Ice (free)diving

[FreediveWI]

Today was the first day of Pirate Cove's 26th annual ice diving weekend. There were lots of people out to enjoy todays nice weather- and all of the great food that was there as well. ;D

For the third year in a row I decided to freedive it, since the lake's not that deep and I didn't feel like dragging all of that suff out with me. It also makes it easier to take pictures without those annoying bubbles spoiling your shots.

I ended up spending just over 2 hours in the water and took a lot of nice photos. Unfortunatly, I can't seem to post for some reason right now. I normally don't have a problem attaching photos to these fourms, but am not able to do so at time.

To describe it in words I would just say that the thick blanket of snow we have this year makes for much darker conditions underwater than we have had in quite a few years. It also makes the hole so bright you'd think it was a light house beacon shining down on you. 8)

Back out tomorrow for more fun in the sun.

Jon

[Chris H]

Do you just wear a harness to clip the rope to while free diving under the ice? I know from UW hockey that you can hold your breath for a long time, but do you use a different strategy when you are under the ice? You always have to surface in the same spot, does that take some of the "free"dom out of it? How many divers were there and how many holes? I'm curious about the turn out.

We were ice diving on Wazee and we had fantastic vis. From 80+ feet deep you could see the hole. I'm sure Doug will post some pictures. It would have been much closer to go to Nagawicka (sp?) but we had a couple of really nice dives on Wazee.

[FreediveWI]

Chris,

If I could just figure out why I can no longer post pictures to this forum >

It would be a lot easier to just show you.

I use a set up similar to the ones used in competition freediving. It includes a weighted line that is suspended off the bottom a few feet so it can move around a little bit. I wear a wrist lanyard and am clipped in by a carbiner so that I can slide up and down the line. Once at the bottom I can move around and look at stuff, but once I start my ascent I get guided back to the hole. In the past I used a normal ice diving harness, but decided to simplify things a bit this year. Since htey use these wrist lanyards in constant ballast comps to over 300' of depth I feel pretty safe using it on an ice dive.

Today I had my freediving buddy out with me. When he was laying on the bottom I could see him from the surface. If there was ever a problem we would haul him up- just like in normal ice diving scenerios.

My normal spearfishing times are 1:30 - 2:00 minutes in the summer time. Under the ice it's about half. It's not really the cold, but every time you come up people want to ask you something and it kind of wrecks your breath-up. In freediving you kind of need to find you Zen. That's why you'll find you can hold your breath much longer after playing around in the water for an hour compared to when you first jump in.

When we spearfish in the winter time we find that we'll start out with 1:30+ bottom times at first and after a couple of hours in hte water our times will drop to as low as 20 seconds. THat's because we start to get cold and it really wrecks you breath hold if you start to shiver- still outlast the bubble blowers by more than an hour. 8)

Maybe I'll post show shots over on the MNSCUBA board and post a link. My buddy and I also got some really nice video today. Once he is done laying down a sound track to it I'll post a link to that as well.

Jon

[FreediveWI]

Try this link, if it doesn't work you could cut and paste it to your address bar.



The password is: deeperblue

All of the video was shot on our digital cameras and editied on the PC.


Jon

[FreediveWI]

If everything is working alright you should see a bunch of pictures here.

Since all of my buddies were scuba divers on Saturday, all you get to see are fellow bubble-blowers. ;D

jon

[FreediveWI]

On Sunday I found another freediver to come with me. He was the one who made the video. Actually, we both shot the footage, but he laid down the sound tract and spliced everything together. I need to upgrade a few things before I can do that.

Jon

[FreediveWI]

Ice diving movie link is fixed. The number of downloads is limited andkeeps needing to be reset. This will be fixed in the near future as we move them to a paid site.