HARTLAND – A snowmobile that fell through thin ice Sunday afternoon on Great Moose Lake likely took with it the life of its driver, officials fear.

Maine Warden Service personnel searched briefly at the spot where the sled entered the cold water, but retrieval efforts were postponed because of darkness. The search will continue early today.

“We’re going in at 8 a.m. in that location,” Mark Latti, spokesman for the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, said Sunday evening, adding hopefully, “It’s certainly possible that the driver could have escaped.”

Two snowmobile riders noticed a helmet and other debris floating in open water on Great Moose Lake around 3:30 p.m. The riders then called police, who dispatched Wardens Kevin Adam and Durward Humphrey, Latti said.

The warden spokesman said the tracks leading to the hole in the ice were not fresh, but he couldn’t predict when the sled might have entered the water.

“[The accident] didn’t happen anytime near when the call came in,” Latti said.

Great Moose Lake sits between Hartland and St. Albans in southern Somerset County. The area where the sled likely submerged was at an outlet where the water doesn’t freeze because of the current, Latti said.

“If people are unfamiliar with an area, they don’t know what’s coming,” Latti said.

When asked if he thought the driver was unfamiliar with the lake, the spokesman replied, “It’s hard to say. You can’t really play ‘what if’ in this case.”

Maine has recorded four fatalities for the 2004-05 snowmobile season, which runs as late as April in northern parts of the state. The most recent death was a New Jersey man who died Thursday, Jan. 27, when his snowmobile struck a tree in the Aroostook County town of Sinclair.