GREENVILLE JUNCTION – A Massachusetts man who watched his sister and a friend go through the ice on Moosehead Lake Sunday night while snowmobiling said he would never again go back on the lake on a snowmobile.

While the pair managed to escape from the icy cold water near the East Outlet on Moosehead Lake, it was a brush with disaster that Ryan Cartier, 20, of Bellingham, Mass., hopes never to witness or be a part of again.

The incident serves as a reminder that those who do not follow the trails risk hitting open water at West Outlet, East Outlet or where Moose River dumps into Moosehead Lake. There also are isolated spots of open water around some of the lake’s islands, according to wardens.

Cartier’s group isn’t the first to have made the mistake along this particular shoreline. The area has been the site of several similar incidents over the years. The most recent was in February 2004 when a Bangor man and his son from Bernville, Pa., went through the ice, followed two days later by a similar incident in which two New York men and a Bangor man went through the ice. All five were either rescued or climbed from the water themselves.

Wardens caution that the wet weather and the higher temperatures Monday will add to any slush that is already layering lakes throughout the state. Snowmobilers should use caution, particularly along shorelines, because that is where the melting occurs first, they say.

Cartier, his sister Courtney Cartier, 21, Blake Phillips, 21, and Blake’s mother, Terry Phillips, 55, all of Bellingham, had been snowmobiling in the region over the weekend and were returning to their motel in Jackman when the accident occurred.

The four had been to Greenville and were traveling back up the lake to Rockwood when they turned at Wilsons on Moosehead Lake at about 9 p.m. to connect to the land trail to take them to Jackman, Cartier recalled Monday. Cartier said he and the others were familiar with the region having snowmobiled it in the past, but the group thought they were farther up the lake Sunday night than they actually were. “We knew we were close to the land trail” because of the lights we saw on shore and the snowmobile tracks we observed, he noted.

What they didn’t anticipate, however, was the thin ice near the East Outlet of Moosehead Lake near Wilsons, a set of lakefront cottages owned by Scott and Alison Snell.

Ryan Cartier, along with Terry Phillips, had been traveling behind Courtney Cartier and Blake Phillips. Ryan Cartier said he stopped his sled when he saw the pair go into the water. “I immediately pulled Blake out, and I came back to my sled and got my tow strap and got onto the dock [at Wilson’s] and was trying to throw her [Courtney] the tow strap. Then [Scott] Snell came over with a rope, and we were able to pull her out.”

The only thing that went through Cartier’s mind as he watched his sister and his friend fall into the water, he said, was “just stay calm.”

On shore, someone at the sporting camps had observed four sets of lights and then saw two of them disappear, according to Warden Troy Dauphinee, who investigated the accident. Dauphinee said the person who observed the lights notified Snell who went outside to assist the party while someone else called 911. The accident did not occur too far from the docks at the campground, he said.

Courtney Cartier, who was the first one to land in the water, was taken by ambulance to C.A. Dean Memorial Hospital where she was treated for abrasions and was later released, Dauphinee said.

Had it been daytime, Dauphinee said the snowmobile operators would have seen the open water. Snowmobilers need to use extra caution while traveling the lake after dark, he said.

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