Today was a nice sunny winter day and I did not want to waste it in the office, so I headed out to do some remote work by snowmobile. The conditions were perfect for traveling (did about 100km) and I was accessing lots of sites easily, but on the big lakes there were many patches of glare, slippery ice between the rough snow sections.

In the late afternoon I was doing a wide sweeping turn out of a bay when I drove off a hardpacked snow section and the carbide ski-runners bit into a smooth sheet of ice. Because I was in a right turn at about 60km/hr the rear-end of the snowmobile instantly spun around to the left and launched me off the machine.

From what I remember and judging by what hurts now; I hit the ice with my the left side of my head first, then my elbows, then my left hip and knee. I thought the snowmobile was going to land on top of me, but by luck it spun away to the right and even stayed up-right. I laid on the ice for a while trying to get my head straight, I tried to get up a couple times but my body was just not able to function yet.

I was about 3 km down the lake from a group of occupied ice huts and I had intermittent radio communication back to my work centre, so I was not completely cut-off.

I had a large survival/first-aid kit on the snowmobile, plus a small PSK in my pocket and a mini-kit on my belt, they were all of little use at this time because for about 5 minutes I could not even sit-up.

I flexed and moved parts of my body to check if anything was badly broken, lots of parts hurt but all seemed to work. After about 5 minutes I managed to sit-up and then slowly stand-up. My snowmobile was still running and after a quick contact with work on the radio, I called it a day and carefully made it back to my truck; where I loaded the sled and then drove home. Had a major headache and sore lower back!

The only physical damage was a cracked LCD screen on the 2-way radio that was on my hip, that is also the part of my body that now hurts the most.

The best move I did all day was wearing a quality full-face helmet, if I had not been wearing a helmet I would be dead.

I probably should not have tried to turn so sharply on glare ice and traveling with a partner would also have been a good idea.

I think it is my mistakes that I learn from the most?

Mike