Ice house removal video in northern Minnesota goes viral

LAKE OF THE WOODS, Minn. (FOX 9) - Despite the extended deadline for ice houses, fishing guides are sharing videos that may have some resorts thinking twice about waiting much longer. 

Over the weekend Eric Best, a fishing guide on Lake of the Woods shared a jaw-dropping video that has since gone viral. It shows he and a coworker driving through a flooded ice road, towing an ice house.

"Ice is never 100% safe, so I would by no means advise someone to go out on their own driving through a flooded ice road, but it's a road we are traveling every day so to the best of our knowledge the ice was safe enough to get out there. And like I said we had customers out there, so it's kind of an obligation to get out there and make sure they get off safely and the houses off safely," said Best. 

He says they take measurements of the ice daily and know that there was about 3'-4' of ice beneath all that water. Even with that knowledge, Best says it still got his heart racing. 

"It was quite a bit of water. It kind of gets contained between the banks on the side of the road. There were parts of it that were 3.5' deep of water, so, it's kind of a lot but its honestly relatively typical of this time of year. Almost every year you run into this sort of stuff," said Best. 

Best says they often run into flooded roads along their route, but this year was a little worse than years past. The warmer weather, and abundant sunshine took the roads from a little slush to a lot of water in a matter of one day. 

Everyone made it off the ice safely, and Best says several other resorts on the lake have also made the move to remove all their houses, and close for the season.