DESPERATION DRIVES US TO ICE DIVING
& ALMOST KILLS ME

Its 1963 in Blacksburg, Va. What do you do in the winter when you are on the top of a mountain over 300 miles from the ocean and are bored with the pool? The only local lake we considered diving in has a foot of ice covering it in the winter. It was good old mountain lake. During the winter the caretakers did not even consider that anyone would be fool would be sneaking in.

That water certainly was too cold for any wetsuits we owned. To the rescue came the Totes drysuit. The cost was about $29.00 if I remember correctly, and we already owned long underwear for those long cold marches in the Blacksburg winter. A full face mask was only about 10 bucks. Wrist rails and rings and dishwashing gloves completed the setup. We could be dry as a bone, snug as a bug in a rug, and diving again in spite of the winter chill.

Our first adventure was to learn how to put that stuff on. First goes on the two layers of long john thermal underwear. Next comes the dry suit. The dry suit came in two parts. One was a hooded shirt that came down your legs. The other was a pair of pants that came up to your chest. After sliding down into the pants and folding the extra down your legs you put on the shirt and let it go down to the edge of the pants. Now you roll the two together up your body making a seal. It becomes a roll at your waist. The same routine for the gloves and wrist seals using a ring of latex rubber tubing in the middle of the roll. The roll ends up on the groove on the wrist rail. We played around with blowing up the suit and looking like a super hero with Popeye muscles.

The first big mistake, doing this in a warm dorm almost resulted in heat stroke. Sweat comes out of every pore at a rate of a quart every fifteen minutes. We get out of our suits as fast as we can. We are encouraged, if they are this hot here, wait till we get to the lake. We can't wait to the weekend.

In the boredom of a winter dorm, and you plan an activity as unusual as this, it is not hard to gather a following. On Saturday we head out for the lake with our groupies. No problem sneaking onto the ice. Being southern boys, we had no clue how much trouble it would be to cut a hole big enough in the ice to go through. A couple of us made the second mistake. That was suiting up when we got there. It took over an hour to cut through the ice. Even though the air temperature was about 20 degrees F, we were roasting to death in those suits. We finally solved the problem by laying on the ice and rolling over every once in a while to keep our body temperature uniform like a seal on a California beach.



Entering the water was heaven. Our body temperature was perfect. No leaks in the suits. Each diver tied a rope to his harness and headed out. What a different diving experience. The surface was completely flat and smooth and our bubbles spread out on them. The visibility was at least 50 feet. The algae had dropped into the depths. The light diffused through the foot of ice and snow covering illuminating the bottom with a uniform ethereal lighting. Nothing moved unless it was due to the motion of our hands or fins. The bass, sunfish, and water newts did not even seem to notice as we approached them. We suspected that their icy brains were on dead slow. Our brains were racing. After our timed 30 minute dive, we felt our ropes jerked and turned back to the hole. It was really hard to return to the portal to our world of air.

In groups of two all of the divers made the icy plunge under the ice. At the end of the dive we slipped the four by eight ice plug back into the hole knowing that in a few hours, it would be once again part of the lakes frozen cover. We had proof of concept and one hundred percent success. The next weekend we would be ready for some real diving.

EVOLUTION IN ACTION