Vehicles are set to make a return to the ice on Upper Red Lake in Beltrami County starting Wednesday as authorities including the Beltrami County Sheriff's Office, Kelliher Fire and Rescue, Red Lake Nation and the Department of Natural Resources Conservation Officers along with resort owners has continued to monitor ice conditions the past several weeks.
Vehicle restrictions were put in-place at the end of December after several incidents of people becoming trapped on ice that had broken away due to unseasonably warm temperatures and high winds. In one incident, more than 100 people had to be rescued from the ice.
"Typically in a winter season, we deal with this all the time on Upper Red Lake," said Beltrami County Sheriff Jason Riggs. "This year has been unseasonably warm and it's extended our ice rescue well into late December. Normally we deal with this from about Thanksgiving until about the first week of December. During the year we might have seven or eight ice rescues. We had that in a month, so it was very busy."
Aerial observations from a sheriff's office drone and DNR plane show that the lake has iced over with some areas reporting up to 13 inches of ice.
The DNR recommends at least four inches of ice for foot/walking traffic and five to seven inches for snowmobiles and small ATVs.
"The ice conditions have improved and the lake has solidified as a main body of water, which means the ice won't move around as much," Riggs said. "There are still inconsistencies in the ice and we preach that ice is never 100% safe. Some spots may be reporting 13 inches of ice, but we know there is ice out there as little as three to four inches because of the healing of the cracks that opened up and new ice that's formed to the west."
Riggs added that many people were frustrated by the vehicle restrictions, but needed to be done due to the growing number of ice rescues and people becoming stranded.
"The frustrating part is common sense side of it. People are so used to being able to do something a certain way because that's the way they've always done it. The frustrating part is no one was taking into consideration that the unseasonably warm temperatures were effecting the ice conditions and they just wanted to play at their leisure with what was going on. It was having a detrimental effect on the amount of response that our first responders and fire departments were able to assist with."
