When push came to shovel, people in Washington County moved a lot of snow Sunday morning.

And a Thomaston man has a tale to tell of his walk to safety after a nearly six-hour ordeal Saturday.

He was lost on the ice at Cathance Lake.

Clyson Peters, 47, was fishing with family and friends at a camp at Chub Cove when he decided to take a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle to check on one of the traps the group had set up out on the lake.

Peters told the Maine Warden Service that within minutes of going onto the ice, blowing snow and whiteout conditions hampered his return.

“He actually got out by the furthest trap. It was snowing and blowing so hard that his tracks filled in and he lost direction,” Warden Jim Martin said Sunday.

When Peters had not returned by 1:30 p.m., his friends notified the wardens. “The obvious concern was that parts of that lake just froze over last week, and there were unsafe ice conditions in the main part of the lake,” Martin said.

Sgt. David Craven said six wardens assisted in the search.

“It was too dangerous to send the wardens out on the ice,” Craven said. “I made arrangements for one of our airboats to be shuttled from Bangor. The airboat allows us to go out on uncertain ice conditions. So if you break through you are OK.”

Slippery roads also hampered the search. “All these side camp roads were just glare ice. With powder snow on top of them, you could barely stand up. So we had trouble getting vehicles around,” Craven said. “We had great cooperation from the local people. Everybody pitched in. … They plowed roads and opened gates.”

Wardens received the report from a caretaker who lives in the area. The caretaker said he had seen some ATV tracks and heard someone yelling. “Very faintly he could hear hollering,” Martin said. “When we went back to check it out we heard the hollering and took a compass bearing on it. … As it turned out it came from further out on the lake.”

While the Warden Service officers were making preparations to rescue the man, it began to get dark and people began to turn on lights at their camps. “He was well-dressed. He wasn’t hypothermic, and he was able to walk [across the ice] to a camp,” Martin said.

Peters told the wardens he had to abandon the ATV after it became stuck on the snow-covered ice.

Martin and Craven praised the owners of the Cathance Lake Variety Store, which remained open and provided food and drinks for the searchers.

Although Peters returned to his camp safely, the wardens warned people to be careful.

“Just because you have safe ice in a cove on one end of the lake doesn’t mean it’s safe everywhere,” Martin said. “You have to check ice conditions and check with locals who live right on the lake who watched it freeze up as to where the bad ice is. If it is questionable, stay off.”

The snowstorm hit the Down East area early Saturday morning, and by the time it ended, more than a foot of snow had fallen.

Some people took to their roofs to remove huge drifts that weighed heavily on trusses.

Although radio scanners hummed throughout the day Saturday with reports of vehicles off the road, most of the accidents were limited to property damage. For the most part, people hunkered down and waited for the storm to pass.