Catch the Ice Dude: Pool Jump onto Ice and How Thick Ice Must Be

A backyard swimming pool, a winter’s worth of cold and one optimistic jumper: that is the whole recipe for Catch the Ice Dude. The pool is frozen over, he leaps anyway, and the ice turns out to be far tougher than he hoped. It is a few seconds of slapstick that went round the internet in 2014.

The Catch the Ice Dude clip

The video was published on YouTube under the name TheDude, and the footage is credited to MrRobcalifornia. The set-up could not be simpler. A familiar outdoor pool sits under a lid of ice, the jumper runs in from the side, and everyone watching knows what he expects: a crack, a splash and a cold swim. What he gets is a hard surface that refuses to give way.

The joke works because the pool still looks like a place you can jump into. The water is right there, just in a different state.

Why a frozen pool can stop a jumper

Clear, solid ice is much stronger than it looks. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources recommends these minimum thicknesses of new, clear ice:

• Walking: 4 inches (about 10 cm)
• Snowmobile or small ATV: 5 to 7 inches
• Larger side-by-side ATV: 7 to 8 inches
• Small car or SUV: 9 to 10 inches

A few inches of solid ice is a hard floor, not a soft surface, and it does not give way the way water does. When ice does break, the result is jagged edges and freezing water, which is exactly what makes falling through so dangerous.

Ice safety on pools, ponds and lakes

The same DNR advice sums up what to do before stepping onto any frozen surface:

• Check the thickness yourself with an auger, spud bar or chisel, at regular intervals, because conditions change fast.
• Do not trust other people’s tracks or social-media posts about conditions.
• Wear a life jacket or float coat, since cold-water shock can disable even strong swimmers.
• Carry ice picks, rope and a phone or whistle, and never go out alone.
• Keep children off the ice unless an adult is supervising.

As the DNR puts it, no ice can ever be considered “safe ice”. Enjoy the clip, and save your own pool jumps for summer.

For more winter mishaps, see the mistaken premise of snow swimming and ice breaking on a flexible trampoline.

Related reading

• Apetor’s Norwegian Winter Films: Comedy in an Icy Setting
• The People vs Winter: James Herring’s Compilation of Lost Traction
• Captain Quinn’s Winter Challenge: A 2014 Internet Trend
• Janitor’s Revenge: A Snow-Shovelling Visual Joke
• Seven Mountain Pools and the Landscapes Around Them

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