ice diving conditions @ habitat

[underwateraddict]

Does anyone know if ice diving is done at the underwater habitat in lake mendota?  Is it easy to find given that safety ropes will require the hole to be accuarately placed.  Anything on the ice conditions.  I have never been there.  Thanks in advance.

[schultz]

Well off course there's ice diving at the Habitat!

Problem is that it's difficult to arrange, get there, and setup. In the good ol' days, Hoofers and Four Lakes would get together to do an outing there. Of course in the good ol' days we could just drive out on Picnic Point with our cars and walk down to the shore, cut our hole, and splash in. Now that the UW has supposedly stopped issuing permits to drive out there, one has to either walk 15 minutes in from the parking lot or use an ATV (with adequate floatation on the ATV) to haul everything out there. Since it's been almost 4 years since the UW stopped with the permits, I may ask around again to see if we can drive in once more.

As far as the current ice conditions, the lake "officially" froze over yesterday (12/19/05) according to the . However, take this with a grain of salt (not enough to melt the ice though) since this is an observation taken at the imaginary line between Picnic Point and Governor's Island. The problem is that the oberserver can't see behind Picnic Point.

That being said, I hiked out to the end of Picnic Point today in an effort to answer your question, and sure as shoot'n, there is ice over the habitat right now. Problem is that it is only about 2 inches thick in places, and as I walked out towards the habitat, there was some ice that began to crack in places. As you look towards Middleton Bay, you'll notice that there is still some open water out there, so the lake is not "entirely" frozen over and certainly not safe enough to dive at the habitat.

I'd say wait another month, and it should be good to go. In the mean time, I'll continue looking into the UW permits once again.