Tell me about your experiences ICE DIVING, learned tips & tricks, and things gone wrong...

[rjack321]

The idea of the 2 x 4 tag line anchor is excellent... any actual failures of ice screws documented?


Cave course.... brilliant, and terrifying.

Ice screws are entirely dependent on the quality of the ice. They can hold a couple of thousand pounds before shearing out. Or they can come out with you fingers. If you dig down to solid ice (not refrozen snow) you aren't going to just casually flip a proper screw out.

If you are terrified by a cave course then you have no business being in a frozen overhead

 

[Jay Whitehair]

Ice screws are entirely dependent on the quality of the ice. They can hold a couple of thousand pounds before shearing out. Or they can come out with you fingers. If you dig down to solid ice (not refrozen snow) you aren't going to just casually flip a proper screw out.

If you are terrified by a cave course then you have no business being in a frozen overhead

Thats such a harsh statement Cappy.... "no business". My background hobbies are paragliding, hang gliding, single hand off-shore sailing (long distance), World Cup ice yacht racing. Saying I have no business in a simple overhead situation is one of the most uninspiring comments I have received in years. As a career fireman who is used to zero vis adrenalin bumps I love going where others don't dare. But I have heard enough deaths contributed to caves I just have no reason to go in very far. I justify every move I make flying alone and on the seas as risk assessment.... as far as caves go, there is no gold, diamonds or money to be made in them, so I don't expect to have much reason to go in. I think it is a great idea to learn about diving them to learn all I can about advanced diving, but thats about it for me. Terrifying, yes. Manageable, yes.

I am new to this forum and was reluctant to post thinking I don't need any bashing. I just want to learn more about diving from others experienced ahead of me. But ego driven comments such as "I don't have any business" are simply mean spirited. I DO have business in learning. And I remain excited to read more comments about techniques, advice, etc rather than what I have no business in.

Sail on!
j

 

[Jay Whitehair]

ps: Cappy - thanks for the tip on proper anchoring with screws. I know enough to clear to solid ice but having you say that helped me understand that pointing that out to a potential tender is key. And to remind myself to check all others work myself. We use ice screws to moor large ice yachts on the ice for weeks at a time and they do work very well - even in gale force winds... When I think of redundancy in public safety rope work it makes me think that an ice anchor AND a separate through-the-ice wood T type anchor may well be the route I take. I plan on making "Do Not Tamper - Diver Attached" plastic laminated cards to attach at anchor points as well.

j

 

[rjack321]

Thats such a harsh statement Cappy.... "no business". My background hobbies are paragliding, hang gliding, single hand off-shore sailing (long distance), World Cup ice yacht racing. Saying I have no business in a simple overhead situation is one of the most uninspiring comments I have received in years. As a career fireman who is used to zero vis adrenalin bumps I love going where others don't dare. But I have heard enough deaths contributed to caves I just have no reason to go in very far. I justify every move I make flying alone and on the seas as risk assessment.... as far as caves go, there is no gold, diamonds or money to be made in them, so I don't expect to have much reason to go in. I think it is a great idea to learn about diving them to learn all I can about advanced diving, but thats about it for me. Terrifying, yes. Manageable, yes.

I am new to this forum and was reluctant to post thinking I don't need any bashing. I just want to learn more about diving from others experienced ahead of me. But ego driven comments such as "I don't have any business" are simply mean spirited. I DO have business in learning. And I remain excited to read more comments about techniques, advice, etc rather than what I have no business in.

Sail on!
j

1) there is no such thing as a "simple overhead"
2) if you're overhead diving for the "rush" you are going to be in a world of hurt shortly. Being calm, "stop", "think", "act deliberately" is how you stay alive

MANY people have died due to even slight increases in stress in an overhead. Specific to ice diving, that small increase in adrenaline you experience when some small thing goes wrong like your fin getting all twisted up in your tether leads to increased gas consumption. That can lead to regulator freeze up and free flow. Now your small thing has snowballed massively. Having redundant tether anchors is really the least of your potential issues with your approach right now.

 

[nadwidny]

Thats such a harsh statement Cappy.... "no business". My background hobbies are paragliding, hang gliding, single hand off-shore sailing (long distance), World Cup ice yacht racing. Saying I have no business in a simple overhead situation is one of the most uninspiring comments I have received in years. As a career fireman who is used to zero vis adrenalin bumps I love going where others don't dare. But I have heard enough deaths contributed to caves I just have no reason to go in very far. I justify every move I make flying alone and on the seas as risk assessment.... as far as caves go, there is no gold, diamonds or money to be made in them, so I don't expect to have much reason to go in. I think it is a great idea to learn about diving them to learn all I can about advanced diving, but thats about it for me. Terrifying, yes. Manageable, yes.

I am new to this forum and was reluctant to post thinking I don't need any bashing. I just want to learn more about diving from others experienced ahead of me. But ego driven comments such as "I don't have any business" are simply mean spirited. I DO have business in learning. And I remain excited to read more comments about techniques, advice, etc rather than what I have no business in.

Sail on!
j

You don't know what you don't know. And given your resume (none of which has relevance to knowing anything about the simplicities or complexities of ice diving or cave diving), you really don't know.

 

[Germie]

I do it when it is freezing here. I also teach it.
There are several ways to do, one is with a person at surface and a big rope, the other way is using a reel you reel yourself. Always with dual outlet valves or double tanks (sidemount also possible), never with a single valve. If ice is thin, you still cannot break it from under the ice. So always a line.

Sometimes we have clear ice and then skaters above us:

My blogs are in Dutch:
Brenda de Vries - IJsduiken – DuikeninBeeld

Last summer we did icediving in the mountains. That was completely different. The ice was thick, unstable, but it gave the arctic feeling:
Brenda de Vries - IJsduiken in de zomer bij de Gotthardpas – DuikeninBeeld

Gotthardpas:

Lago Sassolo:

 

[leadduck]

Ice diving is not cave diving. One important difference (that caused a few casualties) is that ice is not as static as rock. Watch this:
Even if it looks quiet, over the dive duration of half an hour, your point of entry may be gone.
There's been accidents where divers tied a cave line to a tree and entered from the shore under the ice. When returning, the ice had moved just a few ft closer to the shore, so the line was still there, but no space to exit anymore ... There were also incidents where some idiot passerby thought the line is leftover garbage and cut it from the tree.
If you don't dive from shore but cut an ice triangle in the middle of the lake and push the ice below the sheet, it may move back during your dive and block your exit.

These are good reasons to always have somebody on land watch your point of exit and communicate with the diver. The usual way of teaching ice diving (in our mountain lake diving region at least) is not cave diving style, but always having a line tender at the entrance using rope signals. Haven't heard much complaints about that. Compared to cave diving, also consider that (1) it's really cold and most people don't want to stay long anyway. (2) It's usually a group event. Taking turns as diver, safety, or line tender, is part of the fun. (3) You don't dive deep, the interesting part is near the surface.

 

[Germie]

Most times your computer will not log a dive. So shallow you stay. You dive just under the ice, most times less than 1m deep.

The official way to teach here is also with someone with a rope at surface. But we don't have moving ice here, so we can do it the cave style also. But that is only with experienced divers. We use that quite a lot if we don't have 'officially organised' icedives with sportsdivers. Remember: icediving is sportsdiving, recreational diving, where cavediving is called technical diving. So the equipment is most times single tank and normal bcd. Another reason for someone at surface is the line signal given by divers if something goes wrong. Sportsdivers are most times not able to turn of valves when a regulator freeflows, technical divers can do it. And yes, freeflows are quite common when icediving. Another point is when you do it from a hole in the ice is that you are not able to climb out yourself.
Most times when we do icediving, the ice is not strong enough to hold people, but it is strong enough to do a real icedive with the ice as overhead.

 

[leadduck]

not only shallow, but usually we stay in a short distance from the hole, too. Having fun under the ice surface, enjoying the light effects, taking pics, ... works perfectly within a 25m (75ft) radius around the hole. Most people don't want to swim far away from the hole with a long line on a cave reel anyway.

 

[rhwestfall]

@shoredivr - is that Pat Wollfe in the picture? Windmill Point Park?