This story, “Day of Terror,” appeared in the May 1973 issue of Outdoor Life.
When dawn came on February 26, 1971, the sky was clear over Michigan’s Keweenaw Bay. The thermometer read 26°, and no wind stirred. Nicer winter days don’t come to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Ralph Gianelli died that day after the weather suddenly turned fiendish. He drowned in storm-tossed waters of Lake Superior, probably close to where four of us had been ice-fishing only hours before. Carson Hodges and I barely missed the same fate. If luck had been worse, seven men could have been killed in the worst blizzard I’ve ever experienced.
My three partners and I were all experienced ice fishermen. We’d gone after lake trout on Lake Superior’s ice many times without serious trouble. As far as I could learn, Ralph was the first ice-fisherman to lose his life on Keweenaw Bay.
Ralph was a 55-year-old driver of heavy construction equipment. Joe Watson at 48 was the youngest member of our group. He’s a retail merchant. I work for the post office. Carson Hodges is a carpenter. He and I are in our mid 50’s. When we left our homes in Hancock that morning we were sure we’d finish the day with a fine catch of lake trout.
The trout waters of Keweenaw Bay are about two miles from shore in depths of 90 to 180 feet. The large triangular bay is about 175 miles northeast of Duluth. The Keweenaw Peninsula protects the bay on the northwest. A smaller peninsula juts out on the east side of the bay. This fairly protected water freezes over with hard, blue ice in winter.
The main waters of Lake Superior, however, seldom freeze, because they’re deep and storm-tossed. Ice on Keweenaw Bay usually ends in open water somewhere out on the vast expanse of Superior. This fact is foremost in the minds of the bay’s ice-fishermen. It rarely happens, but an outside section of the bay’s ice can crack off and float out. A fisherman caught on a drifting floe would be in serious trouble.
The area’s anglers stay off the ice in bad weather. Most use snowmobiles to get to the fishing. If bad weather develops, a snow machine can make it to shore in minutes. Some experienced anglers tow boats on sleighs behind their machines so that they’ll be ready for any emergency.
Still, nature can be violent, especially in the North Country winter. Blizzards and high winds can come as suddenly as an explosion. We left Hancock before dawn in two pickup trucks, each loaded with a snowmobile, sleighs, and ice-fishing gear. After 25 miles we pulled in at Makinen’s Landing, three miles north of Portage Entry. As the sun was topping the horizon we hooked the sleighs to the snowmobiles and headed southeast toward the trout grounds off Section Eight Point.
Joe and I shared the seat on one machine; Ralph and Carson rode the other. It didn’t take long to travel two miles to our fishing area. Minutes later we had our tents up and were fishing. The tents offer some protection against the bitter cold. They’re canvas and tepee-shaped, with struts hinged at the top to permit folding into compact rolls. A zipper opening serves as a door.
Joe and I soon decided to try a new spot. We snowmobiled a half-mile south and drilled holes 75 yards apart. About 10 a.m. I really got into the trout. I had three on the ice and had lost several others when I felt a sudden shudder across the ice. I jumped outside the tent and couldn’t believe how much the weather had changed. The sky was a mass of ugly clouds. But what surprised me most was the sudden increase in wind.
The wind was blowing southwest toward the open water of Lake Superior. Such a wind is dangerous because it can crack the ice and push the floes into the open water. I knew we should get off the bay in a hurry, so I took off to warn Joe. What I saw stopped me in my tracks. A ribbon of black water ran in a jagged line between me and the shore as far as I could see.
I was adrift on a huge ice floe. But I figured it would take a long time for the floe to begin moving. The crack didn’t look more than six inches wide. Joe was on the other side of the crack, so I ran toward him, yelling.
When I got close to the crack, I saw I’d badly misjudged its width. The black water was about six feet wide and looked wider. My blood ran cold as I saw I had no chance of jumping to safety.
I couldn’t believe that a huge floe could drift so fast. I guessed the mass of loose ice was about 14 miles wide and four miles across (our fishing area was four miles from open water, and the crack probably ran clear across the 14-mile-wide bay).
Joe was 20 yards from me. We discussed the situation in shouts for a moment. Then he began walking toward shore to organize a rescue. That’s when a heavy snowfall loomed like an onrushing wall of white. I saw Joe vanish in the blizzard.
My partner’s snowmobile was only a few yards away. I rushed to the machine, started the engine, drove to my fishing site, and grabbed my gear. Then I roared off to warn Ralph and Carson. They were on my side of the crack, still in their tents and unaware of what was happening. Now the crack was 20 feet wide. As I got close to my partners I jumped off the machine.
“It’s cracked off,” I hollered. “We’re adrift! Let’s get out of here!”
Ralph and Carson moved so fast that they hardly bothered looking at the widening channel of water. We loaded our gear and began snowmobiling north, staying about 50 feet from the edge of the ice. The only logical thing was to get as close as we could to Makinen’s Landing. Any rescue attempt would start there.
My two partners stayed 50 yards ahead of me because we wanted to spread the weight of the machines. We’d traveled about a mile when the eight-inch-thick ice cracked again. This split ran perpendicular to the first crack, and it shot between our two snowmobiles. Again I was amazed by how fast the gap widened. By the time I reached the crack it was four feet wide.
I had the throttle of Joe’s machine wide open. I wanted to jump the open water to the floe my partners were on. The machine made the hurdle, but when it landed its hood flew off. Then the engine stopped, and I couldn’t start it again.
Ralph and Carson saw my predicament, turned, and roared back. We abandoned Joe’s machine and traveled half a mile from the new crack. Then we stopped. There was no sense in going farther.
We were about 1½ miles east of Makinen’s Landing. We figured our only chance was to stay put and hope for rescue by boat. The blizzard was reaching full force. We couldn’t see 100 feet in the hard snow, and the wind was strengthening all the time. We knew that if we drifted far enough our floe would be smashed to bits by rough water. It seemed only a matter of time before we would meet death.
“Well, boys,” Ralph said, “we’re going for our last ride, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Though Ralph, Carson, and I didn’t know it, Joe had no chance of getting to the landing in time. He told me later what happened. Joe was worried about more ice cracking loose, so he headed for the closest shoreline, at Section Eight Point. In the blizzard he had to guess at directions. Several times he had to veer off course when he spotted open water ahead. Soon the snow was so deep that walking became difficult. Then water began flooding the ice and changing the snow to slush. Walking in that stuff was even tougher.
Joe finally made it to shore at 12:30, but he was still over a mile from Makinen’s Landing. He could have walked inland a half-mile to a road, but he stayed on the shoreline. He was hoping for a break in the blizzard so that he could see us. He could then direct rescuers to the proper area.
He had to make his way up and down cliffs, around huge rocks, and through snowdrifts. The shoreline there has practically no beach; it’s mostly a mountainlike jumble. So Joe didn’t reach the landing till midafternoon. He was completely exhausted.
“I just about killed myself on that trip,” he said later. “I kept bulling ahead because time seemed all-important. I didn’t dare stop to rest. I thought my heart was going to explode several times.”
Meanwhile another rescue effort was in the making.
Bruce Haataja and his brother Bob were also fishing that morning. They had set up about a mile north of us. If they had stayed on the ice, they would have been trapped too, but they quit fishing early. As soon as the weather changed they packed up and snowmobiled to Makinen’s Landing. They were on shore when the crack ripped across the bay.
They could have headed for home, but they didn’t. They knew we were still out on the ice, and they were worried. Harold Makinen was concerned too. The three men decided to wait for us to come in.
They couldn’t see us in the driving snow, but they eventually heard our snowmobile far out in the storm. When the engine suddenly stopped — and didn’t start again — the trio figured something was wrong.
That was when we stopped our snowmobile because we saw no sense in traveling farther. We were just about resigned to not being rescued. If we had known that the Haatajas were tying a 12-foot aluminum pram to their snowmobile and preparing to look for us, we would have had high hopes. The two brothers are veteran ice-fishermen from the Calumet, Michigan, area. Bob, 28, works with his father in a refrigeration business. Bruce is three years older and is a forestry technician.
With lots of luck, Bob and Bruce found us. They knew where we had been in relation to their own fishing area, so they followed the half-drifted over snowmobile track they’d made while traveling off the ice. They rode east to open water. The odds that they would end up almost directly across from us were slim, but that’s how it worked out.
Luck was with us in another way too. When the floe had first broken loose, the gap of open water probably had widened so fast because of a sudden change in water pressure near the crack. When that pressure eased off, the huge floe — it must have weighed thousands of tons — had become relatively immobile until the ever-stronger wind began pushing it. When Bob and Bruce found us, the gap was about 30 feet across. But it was again widening with ever-increasing speed.
Ralph, Carson, and I heard the Haatajas’ snowmobile coming long before we saw it. Then we saw the dim yellow glow of the machine’s headlight blinking in the blizzard. Bob and Bruce spotted us at about the same time.
Bob cut his boat loose, shoved it into the water, and rowed across the gap that now had widened to about 50 feet. The pram was small, so we decided that the safest procedure was to rescue one man at a time. I got in first. By the time we neared safe ice the wind was reaching gale force. A 12-foot pike pole was in the boat. As we came in stern first I shoved the pole out toward Bruce. He grabbed it and pulled the pram to the edge of the ice. I jumped from the stern as Bob got ready to row back across the gap.
Then Harold Makinen arrived, towing another boat with his snowmobile. When Bob saw the 10-foot aluminum pram, he waited till we shoved the smaller craft into the water. Then he tied it to his boat and rowed out.
The wind was blowing at least 40 miles an hour, and the floe was moving rapidly. By the time Bob reached it, the open water was 300 feet wide and building whitecaps.
“There’s nothing more I can do out here,” Harold said. “Things don’t look good. I’m heading in to notify the Coast Guard.”
Bruce and I could just make out the activity on the floe. Through the veil of snow we saw two men in one boat and one in the other, but we couldn’t identify the figures. The men and boats disappeared in the blizzard. Moments later we saw the smaller pram with one man aboard coming on strong.
We started Bruce’s snowmobile and beamed the headlight at the approaching boat. Several times we saw the man glance over his shoulder at the light. Then the falling snow thickened so much that we couldn’t see 20 feet. For several minutes we yelled and raced the snowmobile engine, hoping to be heard by the man in the pram.
Then the snow cleared for a few seconds, and Bruce and I looked out on a grim scene. We saw no sign of boats, men, or the ice floe. We saw nothing but endless water that the gale was churning to a froth.
We felt sure that the icy waters had claimed the three men, but we decided to stay and hope for a miracle. The vicious wind seemed ready to tear our clothes off. About 10 minutes later Harold snowmobiled up.
“This storm is getting worse,” he said. “We aren’t doing anybody any good out here. This ice may crack loose any minute. Let’s head for land before three more of us go into the water.”
Soon after we reached shore a Coast Guard crew arrived from their North Canal Station 35 miles away. They had a 16-foot boat with an outboard motor. Ten men in wetsuits began patrolling the ice while others launched the boat in the open water. It didn’t seem they could do much, because four to five-foot waves were rolling over the ice.
Harold was just about crazy with fear for the lost men — especially for Ralph, one of his best friends. Three times during the afternoon he snowmobiled out, hoping to help. The last time, the ice had six inches of water on it, and his machine broke down just after he reached shore.
About 4 p.m. Bob Haataja and Carson walked into Harold’s camp. I couldn’t believe my eyes. They learned that Ralph was still missing. Then they told us how they escaped death by the narrowest margin.
“When I got back to the floe I shoved the small pram toward Ralph,” said Bob. “Carson jumped into my boat, and we all took off. We’d made only a few yards when one of my oarlocks broke. I ran a piece of nylon rope through the oarlock hole and tied it to the oar. The arrangement worked, but by the time we were under way again Ralph had pulled ahead of us. I thought sure he’d make it. He must have swamped out there.”
“We almost swamped too,” added Carson. “The waves were so high that we knew we’d go under if we kept heading directly into them. Our only chance was to quarter across the whitecaps. We realized then that we’d have to row all the way to land.
“It took us over an hour to reach slightly calmer water, and another hour before we sighted shore. We figured our ordeal was about over when we were thirty yards from the beach. Then one of Bob’s oars broke, and we lost the paddle end. It looked as if our luck had run out, because we were both really beat.”
“I grabbed the pike pole,” Bob told us. “I jabbed it straight down, and it just barely reached bottom. We had to work furiously because the wind was already blowing us back to sea. When you’re looking death in the face you call up physical reserves in a hurry. I pushed with the pole, and Carson paddled with the good oar till we made it to shore.
“We were a mile and a half from here. The snow’s hip-deep in the rocks and cliffs along that shore, except for deer runways that are packed down. We stayed on runways most of the way back. Thank God for deer.”
The storm didn’t let up, so the Coast Guard suspended the search for Ralph at dusk. Joe, Carson, and I left for home to spend the night, but the road was so full of snow that we made only a few miles to a tavern and restaurant. We were told that all roads out were blocked, so we put up in a cabin. The next morning we followed a county plow back to the landing.
The snow stopped during the night, but the wind was still raging. The gale had broken up the ice we’d been on the day before, and that part of the bay was open water. There was practically no chance that Ralph was alive. Even so, a Coast Guard helicopter and other aircraft searched far out over Lake Superior. The hope was that Ralph might be on a floe that hadn’t broken up. But the pilots found no trace of any ice. The search was abandoned.
Related: Frozen Terror, One of the Greatest Survival Stories of All Time
Ralph’s body was found on June 8, 1972, off Point Abbaye on the east side of the bay. No trace of the 10-foot pram used by Ralph has ever been found. Nor has there ever been any report of the tents, sleighs, ice-fishing gear, and other items we used that would float. The two snowmobiles are somewhere on the bottom of Keweenaw Bay.
Bob Haataja was the man most responsible for saving Carson and me. The Michigan State Police presented him with a citation for heroism. The award was given at a dinner of the Lions Club in Calumet, Mich.
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