Snowmobile mystery: Photo shows 1 sled down, 2 human tracks coming out of water
'It sucks,' says Dennis Kaomayok who believes his family's snowmobile is under water in Cambridge Bay
A scene of what appears to be a snowmobile plunging into ice, and human tracks crawling back to shore, was a topic of discussion in Cambridge Bay Thursday.
Community members are wondering what happened, and who are the two people responsible for the tracks.
An experienced diver in the community offered to recover someone's snowmobile out of the water "in front of town" on the community's Facebook page on Thursday.
That prompted Francis Emingak, another resident, to go check out the scene.
"[I] saw these Ski-Doo tracks going from east to west on the bay and… the ice broken. The Ski-Doo is in the water I guess," said Emingak.
He also said there were two human tracks coming out of the water, back to shore.
After the news spread, Dennis Kaomayok realized his family's snowmobile was missing. He thinks it's the one that went in the ocean.
"It was a cheap Ski-Doo. I bought it for like 500 bucks, but it was for my kids," said Kaomayok. "It sucks that it's not there anymore."
Kaomayok says his machine disappeared two days ago.
Kaomayok believes it may have been a "couple of kids joyriding."
"Joyriding on thin ice," said Kaomayok, who added he didn't have insurance on the sled.
"Please be extremely careful when travelling on the sea ice," the hamlet office posted to Facebook Thursday. "In many areas it is not thick enough to support snowmachines at this point."
CBC News reached out to RCMP, who declined to comment about the incident.
With files from Mark Hadlari