By Tim Binnall
An Alaskan woman who fell through the ice atop a lake managed to escape the perilous predicament thanks to a frozen dead hare that she had picked earlier in the day. The bizarre incident reportedly occurred back in November and came to light this week when Kelsey Haas decided to share the remarkable tale as a warning to others about the dangers of straying onto thin ice. While en route to exploring a popular site known as Grewingk Glacier, she and her friends were skating across a frozen lake and stumbled upon the remains of a hare that had recently perished. “It wasn't warm, it wasn't super stiff," she recalled, "it was interesting." Planning to later skin the animal for its fur, Haas held on to the creature, which turned out to be a rather fortuitous decision.
As they were heading home at the end of the day, the group spotted an ice formation that she described as a "perfectly picturesque arch, right in the middle of an iceberg." Throwing caution to the wind, Haas skated towards the breathtaking sight and, in the process, wound up falling through a hole in the ice. Drawing on her experience as a hiking guide, she quickly began taking the necessary steps to pull herself out of the frigid water and, as she approached the edge of the ice, Haas realized that she was still holding the frozen hare. "I don’t know how I didn't let that go," she marveled when looking back on the experience.
The animal's remains wound up serving something of a miraculous purpose in the moment as, in a MacGyver-like maneuver, Haas was able to whip the wet carcass onto the ice and it almost instantly froze to the surface of the lake. She then used the hare like a grappling hook to extricate herself from the water, where she quickly changed into dry clothes and worked to raise her body temperature. "On the hike back, my feet were definitely pretty numb the whole way," she recalled. That particular aspect of her misadventure may have served as the inspiration for her plans for the hare, which she kept, as she intends to "make slippers out of it."