Not sub-zero but 4 degrees. I almost drown during a duck hunt a few weeks ago.
Driving wind blowing from the North. I launched my kayak to recover some ducks I'd shot. Water was calm in the lee of the North shore cliffs, but when I got out further the wind caught the kayak, lost sight of shore in the fog, water turned to whitecaps, and I was not able to fight my way back into the lee of the cliffs. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! I was forced to take a tack where the whitecaps wouldn't breech into the boat. More than an hour later I made it into the surface slush that had not yet turned to ice in the flooded tamarisks on the West end of the reservoir. From there I worked my way to solid ground which took about another 45 minutes.
The REALLY scary part came when I was safe on shore. My light kayak had built up so much ice that it was too heavy to pull up the slope of the shore. I knocked more than 150 lbs of ice off the boat and realized I had been riding way too low in the water for the choppy conditions that day. It wouldn't have taken very much more ice to do me in ... and all to try to recover a stupid duck.
Yikes!!!
Alamosa, that's a closer shave than I ever want to have! Cold water combined with cold air can become a lethal combination in short order. Sure glad to hear you came through all right! I would have been terrified.
My best friend and I fell through ice on a frozen creek when we were 15. Fortunately there was a second layer of ice under the first (this happens in western streams due to fall drought conditions followed by heavy snowfalls in early winter), so we only went in hip-deep. It was 50 below zero that day, if we'd gone all the way in I doubt we'd have survived. As it was, the 2-mile walk back to the cabin was all we could manage. Fortunately the other kids ath the cabin had a fire blazing in the stove and they were able to help us out of our frozen-solid clothes... our fingers were useless. My friend was delirious and I could hardly speak or even think. It was hours before I felt halfway warm again.
Cold water and cold air are a deadly combo.
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
