HelmGuy
27-12-2010, 16:02
Boxing Day Ice Dive – Abbot’s Pool near Bristol
Every year our diving club joins with a number of other local clubs in an anual raft race. We all race home made rafts down a 3 mile stretch of the river Avon finishing at a pub on the river side. It’s great fun and good to do a little bit of exercise after over eating on Christmas day.
However, this year the race was cancelled due to the bad weather. The lock gates we usually start the race from were frozen solid. With a week or so of sub-zero temperature we’d been expecting this to happen and a few of the more hardy souls in our club were already talking about whether we might be able to do an ice dive instead.
With a bit of research we found an article on DiverNet by John Liddiard who had ice dived a local lake 3 years previous. A quick trip by two members of the club to check that the lake was frozen and confirmation that the raft race was cancelled and the ice dive at Abbot’s Pool was on!
5 members of the club were brave (or is that mad?) enough to do the dive and we all agreed to meet there at 9am Boxing Day morning.
The weather on the day
Driving to Abbot’s pool at 8:30am my car was showing -10 degrees so I was pretty hopeful the lake would still be frozen and when we got there the scene that greeted us was like something from a Christmas card. The roads were covered in snow and the lake was frozen solid. The air temperature was around -7 and we drilled a few holes in the ice to test the thickness. It was around 10cm in places and the water was around 2 degrees.
http://helmguy.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/abottspoollce.jpg
Interestingly our club had organised an ice diving trip to Poland about a year ago which I’d missed out on. But from what I’m told the ice was actually thicker here in Bristol than in Poland! Fred thought it was thick enough to drive a car on but I certainly wasn’t about to test that one out.
Cutting the Hole
Fred had brought along an electric drill and we had a couple of hand saws and a couple of claw hammers. To being with we weren’t even sure we’d be able to cut through the ice – it was that thick – but after about 25 minutes of hard work (thanks Fred!) we’d mananged to get a huge chunk of ice out big enough for 2 divers to get in and out of the water safely.
http://helmguy.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/freddrillingice.jpg
http://helmguy.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/holeinice.jpg
http://helmguy.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/thickice.jpg
Dive Equipment
Compared with a normal dive trip we didn’t need that much dive equipment. We set up two 12ltr cylinders with back plates and harness and a set of cold water regulators to share between us. We also prepared another set of gear (twin 7′s) for a stand-by safety diver. The plan is that if there’s a problem we could send in the safety diver to help on their own rope. We didn’t use BC’s and relied just on our dry suits for buoyancy. The water was shallow and we were all quite buoyant and spent most of the dive just under the ice.
Ropes were important and we used a set of ropes borrowed from a club member who also happen to be a climbing instructor (unfortunately he couldn’t make the dive as he had the flu!). We tied one end of the rope to an iron post and layed the ropes out to make sure they didn’t get tangled up. The rope was placed over one shoulder and under the other shoulder of the diver underneath their diving harness and also clipped on with a large carabiner. Both divers were attached to the same rope with a short length of rope between them so there was no chance of them losing each other.
We settled on a basic set of rope signals. ONE pull for OK, TWO pulls for “give me more rope”, THREE pulls for take up slack and FOUR pulls for “Come back” or ”I am returning”. Any more than 4 pulls meant that there was a problem and we’d have to haul them out of the water or send in the safety diver. Dan came along and acted as our rope tender and we all agreed that if he gave a single pull (meaning “Are you ok?”) and didn’t get a response then we’d assume there
was a problem and haul you out! So it was important to pay attention to the rope signals.
My first time ice diving!
http://helmguy.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/gettingintowater.jpg
Somehow I ended up being the first diver in the water and would be diving with Ian. The plan was that I’d lead the dive and Ian would be responsible for the rope signals. I also took a small torch and my underwater camera hoping to take some interesting photos of divers underwater. As it happened both the torch and camera were a waste of time because as soon as we got into the water we could see that there was little or no visibility at all! This was my first ice dive and also my first dive in zero vis so it took me a minute to settle down. This wasn’t a great dive for the claustrophobic or those with a nervous disposition! After a tentative OK from me Ian then led us for a bimble around the lake. I tried to take a photo of him but the vis was so poor there was little point. I turned on my torch which did nothing to help viability but I left it on anyway as apparently the guys topside could see where we were by following the torch light. I got a new dive computer for Christmas so wore that to test it out but as we were so shallow it didn’t even log a dive. At least I know it’s waterproof and ok in water down to 2 degrees!
We had a little look around and saw very little except a few branches and I think Ian also found a shopping trolley! The zero vis made it difficult for me to keep track of where I was in relation to the hole we’d cut in the ice so the ropes were very reassuring! Ian inverted to stand on the ice upside down and it was fun trying to look up through the ice at the world above. At one point I clearly saw a pair of feet walk over our heads (Fred’s I believe). We made our way back to the hole and got out of the water to let everyone else have a go. As there were 5 of us Ian stayed kitted up to go back in again with Gary and then Fred and Flave were the last pair into the water.
Several people were out for a boxing day walk around the lake while we were diving and we got some strange looks from them. I’m sure I heard one of them mutter something like “nutters” and maybe we were but it was a great experience and something you don’t get to do very often so close to home.
Would I do it again? Definitely. I think if the vis had been good it would have been an awesome dive so I’d love to try it again in deeper water where you’re likely to get better visibility.
Thanks to all the guys for making this fun and safe!
Every year our diving club joins with a number of other local clubs in an anual raft race. We all race home made rafts down a 3 mile stretch of the river Avon finishing at a pub on the river side. It’s great fun and good to do a little bit of exercise after over eating on Christmas day.
However, this year the race was cancelled due to the bad weather. The lock gates we usually start the race from were frozen solid. With a week or so of sub-zero temperature we’d been expecting this to happen and a few of the more hardy souls in our club were already talking about whether we might be able to do an ice dive instead.
With a bit of research we found an article on DiverNet by John Liddiard who had ice dived a local lake 3 years previous. A quick trip by two members of the club to check that the lake was frozen and confirmation that the raft race was cancelled and the ice dive at Abbot’s Pool was on!
5 members of the club were brave (or is that mad?) enough to do the dive and we all agreed to meet there at 9am Boxing Day morning.
The weather on the day
Driving to Abbot’s pool at 8:30am my car was showing -10 degrees so I was pretty hopeful the lake would still be frozen and when we got there the scene that greeted us was like something from a Christmas card. The roads were covered in snow and the lake was frozen solid. The air temperature was around -7 and we drilled a few holes in the ice to test the thickness. It was around 10cm in places and the water was around 2 degrees.
http://helmguy.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/abottspoollce.jpg
Interestingly our club had organised an ice diving trip to Poland about a year ago which I’d missed out on. But from what I’m told the ice was actually thicker here in Bristol than in Poland! Fred thought it was thick enough to drive a car on but I certainly wasn’t about to test that one out.
Cutting the Hole
Fred had brought along an electric drill and we had a couple of hand saws and a couple of claw hammers. To being with we weren’t even sure we’d be able to cut through the ice – it was that thick – but after about 25 minutes of hard work (thanks Fred!) we’d mananged to get a huge chunk of ice out big enough for 2 divers to get in and out of the water safely.
http://helmguy.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/freddrillingice.jpg
http://helmguy.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/holeinice.jpg
http://helmguy.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/thickice.jpg
Dive Equipment
Compared with a normal dive trip we didn’t need that much dive equipment. We set up two 12ltr cylinders with back plates and harness and a set of cold water regulators to share between us. We also prepared another set of gear (twin 7′s) for a stand-by safety diver. The plan is that if there’s a problem we could send in the safety diver to help on their own rope. We didn’t use BC’s and relied just on our dry suits for buoyancy. The water was shallow and we were all quite buoyant and spent most of the dive just under the ice.
Ropes were important and we used a set of ropes borrowed from a club member who also happen to be a climbing instructor (unfortunately he couldn’t make the dive as he had the flu!). We tied one end of the rope to an iron post and layed the ropes out to make sure they didn’t get tangled up. The rope was placed over one shoulder and under the other shoulder of the diver underneath their diving harness and also clipped on with a large carabiner. Both divers were attached to the same rope with a short length of rope between them so there was no chance of them losing each other.
We settled on a basic set of rope signals. ONE pull for OK, TWO pulls for “give me more rope”, THREE pulls for take up slack and FOUR pulls for “Come back” or ”I am returning”. Any more than 4 pulls meant that there was a problem and we’d have to haul them out of the water or send in the safety diver. Dan came along and acted as our rope tender and we all agreed that if he gave a single pull (meaning “Are you ok?”) and didn’t get a response then we’d assume there
was a problem and haul you out! So it was important to pay attention to the rope signals.
My first time ice diving!
http://helmguy.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/gettingintowater.jpg
Somehow I ended up being the first diver in the water and would be diving with Ian. The plan was that I’d lead the dive and Ian would be responsible for the rope signals. I also took a small torch and my underwater camera hoping to take some interesting photos of divers underwater. As it happened both the torch and camera were a waste of time because as soon as we got into the water we could see that there was little or no visibility at all! This was my first ice dive and also my first dive in zero vis so it took me a minute to settle down. This wasn’t a great dive for the claustrophobic or those with a nervous disposition! After a tentative OK from me Ian then led us for a bimble around the lake. I tried to take a photo of him but the vis was so poor there was little point. I turned on my torch which did nothing to help viability but I left it on anyway as apparently the guys topside could see where we were by following the torch light. I got a new dive computer for Christmas so wore that to test it out but as we were so shallow it didn’t even log a dive. At least I know it’s waterproof and ok in water down to 2 degrees!
We had a little look around and saw very little except a few branches and I think Ian also found a shopping trolley! The zero vis made it difficult for me to keep track of where I was in relation to the hole we’d cut in the ice so the ropes were very reassuring! Ian inverted to stand on the ice upside down and it was fun trying to look up through the ice at the world above. At one point I clearly saw a pair of feet walk over our heads (Fred’s I believe). We made our way back to the hole and got out of the water to let everyone else have a go. As there were 5 of us Ian stayed kitted up to go back in again with Gary and then Fred and Flave were the last pair into the water.
Several people were out for a boxing day walk around the lake while we were diving and we got some strange looks from them. I’m sure I heard one of them mutter something like “nutters” and maybe we were but it was a great experience and something you don’t get to do very often so close to home.
Would I do it again? Definitely. I think if the vis had been good it would have been an awesome dive so I’d love to try it again in deeper water where you’re likely to get better visibility.
Thanks to all the guys for making this fun and safe!