Ice fishing turns into snowshoe trek

The young men of Boy Scout Troop 188 went ice-fishing on Saturday, February, 9. Even though they all held to the Boy Scout motto "Be Prepared," they had no idea of the surprises in store for them.

The goal was to go ice fishing on Marion Lake. That's what they all expected to do when they met in the parking lot of the Sisters LDS Church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) at sunup, all of them chock-full of the energy of youth, equipped with warm clothing, water, food and snowshoes.

Scouts Spencer Smith, Rory Petterson, Spencer Risenmay, Brigham Ford, Bruce Green, Joshua Liddell and Alexander Densley piled themselves and their snow gear into vehicles driven by scout leaders Eric Liddell, Jesse Risenmay and Barrett Ford, and off they

went.

"We drove to Marion Forks and turned off Highway 20, but had to park four miles from the trailhead due to heavy snow on the access road," said Eric Liddell.

That was surprise number one - a long slog on snowshoes just to get to the trailhead.

Surprise number two arrived at the Marion Lake trailhead - they couldn't get to the lake. They had to go another two miles - uphill - to Anne Lake, instead.

Upon arrival at Anne Lake, 12-year-old Bruce Green took on the chore of using the ice-auger to get through the foot of snow and ice with a hole big enough to fish through. The actual fishing fell to Eric Liddell, who had the ice worms and fishing tackle.

It didn't take too long for a nice big rainbow to discover Eric's delicious worm hanging there, and true to custom - winter or summer - that big, hungry rainbow grabbed onto the worm, and tried to get away with it -with the usual results. After a short battle, Eric won.

As the tricked fish came up through Bruce's nice round hole, cheers went up, but that also brought the group to the reality they had a fish to cope with. After a short discussion, everyone decided that carrying the unfortunate fish miles across ice and snow wasn't rally a good idea, so without ceremony, Eric slid it back into the hole, dried off his freezing hands and everyone headed back to the parking lot and the warm ride back to civilization.

Upon arrival at his home, Bruce said, "The hike was long and difficult.

"Eric's fish was a nice big rainbow trout that we put back in the lake. After the hike it felt like my feet were ready to walk off. Getting out of the car to walk into my house made my legs ache."

The next day in church, Jesse Risenmay said, "Boy, what a hike that was, my legs were hurting like never before on the way back down the trail. I had to keep telling 'em, 'Come on legs, keep on walkin.'"

But he was grinning at the scouts when he said it, and they were grinning right back - raring to go on another Troop 188 adventure.