Motorcyclist grateful for rescue from Wasilla Lake

WASILLA — The man who was rescued Monday after falling through the ice on Wasilla Lake said he hopes to get his motorcycle back, and that telling his story will prevent other people from making the same mistake he did.

“I should not have been down there in the narrows. That was just it. It was too early,” said Michael Fugere.

The “narrows” he refers to is an area of the lake where two peninsulas almost converge, making a small channel with a wide, open lake on either side. The area has flowing water most of the year and is a continuously troublesome spot with rescues there nearly every winter. Emergency responders urge people to always avoid the ice in that area.

Fugere lives very close to the lake and has been riding off-road motorcycles in the summer and the winter for decades.

“I’ve been riding that bike on there for years but it just hadn’t frozen that section,” he said. “Normally I can get clear to the opening and get to the other part of the lake and go through.”

He said that he’d been out for a while on Monday. He’d already been out for food once and was out again.

“The sun was shining and I was having fun,” Fugere said.

He said he knew he was in trouble before he went into the water.

“My last thought was, ‘I hope I make it before I hit the water,’” he said.

He did not make it. The bike sunk and he was left on the surface. Fugere said he thinks that his riding gear actually kept him afloat. Underneath his snowmachine suit he was wearing hockey pads with waterproof foam on the inside.

Water was pouring into the suit, though, he thinks through the neck opening. He said he managed to get himself to the edge.

“I had got up on the ice twice and it had broken off on me,” he said.

Three men out ice fishing came to his rescue. One crawled to him on his belly, the second grabbed the first man’s legs and the third dialed 911.

Fugere said he thinks he might have already made it onto the ice a third time just before they arrived. But whether they hauled him out or just helped him stand up he was very happy to see them.

One of the ice fishermen said he had happened to step out of the fishing shanty soon after Fugere went in.

Had that not happened, they might never have noticed him in there. Fugere said he would not have been able to shout for help.

“I couldn’t yell, I was too busy staying afloat,”

He said his plan had been to get to the shanty and ask for help, if he could make it that far.

Fugere said he plans to track those fishermen down to say thanks, and to do the same for the Mat-Su Borough rescuers who showed up and put him in an ambulance.

He said he was hypothermic by the time he got someplace warm.

“I got down to 91 degrees body temperature,” he said.

Other than track down the people that helped him, Fugere said his plans are to wait for thicker ice and go back to hoist out his motorcycle.

“I want to get it out,” he said. “I bought that bike in 1986 brand new.”

Also — he plans to augment his emergency gear.

“I’m going to have flares with me,” he said. If he runs into trouble — “I just launch a flare. Somebody’s going to see that pretty darn quick.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.