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Car Through Lake Ice: A Russian Crowd Hauls an SUV Out of a Frozen Lake

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A light-coloured SUV sits in a channel of broken lake ice, water up to its windows, while a crowd of men in winter gear stands around it with long poles and timber beams. Russian YouTube user Yuri Danilov filmed the whole recovery and titled it “Дубинушка или русская смекалка”, which translates as “Dubinushka, or Russian ingenuity”.

Light-coloured SUV sunk to its windows in broken lake ice, with men and timber beams around it
Timber beams across the roof and a crowd on the ice: the recovery under way. Credit: Yuri Danilov, YouTube.

Dubinushka: the hauling song behind the title

Russian viewers will recognise the joke in the title. “Dubinushka” is a famous Russian work song, a diminutive of dubina, a cudgel or heavy stick, traditionally of green oak. Labourers sang it while doing heavy manual work, shouting its refrain together so that everyone pulled at the same moment.

It is best known as a song of the burlaks, the barge haulers who dragged boats up the Volga and other rivers of the Russian Empire until steamships replaced them in the 1800s, and whom Ilya Repin painted in Burlaks on the Volga. The great bass Feodor Chaliapin made the song famous, and Rimsky-Korsakov wrote an orchestral Dubinushka in 1905. Calling a car recovery “Dubinushka” promises muscle and teamwork, and the opening shot delivers a crowd and a pile of timber ready for the job.

Video: Дубинушка или русская смекалка (published by Yuri Danilov).

How thick ice must be for a car

Driving onto frozen lakes is a winter routine in many northern countries, above all for ice fishing. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources publishes some of the clearest guidelines for new, clear ice:

  • 4 inches (10 cm): people on foot and ice fishing
  • 5–7 inches (13–18 cm): snowmobile or small ATV
  • 9–10 inches (23–25 cm): small car or SUV
  • 11–12 inches (28–30 cm): medium SUV or small truck
  • 16–17 inches (41–43 cm): heavy-duty truck

White, snowy ice, formed when snow melts on the surface and refreezes, is only about half as strong, so the DNR says to double those figures. Ice is also weaker near inlets and over currents, and it can vary from a foot thick to an inch or two within a few steps.

If your car goes through the ice

The Minnesota DNR’s advice is blunt: the best time to escape is before the vehicle sinks. A car may float for anything from a few seconds to several minutes, depending on how airtight it is. Get out through the side windows, because water pressure can hold the doors shut, and keep a spring-loaded window-breaking tool within reach. In water 15 feet (about 4.5 m) or deeper, front-engine vehicles may sink at a steep angle and land on their roof.

Getting a sunken car out of a lake

Once everyone is safe, the car still has to come out, and quickly: fuel, oil and other fluids do not belong in a lake. In Minnesota, owners must notify the sheriff within 48 hours and remove a sunken vehicle within 30 days, or local government removes it and bills them two to five times the cost. Danilov’s crowd tackled the job the old way, with timber, poles and a lot of hands.

For a happier kind of ice driving, see tracks across a frozen lake in western Norway, and prepare for ordinary winter roads with 15 clever tricks for winter problems.

Sources

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80 comments

  1. Incredible!!! No health and safety unnecessarily complicating the recovery and at very little cost. Hats off to them

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    1. I read that Post and got it fine and informative.

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  2. I'd like to know why the rope they reeled up isn't gathered around the pivot they were turning?

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    1. and why it didn't look very taut!

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    2. Dumb ass conspiracy theorists always looking for some complicated answer. Google Occam's Razor you profound idiots and try to wrap your minds around it.

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    3. ropes is coiling just under the ice given the angle of the pivot had to be in relation to the pull needed,, if the pivot was completly upright i should imagine it would have pulled out,,

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    4. How can you get all doubtful about this and say the rope is not taught and that the rope isn't even reeled up at the pivot????? go to 0:38 then check 2:42 you dunces, the pivot has raised up, and you can see the nice coiling that is PERFECT - the rope is very taught, you are blind to now see that, especially for how tightly wrapped around the pivot it is. Did you expect it to be a wild messy loose coiling around the pivot? Come on, if you have the mind to do this, it's not going to be some slop job. The angle of the pivot is just-so in that it causes the rope to slide down constantly in towards the ice and in the process pull the pivot out as it coils around the pivot. Come on!!!!!!!! And if they are driving on ice it is OBVIOUSLY an ice/snow town that has it's feet well grounded in the utilization of technology with ice/snow. User your fcking heads!

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    5. Taught? User your.. heads? You are unintelligible>

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    6. I agree with Mike and there is no need to abuse people because they may not understand engineering.

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    7. My goodness, my words were unintelligible due to 2 auto-fills? Are you kidding me? You are that narrow minded to not understand because I made two obvious mistakes? You cannot see that "taught" obviously meant "taut", and "User" meant "Use". Just like all the other internet newfags that make an argument based off of spelling mistakes, as if it denotes the validity of it entirely and gives you some upper hand - when it's not about that at all. Great point there sir Mike, you disagree with my words or don't like that I have an opinion towards those that were calling this out as fake - so you call me out on two very blatantly obvious grammatical mistakes? Seriously? So I defended that this video is real, and you can only say my words go unreadable, because of TWO auto-fills, and you are too narrow minded to see the most obvious intended words using your programmed english syntax? If you're going to make an ass of me, at least have a genuine reason jackass.

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    8. I have to agree with H4, he's made an excellent point and you used grammar mistakes to make him seem like a moron. Mike, it's internet pedants like you that contribute absolutely nothing but go around acting like some esteemed intellectual because you are able to police everyone's words and use that to disprove them solely on the grounds of grammatical mistakes, dismissing any great points laden in their opinion. If you want to believe this video is fake, then go right ahead, but at least have the grounds to back it up with, and not just expect that pointing out grammatical errors makes you right, him wrong, or you any smarter.

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    9. sure h4rk4t was brash, but his point is good. Mike, get a life.

      and he wasn't being abusive, just brash, overly assertive. I can see why though - how can you call this fake? Even one not familiar with physics/engineering/mechanics can see this is not fake, unless your observational and picture memory are just utterly not there.

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    10. MIKE GET A LIFE.

      H4RK4T, BE MORE PASSIVE WHEN MAKING THESE POINTS! dumb ppl are less willing to understand if you attack them. DO NOT ARGUE WITH A DUMB PERSON LIKE MIKE, THEY WILL JUST PULL YOU DOWN TO THEIR LVL!

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    11. h4rk4t do not listen to him! He is trying to troll you do not take the bait!

      I love how clear you made that! People are just thin skinned these days and can't take any criticism, even soft criticism (yours wasn't so soft, but still, this is the internet, how can you get so butt-hurt haha!)

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    12. I agree with Mike...................that h4rk4t made mistakes. But Mike, you're sillier than a chicken in a chicken suit to be unable to understand him because of those two mistakes. English must not be your native language :(

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    13. "I agree with Mike and there is no need to abuse people because they may not understand engineering."

      GROW SOME THICKER SKIN YOU PUSSY!

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    14. hhahaahhaha "no need to abuse people because they may not understand".

      Just like there is no need to abuse certain people that don't understand why killing is bad.

      Are you kidding me? He was being abusive? Go crawl under Obama's dick and keep sucking you little politically correct child. This isn't A Brave New World, this is a world where we speak our mind. Offending people is a necessary and healthy act... EVERY TIME YOU SAY SOMETHING THAT'S OFFENSIVE TO ANOTHER PERSON, YOU JUST CAUSED A DISCUSSION. YOU JUST FORCED THEM TO HAVE TO THINK.

      KEYWORDS: FORCED THEM TO HAVE TO THINK.

      If you can't grow some thicker skin to bare the offense, keep living your life with complete bliss and mindless contentment. No need to use your brain or opinions, or show passion in your words, just keep on chuggin' like the tool you are.

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    15. A few ladies from the tractor factory could have "wenched" the car up faster.

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  3. engineering at it best..gj guys

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  4. It is gathering, just on a single neat layer, so it's hard to see. The pivot seems to be actually rising slowly and each new round of the wire right next to the previous one.

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  5. U.S, still riding in Former Soviet Union engineered rockets to the International Space Station!

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  6. Russians are very good at "poor man solutions" than the Americans!! You know that!

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  7. Looks like the Obama space program. The guys will need to run in circles to get the car in orbit.

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  8. Не бит, не крашен, ездил дедушка на дачу

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  9. Good old Russian know how? Is that what put it in the lake in the first place!? Crazy Russian Drivers :-D

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    1. um, that might have something to do with the can(s) of beer (see 3:15).
      Qdos to the guys, they knew what they were doing and did it well.

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    2. if you had noticed it is an english car, crazy english driver lol

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  10. Great music - Anybody know who it's by?

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  11. They probably did this already 100 times

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  12. Global warming is a bitch ain't it...

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  13. What I'd like to know is how they got the rope tied on to the vehicle. It had to be secured to something solid, and that was all submerged under water.

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    1. Last time I fished a truck out of the mud I duct taped the hook to a piece of pipe and fished until I hooked an axle, then pulled the tape loose. Surely they did something compairable.

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  14. I would say they did pretty dam good.....lol

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  15. aliens did it.. lol

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  16. Does nobody think how much rope it should be on this poll when they are finished? Where did the rope go???? Should have been much thicker poll than in the beginnig.

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  17. Even the rope is less in the end than in the beginning and the poll is higher. Taken the angel it's impossible togo up. The poll is just a "middel man" the pulling is done by a mechanical winch longer out..

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  18. One thing for sure,, no Engineers in on this job.... plain and simple roughneck technology..

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  19. How did it come there in the first place?

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  20. Smart folks but nothing but salvage i'm afraid.

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    1. Yes, I'm wondering the same thing. Why! Must have had something valuable in the car?

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    2. Perhaps to keep the junk out of the lake and keep anything that hadn't leaked out already from doing so.

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  21. Nice job but the car aint worth a crap now.

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  22. Note the beer can next to the driver's seat. Hmmm

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  23. A little wax and Armor All and she'll be just fine.

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  24. Agree with your point - very smartly done! Like how three people were used to pull the vehicle out.

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  25. Good work by the people! Wonder what was the car doing there?

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  26. Would the car still be drivable? Doesn't the water wreck the whole electrics?

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  27. bravo les russes, on a pas d'argent? mais de belles idées, vive le systeme D

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  28. Engine will be fine, if things were not left running. Electrics maybe.Needs some serious TLC though.

    Doesn't look like an English car to me. Which make exactly? RHD yes. But then that includes Japan, Australia, India, South Africa, New Zealand, Malaysia and Australia I know of. Not Russia though. I As a point of fact there is too much ignorant opinion from people with no understanding through education and experience of what they write here. Pointless waste of time to scan though uninformed opinion.

    Study the subjects involved and validate your data before you express an opinion. Everything is possible when you understand nothing.

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  29. In a world of Health & Safety , they would be unlikely to be able to use this method of getting it out . But then in this world of Health & Safety it is unlikely to have gone in to start with ! Love the ice bearing capstan .

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  30. how did the van go from 1/2 way up the posts to completely. It is tied off to the cross bar yet mysteriously climbs the wooden supports.... and where is the part where someone gets into the water to attach the cable from the crossbar to the vehicles undercarriage.....staged.....

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  31. Amazing one. This seems like when someone try their hard no matter what circumstances they are facing they will achieve success. :) Thanks sharing.

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  32. thank you forever admin, good website.

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  35. Hi ,
    I appreciate your efforts. Keep sharing such informative articles.

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  36. Incredible post you are shared very smartly done! Like how three people were used to pull the vehicle out with Frozen Lake

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  37. Great Blog. I really found the so many interesting stuff here .Thank u

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  38. All things considered, thank you for making such helpful article.

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  39. I think every one of my friend who’s just commenting is right. Its quite complex to really handle it. Thanks for sharing maire team. 🙂

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  42. The visual elements in your blog posts are always a nice touch. They really help to illustrate the points you're making

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  47. Incredible resourcefulness! Watching those Russians pull the car from the frozen lake showcases their determination and creativity. It’s a thrilling reminder of the unexpected challenges winter brings. Great video.






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  48. You’ve hit the nail on the head with this one. A must-read for anyone interested in topic.

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