You’d probably like it Lunker. Commercial divers are really professional, well trained and do a lot of stuff that we amateurs don’t do even if we had the necessary expensive equipment. I’ve .done many post grad classes in mixed gas, deep diving, rescue diving, no overhead surface access, wreck diving, , and like you mentioned, through ice diving.
Ice diving does let you experience better visibility than in summer, but takes a lot of effort, a real team approach, special training, and a cadre of experienced safety divers on the ice, everyone learning safety protocols and tug on the safety harness type signals. I’ve only done it a couple times years ago on Sak. You need a dry suit, wet suit not enough, backup equipment, safety lines, and paths trampled radially the snow lit from the hole. You can see these paths from under the ice, and if all else failed and your safety line broke or knot broke, you can follow them back to the hole.
After doing it,all I can say is it’s .Ike a lot of things in life you should do just to experience it before you fertilize grass from the underside! Skydiving, lots of stuff. In two fairly long dives each, the bunch of us only saw one dormant crayfish and a couple tiny smallmouths that looked like they were hibernating. Not exciting at all! There’s companies of pro divers around that do this stuff routinely to haul out vehicles broke through the ice, SAR for bodies and things like that and I envy them! At my old age, give me nice warm Carribean water with 100 foot visibility! Water here (Az) surface is around 80 all summer but vis 15-20 feet or so. Seems more algae every year as surface twmps heat up. Vis in Sak varies a lot. After wind or rain runoff it can be better than 20 feet or so. Shooting carp and buffaloes is fun. If you want to eat walleyes, though, grab your rod and reel. Yep, you get some, but takes a lot of effort. Can’t shoot bass in ND- they are too easy!
Getting to know you a bit better, I suspect you’d probably like to try Scuba. See a diving Doc (couldn’t be me as you found out I’m a non Doc— kidding! ) and sit inon one of our volunteer lectures (no cost) and some old guy just might show up disguised as a doc and teach you how to avoid not just ear popping but other types of barotrauma, especially the minds that can kill you!
Or try things like SNUBA - I’ve never done it but it’s very safe and will give you an idea what ira like! Basically an air compressor floating on the surface with an air hose no longer than 30 feet so you can screw with Pascals law and get the bends. You can still ver air embolism which could kill you even faster, it with a minimum of instruction you’d be OK.
Best yet head to the Carribean and take a short 4 hour resort. Purse sitting on a nice beach! At the end of the abbreviated class you’ll be paired with a diving instructor who will show you lots of great stuff on your first dive, usually only down to 50 feet or so!
These two th8ngs are a bit like sniffing the wine cor and sipping a bit to see if you’d like to invest in the whole bottle!
Take care. BTW, I apologies for the headline of this thread. Tried to change it after I hit send or whatever, to say something like “Every ody will agree on this mask” and be funny.
Sorry about that. I’ll try not start a dis Susi on on anything else, it most of my friends have their heads full of a wealth of info on all kinds of outdoor topics many would love to see, rather than same old, same old. Sure not trying to tell poor Vollmer how to run a web site. I’ve always wondered why they last a few years, then disappear, etc. no new faces or topics …….
. I welcome you to stay instead of calling us racists and leaving when you no longer have a suitable counterpoint to disagreeable posts.
