Line tender

[jjones9527]

Well I'm a little late to this thread, as I only peruse a couple of the forums on SB. Now that I've been invited to this one it will make it three

I'm part of the Ontario ice diving crew (I think thats what we've been referred to as). Just about every weekend we head out to the local quarry, cut a hole, and jump in. This time of year has become purely about practice and skills. We use it to get back into good form, try out new techniques, and generally prepare for the up coming dive season. There was a pic posted elsewhere of me that was a good example of why we dedicate time to practice (it wasn't pretty )

A few years ago however, we were a little more adventurous in our ice diving, venturing out to a couple of different wrecks that were close to 1000ft off shore, in relatively shallow water (60-90ft). This was done almost every winter weekend for years, until on tragic day when everything that could go wrong did, and we lost a friend. After that the group took a big step back and reevaluated everything we had been doing. We tested various emergency drills, tried new things and analyzed until we found something that limited the risks. The biggest of these was no more "big" dives under the ice. The wrecks look the same in winter as summer, so what was the point. We started focussing on training and practice in the winter, rather than doing the same dive over and over. Some would ask "why continue to ice dive at all?" The answer is that under the ice is another amazing environment to look at, and the visibility it affords unbelievable. Now that we pretty much stay in the first ATA, we get to enjoy it even more.

Some of the other things we decided on:

Always use a stage. It adds one extra reg in the event of a freezup, with adding considerably to task loading (for those trained in its use). Its also much faster to react to and shut it down in the event of failure.

Unhooking the power inflator on really cold dives. This isn't something that we do all the time, but if the water is close to freezing, or we notice any self inflating, it gets unhooked. In event of a runaway power inflator, going horizontal, shutting the valve down while dumping from the rear dump is the fastest way to stop an uncontrolled ascent. We tried going vertical and dumping while unhooking, staying horizontal while dumping from the power inflator while unhooking, etc, and every time staying flat and shutting down while using the rear dump was the most effective. We lost very little depth, and was able to be completed in the least amount of time.

Limiting depth. If you should happen to have an uncontrolled ascent, you don't want to lose sight of your line, or have a violent impact with the ice above.


As for tethered ice diving, its a way to get inexperienced and relatively under skilled divers under the ice while reducing as much risk as possible. It does however introduce many risks of its own. Thats for another run on post though.

 

[Cave Diver]

Thanks for the insight and the safety lessons. Interesting stuff.

 

[gitterdun]

I guess I'm a little late to this party too.

Thank you for the compliments on the pictures. I took them. It was fun having RJack out to dive with us. Ask him about his experience at the airport...lol.

I keep a diving "Bloggy Thing," that tells of our adventures under the ice, even though it's a few weeks behind at the moment. Brian has given most of the goods about our protocols as well.

Why do we do it? The vis is stellar in the winter, I get some pretty cool photos, and it's alot of fun. Of course, you do have to be on your toes, as the excrement can hit the proverbial fan at any moment's notice. Sometimes with none at all.

As far as injuries while tethered, I have heard of someone that had a close call one time. Their buddy yanked the line to go in, and when the tenders started to pull them in, the tether wrapped around his hand, and it was taut against his chest. His reg was being pulled out of his mouth, and he was being bounced off of the surface of the ice. He got a bit cut up and bruised from hitting the ice, as his other hand was making sure that reg stayed put. That is not a situation I would like to be in. :S

 

[Cave Diver]

I keep a diving "Bloggy Thing," that tells of our adventures under the ice, even though it's a few weeks behind at the moment.

I'd love to see you share some of them in the Dives, Trips and Training section.

 

[Steve Blanchard]

After all these years of ice diving "a la cave style" I have noticed a serious down side to what we are doing. This quarry in Wakefield, Quebec, is visited by a great number of divers and many recreationnal divers from Quebec and Ontario. They mostly come out once a year for an ice diving courses, or an experience. They see the way we go about our dives, read about it in a magazine, or on a forum, looking at all the pretty pictures without understanding what goes on behind this style of ice diving. In cave country, the sites are better regulated, there are warning signs and other things that make divers think twice about entering a cave on a single tank and snorkel.

UP HERE, there is nothing of the sort, weekend after weekend, we see more single tank divers show up with a reel, they freshly bought at their LDS, or bring a roll of thick yellow nilon cord, then jump into a shallow hole to make their way under the ice, getting tangled, going deep, buoyant ascents, lines everywhere, you name it.

I could write a book on things that I have seen over the years that would have you cringe.

I rarely post about it, but seeing this is a TEK-TEK forum, it is nice to see good ice diving discussions

Cheers!

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

In cave country, the sites are better regulated, there are warning signs and other things that make divers think twice about entering a cave on a single tank and snorkel.

They don't all have state parks sitting around them. I've learned about caves just through conversation with locals who are self-claimed "bootleg" cave divers. No training, no proper gear, and lots of exagerating - but its also yielded some gems to dive LOL

My point? There are idiots everywhere

 

[Steve Blanchard]

They don't all have state parks sitting around them. I've learned about caves just through conversation with locals who are self-claimed "bootleg" cave divers. No training, no proper gear, and lots of exagerating - but its also yielded some gems to dive LOL

My point? There are idiots everywhere

Good point, I would much rather be diving the caves in Florida LOL

 

[DA Aquamaster]

I'll drop in REALLY late on the thread. Coming from the frozen north ice divers were common fare. I took my first 'dope on a rope' course in 1985 and over the years I have enounter two main schools of though regardig tenders.

One school uses ice screws to secure the line, a single tender, a single diver and a standby diver on the endg eof the hole ready to go with another slightly longer line ready to go. The idea is that a single tender can tend with no need to mofve around the hole and with no interference with a second line tender. In the water, the single diver can readily signal and respond to signals and since penetration is limited to a 100' or so, the diver can easily swim back to the hole in the event of a freeflow and/or if needed be pulled in very quickly. The standby diver is also ready to go and in an emergency can be at the end of the line in not much more than a minute to assist in the event the line snags, the diver does not respond, etc.

A variation on this theme is to have two divers on the single line with one attached to the other with a short tether. Personally, I think this has CF written all over it and I'd rather be solo than on a short tether with another diver.

The second school of thought is to have tow lines, two tenders and two divers in the water. Most often the lines are not secured as the tenders may need to move around the hole to keep the lines clear of one another. Since ice diving is usual shallow with divers tooling around the ice/water interface, circling the hole is common. Moving tenders, multiple unsecured lines, etc increase the risk of a slip and fall by the tender with the possibility of a line being dropped, and if at its maximum extent, being lost in the hole. There is still another diver in the water, but it again in my opinion has CF written all over it.

If there is a few inches of snow on the ice, it is common to shovel pathes radiating out from the hole in all directions for 150' or so to provide a visual cue to assist a diver off the line from getting back to the hole. The effectiveness of that practice is questionable, but it gives you something to do while waiting your turn to dive. The hole itself can be hard to see as it looks much like all the air pockets that soon devleop under the ice.

Ice diving is a social event and you need about 5 people to make it worthwhile when you consider the work to cut the hole, secure the block to a line, shove the block under the ice and then rig the safety lines and establish tender and diver rotations.

The downsides are the lines themselves, the limited penetration, the work involved, and the prospect that one of the 5 divers will dive bomb the bottom or use poor fin techniques and permanently screw the otherwise exceptional visibility. As a general rule, the sucky divers go last and they have explicit instructions to stay right under the ice, under threat of death if they blow the viz. They blow the viz anyway.

My preference is to ice dive with what amounts to cave techniques cave techniques with a secured line on a shot line near the bottom if silty, or on the bottom if sandy with a secondary tie off on the bottom as close as practical to the hole. Isolated doubles work fine, although it require more help getting out of the hole, and I regard a stage as a minimum in terms of redundancy of you are using a single tank. Sidemount has great ice diving possibilities in terms of ease getting ina nd out of the hole, provided it is configured to allow clipping and unclipping with cold hands in heavy gloves or mitts.

Given the possibility of cold hands and heavy gloves and restrictive heavy undergarments, independent doubles, or isolated doubles make sense as it would then not make it absolutely essential that you be able to shut down a freeflowing post.

An alternative I have done in the early and late portions of the winter when ice is still present in the bays and covers but not in the main body of water is to enter in open water from a point and then swim back under the ice sheet. 90% of the fun of ice diving through a hole with only 10% of the work. You still utilize a secured line and cave techniques to open water, but you can also back it up with a compass course to open water. The caution here is to make sure the ice sheet is still firmly attached to the shore and not prone to drift and that the lake is free of any other drifting ice sheets.

We tended to schedule ice dives in advance and do them on special occasions (new years day, etc) so we often got some interesting weather in terms of heavy snow, sub zero temps etc. You have not really been on an ice dive until you come out of the hole and have ice sheets shedding off your dry suit within a minute or two. A warming hut is nice and the foldable tents utility companies use in the frozen north work great in combination with a small space heater. They at elast keep you out of the wind and only semi-cold when changing. Boat coats also work great over the top of your drysuit to help keep you warmer between dives by adding insulation and reducing evaporative cooling.

I am not a fan of unhooking the inflator. If you inflate in only short bursts it does not get excessively chilled and won't freeze. Center balanced inflator designs in my experience are much more reliable than schrader valve designs in very cold temps. A restrictor in the dry suit inflator hose also limits the impact of any stuck inflator issue.

As for diving in ice covered rivers, one of the local sites was downstream of a hydro electric dam and the swift current kept the water open all winter for the first half mile or so even in the coldest weather. An extreme amount of care needed to be taken in the winter if there was ice anywhere close below the dam to ensure you exited before getting swept under it. Prudent divers stayed close to shore along the rip-rap and navigated in a manner to ensure they exited well before there was any risk of going under the ice as going upstream against a 3-5 kt current was just not going to happen. In the late 80's, one of our deputys was killed when exactly that happened.

 

[nadwidny]

Given the possibility of cold hands and heavy gloves and restrictive heavy undergarments, independent doubles, or isolated doubles make sense as it would then not make it absolutely essential that you be able to shut down a freeflowing post.

It is always absolutely essential to shut down a freeflowing post. If you have problems shutting down a freeflowing post because of heavy gloves, cold hands, restrictive underwear then you shouldn't be under the ice in the first place.

Maybe we should just make sure everyone in cold water has a slob winder. Throwing more gear at a skills problem always works.

We tended to schedule ice dives in advance and do them on special occasions (new years day, etc) so we often got some interesting weather in terms of heavy snow, sub zero temps etc. You have not really been on an ice dive until you come out of the hole and have ice sheets shedding off your dry suit within a minute or two.

Planning to dive because of a date on the calendar rather than when conditions allow is poor planning. The colder the air temp, the more gear problems one encounters.

I am not a fan of unhooking the inflator. If you inflate in only short bursts it does not get excessively chilled and won't freeze.

Wrong. I had one start to freeze after just one short burst 2 weeks ago. Probably the only reason I caught it very early was that I was diving my RB and could hear it before it turned into a runaway.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

It is always absolutely essential to shut down a freeflowing post. If you have problems shutting down a freeflowing post because of heavy gloves, cold hands, restrictive underwear then you shouldn't be under the ice in the first place.

Maybe we should just make sure everyone in cold water has a slob winder. Throwing more gear at a skills problem always works.

Planning to dive because of a date on the calendar rather than when conditions allow is poor planning. The colder the air temp, the more gear problems one encounters.

Wrong. I had one start to freeze after just one short burst 2 weeks ago. Probably the only reason I caught it very early was that I was diving my RB and could hear it before it turned into a runaway.

I won't argue it beyond a few comments. I'm not in the mood for a pissing contest today, so I'll just stipulate that you can easily with the biggest (insert suitable noun here) contest and skip the actual contest.

Sorry if that takes the fun out of it, but I am interested in the actual content of what you are saying, just not the abrasive manner nor am I interested in an argument over agency doctrine.

1. Nobody mentioned slob winders, but I agree they have no place in anyone's configuration. As for "always" being essential to shut down a freeflowing post, the word "always" or any other absolute terminology pretty much means it is a statement that is going to be incorrect at some point in some specific situation. It's dogmatic. For example, if a diver is 20 ft from the hole and the post freeflows, it might just make make more sense to just surface and have it shut down there than to mess with shutting it down under water. I appreciate what you are trying to get at, I'm just say'in looking at the big picture helps.

2. Lately, sidemount divers have been pretty quick to sell the vitrues of isolated tanks. In that regard, the concept is suddenly popular again. It's no surprise as the concept can make sense in other environments and from other training perspectives. In general, if it makes sense to simplify to avoid a problem or make the resoultion of the problem easier, why not. It's not a question, it's just a point of view, one that you are not required to share.

3. We've had similar discussions in the past about planning/conducting dives in challenging conditions and where it ends up is that when the conditions get too challenging and is no longer within the parmaters of your philososophical orientation and comnfort zone, you'll elect not to dive. I fully support your decision to do so.

Personally, when it is New Year's Day, the snow is blowing, the temps are around 13 below, and a group of people want to go ice diving, I'm probably going ice diving. Part of the fun and satisfaction from ice diving in those conditions comes from equipping for and overcoming the challenges posed by extreme cold. Otherwise it's just an ice dive and after awhile they get pretty boring and the fun wversus work quotient gets very low. But make no mistake the planning involved includes full recognition of the increased care needed to prevent equipment failures in extremly cold conditions.

4. Most importantly, I am very interested in what type of inflator you were using and the events leading up to the leaking inflator. I've got well over 100 ice dives, several hundred more non ice dives with bottom temps in the 33-35 degree range, and several hundred others with bottom temps in the 36-45 degree range. I've never had a dry suit or wing inflator freeze using short bursts of gas.

I don't doubt yours started leaking, but I'd be interesting in the details so that other possibilties and factors could be considered in addition to just an assumption that cold temps were the sole factor responsible for the the inflator leaking a gas into the suit/wing. Knowing that helps qualify the parameters surrounding the failure and also helps reconcile your negative experience with my non-inflator freezing experience over the course of 25 years and several hundred very cold water dives.