety.
Just then, a friend of Kelly’s pulled up in a Polaris Ranger, an ATV with an enclosed cab. Trout instructed the friend to strip Kelly down and get him some warm dry clothing to stave off hypothermia.
Seconds later, the two were gone.
Later that night, Rinas ran into the friend who said that Kelly dried off, rested a bit and headed for home, swearing never to step foot on the ice again.
Never really safe
It took both men days before they fully absorbed what happened.
“If we hadn’t been there, this guy could have died,” said Rinas, noting that the experience cast a pall over the trip.
“Ice is never really safe,” he said. “It made us a lot more aware of what can happen.”
Added Trout: “Hopefully, if it ever happened to us, someone would do the same thing.”
— Suzanne Rook can be reached at srook@northfieldnews.com or 645-1113. |
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A minor point in this article, but the first sentence in it states “Minnesota fishermen rescue man from subzero waters.” Water cannot be sub zero; it turns into ice at 32 degrees above zero Fahrenheit. At that point, it is no longer water.