It’s not every day you see an airplane parked on a frozen Saskatchewan lake.
When a group of friends saw a Facebook marketplace ad for a plane for sale, it gave them an idea. They decided to buy the grounded plane — not to fly it but to give it new life on the ice.
“We told too many people too,” Lee Saretsky said. “It gave us a good push to get it done.”
Saretsky and his work friends Derek Davis, Jordan Janzen and Jonah Alain all chipped in for the airplane, which cost $3,000. All four men, who enjoy fishing, especially in the winter, had the same idea to refurbish the airplane and turn it into a state-of-the-art ice fishing shack.
“It’s a nice ice shack. It’s not really practical, but it works and it’s kind of fun,” Saretsky said. “You (can) fit a lot of people (and) have a nice little party in there.”
The men spent a year transforming the airplane into an ice shack by spray-foaming inside the structure, adding some old bus seats and installing a couple of diesel heaters. They took the airplane ice shack to the lake last weekend during the cold snap, where it will stay until early March.
A total of 18 people can fit into the shack to enjoy some good company and fish on Last Mountain Lake inside a warm and unique ice shack.
“I think everybody’s pretty excited about it,” he said. “It was on the internet before we were even set up so (the news) went pretty fast. Yeah, it’s been good.”
Photos of the airplane ice shack have been circulating social media particularly on the Facebook group page called “Ice Shack Nation” where the photos have received close to one thousand shares.
Saretsky says their next idea is to buy a rocket and flip it into the next ice shack.