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Steve, You'll find different factions of ice divers right in a small area. The people I ice dive with (Minneapolis/St. Paul, where our ice diving season is about 4 months long) use this method: One tender per diver. Two divers for each triangular hole. One safety diver who is suited up, with gear next to the hole, ready to go. The safety line is 50 feet longer than the diver's line. The safety line is laid out on the ice, untangled, ready to go. All lines attached with ice screws. Divers' lines marked in 25-foot increments. Divers not wearing harness/backplates use a harness over their BCDs to attach the line to. We use locking carabiners to attach lines to ice screws and divers. We remove the ice blocks while diving, and replace them when done, and mark the site with flagging tape so snowmobilers/ice fishermen don't fall in before it refreezes. So we need a minimum of three people to dive. Whether we use lights or not depends on the weather, vis, depth, etc. It's pretty common to limit beginning divers both in time and penetration. Other groups of ice divers in my area will dive with a pair of divers on a single line, with one tender. No one I've ever seen here has dived without a tender, using a reel. Not necessarily the "correct" way, but it works for us. Nanci At 11:45 AM 1/9/98 PST, Steve Schinke wrote: >i recently had a debate about the correct way to ice dive and i thought >i would see what this lists reaction was. We live in northwestern >canada and have ice coverd lakes for about eight months of the year so >unless one has alot of travel dollars you have to leard to ice dive to >get wet. > >This person was in support of some of the large diving factions >standards involving a five person team requiring the divers to be >teathered and a teathered safety diver plus two line tenders. > >my argument was that this seemed to be a little over excessive. I >argued that Ice should be dove like any other overhead environment >using reels, and gas management principles, and that teathering >unnesessary. The divers should be competant enough with there skills >that being roped together and to the surface is ridiculous.(perhaps >eight dives doesn't classify you as a competent advanced diver.....) > >usually the way my buddy and i dive is with reels and ice screws in a >two man team using thirds. We also carry min of two lights although it >is usually unnesesary to use them. the only drawback is thaqt cutting >the hole takes more effort. I was wondering how other people dove ice >as our tech community is rather isolated and small up here. > >STEVE SCHINKE -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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