Tragedy on the Lake

The Green Mountain Club (GMC) founded, built, and maintains Vermont's Long Trail, which was the first long-distance hiking trail in the United States. The Long Trail runs  270+ miles from the Massachusetts state line to the Canadian border. The author of the following story has been a GMC member for decades and has donated thousands of volunteer hours as a caretaker for some of Vermont’s highest peaks and most picturesque trail shelters. 

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Burlington Section Skating Trip of 1937

By Daan Zwick

In the first half of the twentieth century Lake Champlain always froze over solidly during the winter months.  (Roy Buchanan averred that the lake had frozen over every year within anyone’s memory, except in 1888.  That year  the frantic swimming of a whale that had been trapped in the lake kept the lake from freezing.)  Skating, ice boating, and ice fishing were popular recreations, and ice harvesting was a profitable industry. Hundreds of seasonal fishing shanties appeared on Burlington Bay, Mallets Bay and Shelburne Harbor.

In the winter of 1937 Larry Dean led six Burlington Section members on an outing  intending to skate across the lake at its widest point to New York State and back, a total of 26 miles.  The surface was vast sheets of smooth, snow-free ice separated by an occasional expansion crack.  I came across a disk of ice about like a hockey puck and decided to see if I could kick it ice with just my skates all the way to New York.  In so doing I got separated from the rest of our small group.  After a couple of miles of that effort my ice puck had disintegrated, so I gave up and went to rejoin the group, which I had seen in the distance near Juniper Island.

 Lake Champlain at Burlington. The blue mark is just north of Juniper Island. The yellow one is at the South Burlington shore. The blue line is a mile long (for scale)

On my way to that island I met a boy struggling to skate under the load of a limp girl.  I asked if I could help him.  He said that some kids playing on the ice near the island had fallen into the frigid water, and the girl was one of them.  He was trying to get her to shore, but he was tired.  I could see that the girl, probably nine or ten years old, was wet and shivering, so I took off my jacket and put it on her.

I slung the girl across my shoulders and headed for the South Burlington shore as quickly as I could skate with that load.  I could feel her shivering as I carried her so I changed my plan and stopped at the first fishing shanty out on the ice that had a stovepipe. Finding it inhabited and very warm inside, I left my passenger there with the fisherman to get warm while I skated to the South Burlington shore for more help

There I found that an ambulance had come, so I directed the crew to where the girl was. There was also a doctor waiting on the shore – he was the medical examiner who had been called to go out to Juniper Island to declare a drowned child legally dead, but he was not up to the two-mile trip across the ice to Juniper Island. 

I scrounged around and found a small sledge with ice runners and a handle in back – just the thing to transport the doctor.  As I started out from the shore, a reporter from the Burlington Daily News tried to jump on the sled, but I pulled him off – the doctor was as much load as I could handle.  Reaching the island I waited until the doc had performed his duties and then transported him back to shore.  By that time my ankles were so tired I could skate no more.

(I learned later that a family of four children from the shore nearby had gone with their sleds to play on Juniper Island.  While the open lake ice was very thick, and safe for travel, the south side of that rocky island had absorbed enough of the sun’s heat to weaken the ice there so that the children had broken through.  One boy in that group had managed to pull all his siblings to shore on the island, and holler for help.  Larry Dean, who had led his group past the north side of the island just a few minutes before, heard the call and responded. For a long while Larry performed the prone pressure rib compression resuscitation (state of the art first aid at that time) on the one child who was not breathing.  In spite of his effort, Larry was not successful in restoring life to the boy – thus the call for the doctor.

I do not know if there ever was another Burlington Section attempt to skate across the lake.

Daan 3/31/11