Not being from the more temperate climates, local diving in Ontario can involve ice diving. Now there are inherent risks in ice diving - namely being in an overhead environment and being on the ice surface of the lake.
Our shop runs PADI ice diver courses through the winter and we were up 2 weekends ago at the end of February doing ice diver certifications. One of our popular sites for ice diving is a site called "The Morrison" named after the wreck that burned to the waterline and was set adrift and sunk in Lake Simcoe just north of Toronto. See: Wreck of the JC Morrison
The city of Barrie, which is where the Morrison site is located, has a water treatment plant that pumps treated water back out into the bay, located adjacent to the wreck site. This treatment plant pumps water year round. This water happens also to be quite a bit warmer than the ambient water temperature in the winter time. As a result, the ice surface directly above the outlets is considerably thinner. The locals all know this as do many of the ice divers, including our group.
However, for some poor soul who decided to go ice fishing and had the misfortune of deciding to drive over and stop on top of this spot of thin ice .... well, you can imagine what happened next. Our newest "wreck", the wreck of the "Grand Prix" was provided for us for this weekend's ice diving pleasure.
Water temps were a balmy 34F. Air temperatures were a tropical 36F. Slight winds with some snow coming down made for a fun day of ice diving.
That's me in the second pic...
Our shop runs PADI ice diver courses through the winter and we were up 2 weekends ago at the end of February doing ice diver certifications. One of our popular sites for ice diving is a site called "The Morrison" named after the wreck that burned to the waterline and was set adrift and sunk in Lake Simcoe just north of Toronto. See: Wreck of the JC Morrison
The city of Barrie, which is where the Morrison site is located, has a water treatment plant that pumps treated water back out into the bay, located adjacent to the wreck site. This treatment plant pumps water year round. This water happens also to be quite a bit warmer than the ambient water temperature in the winter time. As a result, the ice surface directly above the outlets is considerably thinner. The locals all know this as do many of the ice divers, including our group.
However, for some poor soul who decided to go ice fishing and had the misfortune of deciding to drive over and stop on top of this spot of thin ice .... well, you can imagine what happened next. Our newest "wreck", the wreck of the "Grand Prix" was provided for us for this weekend's ice diving pleasure.
Water temps were a balmy 34F. Air temperatures were a tropical 36F. Slight winds with some snow coming down made for a fun day of ice diving.
That's me in the second pic...
