Teen stranded on arctic ice floe rescued

TRENTON, Ontario, Nov. 10 (UPI) -- A Canadian teenager was recovering Tuesday, a day after military rescuers in aircraft plucked him from a free-floating ice floe in Hudson Bay.

Four Coral Harbor men who were part of the rescue effort were safe after getting stuck in the ice floe three miles from shore while heading home. They spent the night on the ice and had to be rescued themselves.

They made it back to shore Tuesday with help from six other men who ventured out on all-terrain vehicles and helped them drag their boat to land, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. said.

"They were able to drag that vessel and kind of run it through the open water that was between them and managed that back to land, basically walking and dragging the vessel mostly," Capt. Mike Young of the Joint Rescue Coordination Center in Trenton, Ontario, told the CBC.

Young said the men were never in any immediate danger, as they were wearing warm clothes and carrying emergency supplies such as heating sources.

Young said the teenage boy had set out on a weekend hunting expedition with his uncle from the village of Coral Harbor in Nunavut. At some point, the pair's snowmobiles broke down and the uncle set out on foot for help, the CBC said.

While he was gone, the ice cracked and the teenager began floating away from the area.

The boy's family requested names be withheld, village officials said.

Young said military aircraft first spotted the youth Sunday night but lost him in the darkness. Monday morning, he was spotted again 25 miles away from the last sighting, Young said.

Rescue technicians in arctic survival suits parachuted to an adjacent ice floe and "bodysurfed" to the boy, who was conscious and responsive, Young said. The boy was winched to safety and hospitalized with hypothermia, the CBC said.