Lake of the Woods 'Bombers' remain winter workhorses

Before Gregg Hennum sold Sportsman's Lodge in 2021, his family's well-known Lake of the Woods fishing resort maintained a fleet of more than 20 Bombardier snow buses to get anglers to and from the walleyes.

Those caterpillar-tracked machines were so critical to making money during winter, he kept four for himself. Around Lake of the Woods, they're known as "Bombers.''

"We've put thousands and thousands and thousands of miles on them," said Hennum, who now operates a year-round, cross-lake transportation service to deliver goods and shuttle passengers. "Even if money was no object … I wouldn't replace them with anything else."

Despite their vintage engineering (Bombardier stopped making the vehicles in 1979), the bug-shaped snowmobiles have grown in stature from oddball curiosities in the Northwest Angle to iconic winter workhorses. Manufactured in Quebec starting in the 1940s, they can be found in Russia, Iceland, Alaska and all across Canada.

On Lake of the Woods three days after Christmas, a Bomber-related death drew statewide attention and cast a pall over the emerging ice fishing season. But within the local fishing community, the tragedy did nothing to shake people's confidence in the machines. Roughly 70 Bombers are believed to be in commercial use around the lake, each shuttling thousands of anglers every year to ice houses miles away from shore.

Lake of the Woods County Sheriff Gary Fish said the fatal plunge and possible drowning happened one-quarter mile south of Flag Island and remains under investigation pending autopsy results. There's been no published finding so far of a probable cause.

According to reports from the scene, a Bomber operated by an Angle Inlet resort was taking a group of customers to a fishing location shortly after 8 a.m. when the machine broke through the ice on Dec. 28. The Inlet is located in the northwest corner of Minnesota's Northwest Angle. According to a preliminary report from the sheriff's office, the ice was 12 inches thick and the water was 10-feet deep. The driver, along with another nearby party, immediately assisted passengers with their exit from the vehicle. The front end of the machine was still atop the ice, a witness said, while the tail end was underwater.

Seven of the eight passengers were able to escape, the sheriff's report said, but the body of John Frey, 78, from Prairie du Sac, Wis., was recovered from the vehicle hours later.

One day later, Angle Outpost Resort wrote a solemn message on its Facebook site. "We're devastated by the loss of our longtime guest and fellow angler. Thank you in advance for comments that respect him, his family and friends, and the Lake of the Woods fishing community. Your understanding and prayers are deeply appreciated."

The last time a resort-operated transport vehicle broke through the ice with fatal consequences on Lake of the Woods was in late December 1997. That's when a van retrofitted with skis in front and tracks in back hit a snow-covered crack and sank very quickly off the south shore north of Baudette. The vehicle was not a Bomber. Four passengers from Beaver Dam, Wis., drowned and three others escaped. They were on their way to a fishing shack.

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