Ice warning rings hollow for some people

Another March day in Minnesota. Another person who had to be rescued from an ice floe.

It’s hard to imagine anyone thought the ice was safe on the St. Croix River; there’s plenty of open water there.

But Chris Dedrickson, 45, did, and lived to tell the Star Tribune about it.

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His ordeal behind him, Dedrickson stood on the riverbank shortly after 2 p.m., surveying the scene. He thought of his father, who drowned on the river in a boating accident 39 years ago, not far from where the ice glided through deep, crystal blue water. Unlike the rest of the St. Croix, he said, that stretch stayed open through the winter because of the faster current.

Dedrickson said he was grateful for Tuesday’s rescue but said he didn’t panic. He was embarrassed, though, by the commotion he caused.

“I would have rather got in my friend’s canoe and saved the taxpayers a lot of money,” he said.

The people who had to be rescued from The Cribs on Lake Superior in Duluth yesterday thought the ice was safe, too.

Two adults and two children had to be rescued when they started breaking through the ice, the Duluth News Tribune reports today.

The ice provided a walkway for people to explore the cribs —
Related: Enter the Sunrise Lake Minnetonka ice-out contest (KARE).