Glens Falls Chronicle Serving the Glens Falls/Lake George region; Warren, Washington and northern Saratoga counties since 1980
By Ben Westcott, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, Jan. 25, was a perfect and rare winter day on Lake George. The ice was clear and not yet snowed upon.
Beth Maher, 68, and her friends Scott Robertson and Rick Morse went to Million Dollar Beach to do some Nordic skating.
“It’s a period of time before heavy snows come, but yet it’s cold enough…Everything has to come together.
They started in Lake George Village, then skated north.
They made it as far as Diamond Point where near disaster struck.
Dr. Maher fell through the ice
She said she was in the frigid Lake George water for over 10 minutes before she was able to “self-rescue” and heave herself onto the slick surface.
“Black ice is a special thing when it happens. We just went too far,” said the “semi-retired” physician who still sees patients per diem at Hudson Headwaters Health Network. She lives in North River.
Why did the trio skate so far that day?
“I think it was the endorphins and all the good hormones that were going through our bodies, and the beautiful sunshine and the absolutely smooth ice,” Dr. Maher explained.
“There was a point where I think we had a warning that something was not quite right. There were a couple ridges that we crossed over. But I think we were just high from the beauty of it.
“We should have looked at the signs. We should have known to turn around.”
They had planned to skate all the way to Bolton Landing and finish just north of The Sagamore Resort, where the wife of one of the men would pick them up so they wouldn’t have to skate back south into the wind.
But instead the woman called to alert the skaters: “You’re not coming up this far, because it’s open” water.
At Diamond Point, Dr. Maher said they started looking for a way off the ice but “it was proving a little difficult.
“There were places where it was hard to see if it was ice or water. I went over towards the edge thinking that I saw a place where we could get off, and as I’m going over towards the edge I noticed the ice cracking.
Dr. Maher was wearing a helmet and had ice picks around her neck. She said she tried multiple times to pull herself up onto the ice with the picks, only to have the ice break again.
“One time I was really close — my whole chest was out of the water and on the ice — and the ice broke again. That’s when my face went right smack into the water, which was not too pleasant.
“I was quite frustrated that I didn’t have as much upper body strength…I had the picks but it was much harder than I expected.”
Dr. Maher said her friends suggested he try throwing her leg up unto the ice.
That ended up working. “It took a few tries, but once I threw my leg up, they encouraged me just to roll over to thicker ice. And that’s what I did. I rolled and rolled and rolled, and got not too close to where they were, but near enough to know that it was better ice.”
Mr. Robertson had called 911.
“When I was laying on the ice I could hear all the ambulance and the response, and I just said, everything’s going to be fine,” Dr. Maher said. “It’s going to be okay.”
“But then my clothes started freezing to the ice. So I moved gently up on all fours, and the ice started to crack again. So I just laid still and waited.”
Responders from the Bolton Volunteer Fire Department walked in the water, broke through the ice, and then climbed up onto it with a sled, Dr. Maher said.
She said one man used picks to pull himself along with the sled. He instructed Dr. Maher to roll into it.
She said she grabbed onto a rope while responders pulled the sled across the ice until she reached water, and then they pulled her through the water approximately 50 feet to the shore’s edge.
Dr. Maher said she was put into an ambulance and transported to Glens Falls Hospital to get checked out. “Everything was good,” she said. “I got to go home a couple hours later a very lucky woman.”
Dr. Maher has lived in North River for 13 years. Prior to that she lived in New Jersey and Buffalo.
She said she grew up skating, and had skated on Lake George a handful of times.
At no point during the incident did she think she would die, Dr. Maher said, “partly because I heard the ambulances and I was working on getting out.”
“When I was on the ice (after falling through) I said never again, but the conditions down at Million Dollar Beach were fantastic,” she said. “If we had just stayed down there we would have had a blast.”
Dr. Maher said she also enjoys cross country skiing and swimming, “but not in frozen water!” she adds with a laugh.
Asked if she’ll skate on Lake George again after the jarring experience, Dr. Maher said, “I probably will.”
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