Friday 27th January. BACK TO TOP

Late start, despite no hangover. Luuuke looked like shit at brekky. He and Ricky admitted that the strip club turned out to be somewhat different. It was in fact a brothel. Fortunately they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) afford the €450 required and had so just had an expensive beer instead. Got away at about 10.
Drove through Belgium, Luxembourg (no snow in Luxembourg) and into Germany. The traffic got bad in Germany, particularly around Stuttgart. Dorothy did us proud though (not so sure about Matt’s driving!) and we got to the Taucherhof in Aitrang by 5. It was pretty cold now and there was plenty of snow on the ground. It looked particularly deserted, but with the help of a local woman found Thomas and we were shown around. The hot tub and sauna looked particularly appealing!
Andy and Ricky arrived about 15 minutes after us and Luuuuke and Jeremy another 30 minutes after that.
It was then beer o’clock! The Taucherhof had plenty of beer, which was good!
We drank until 7, chatting to Thomas about the ice diving, then walked to the local restaurant where we had more beer and some pretty good food, despite not understanding a single thing on the menu. I can’t even pretend to speak German.

Saturday 28th January. BACK TO TOP

Brekky at 8:30. This was good. There was another group of grown-up proper ice divers there too. They cleared off to Austria straight after breakfast while Thomas went through the theory of ice diving. It was all informative and entertaining. Then it was out into the snow covered garden to try rope techniques.
Then we prepped the kit, had a quick lunch at another local hostelry, and it was into the bus to go to the local lake to go ice diving, yippeeee!

It was only a five minute drive to the lake. The scenery was very pretty - snow covered fields glistening in the sunshine. All a bit ideal, really. The lake was quite small - 50m wide by 400m long. About 300m was frozen over - the far end was still open water. There were a few people playing with model speed boats on that part.
When we arrived at the lake and unpacked the kit onto a tarpaulin, Jeremy then came up to me and said “did you pack the other cylinders, Keith?”. I had a moment of panic. No, I’d certainly not packed any other cylinders other than what my breaver wanted. The panic didn’t last long though as I quickly realised that it was just Jeremy who’d not brought all his kit! Ooops. In the end he borrowed Luuuke’s breaver.
The first thing was to get into the drysuit. The rule was; if you’re on the ice you must either be in a zipped-up drysuit, or in normal clothes. We chose the former!
Next, we had to cut a hole in the ice, which was about 200mm thick, covered in a light dusting of snow. First, a hole was bashed through the ice with a pitchfork, then a triangle with 2m sides cut with a large saw. A triangle makes getting out easier than a square, and it’s also less sawing than a square!
The sides of the triangle were about 2m; allowing sufficient space for two fully kitted divers in the opening. We also had to take care with cutting so the sides were slightly bevelled, thus allowing the cut section to be pushed beneath the ice. Apparently the rules say you should lift the cut section out… but it weighs a ton! Maybe some maths wiz can tell me how heavy a triangle of ice is 2m each side, 200mm thick.

Matt and I dived first. Jeremy tendered us. We kitted up on the edge of the ice - not very easy as it was extremely slippery, as you can imagine! Eventually we did it and slid into the water. The viz was good; maybe 10m or more. The water was not particularly cold, well it seemed no worse than Horsea Lake on a cold February morning! The lake was about 6m deep and the bottom was silt covered in long thin weed. We slid beneath the ice. It was cool. This was we’d come here to do - the bottom of the ice was smooth and disappeared off in all directions. It looked amazing. Matt, for reasons best known to himself, sunk down into the weed and silt. I made myself buoyant and slid along the underside of the ice; I figured I could sink into silt any day of the week back home. We went out along on length of the lake, behind us the rope disappeared back out of the hole behind us. The shone down through the hole most prettily. Before long the lake became shallow so we turned ourselves and went back to the hole. None of the dives were very long; the lake was fairly small and there just wasn’t any particular need to dive longer.

Once the dives were complete we pushed the cut-out ice back into the hole and walked down the ice towards where the lake was no longer frozen. This was quite scary (at least for me!) - this just wasn’t a sensible thing to do! It was surprising how far you could get before there was any sign of the ice breaking. The first indication was a most unpleasant noise that shot very quickly from one side of the ice to the other. It’s hard to describe the sound - imagine a large piece of sheet steel being struck with a bit of wood and the sound that would then go through the steel and you’ll about have it. It was quite terrifying when you’re actually on the ice, even thought we were obviously still in drysuits. I ran back onto thicker ice. The others progressed closer to the edge, more shrieks coming from the ice and also it starting making cracking noises that you’d expect it to. Suddenly the ice gave way beneath Matt and he dropped into the lake. The ice was about an inch think where it’d given way beneath him. Getting out took a bit of doing; once the ice had broken it lost a bit of its strength and what had previously held now also gave way beneath him as he crawled his way back. Eventually the ice was too thick to break again and he slid out on his belly onto the ice.

We tidied up our stuff and drove back to the Taucherhof. Stuff was unloaded into the dive store so it wouldn’t freeze overnight and we headed into the hot tub with beer! Yum! This was a good thing to do after ice diving! Matt was first to dash out of the tub and out into the snow. He really is turning into mini-Ian. Everyone else then had to do it - in fact it’s not really cold if you’re quick, you just don’t have time for the cold to seep through, though your bits get a bit chilly lying face down on the ice! Getting back into the tub your skin tingles briefly. We also did the sauna, more snow, and ended up with a shower.

That evening we ate at the Taucherhof. It was a sort of indoor barbeque, everything getting cooked on what they called a “hot stone”. This was a slab of polished granite 50cm by 20cm by 1cm held in a frame over two spirit burners. On the granite you put whatever meat or veg that you wanted to cook. There was one hot stone between the six of us - the rules were that you had to make your own part of the stone as tasty as possible, but once it was on the stone it became anyone’s to eat! In fact I think we all stuck to our own sections; everyone preffered to eat what they’d chosen. With some more beer it was good fun, anyway! After the hot stone was done a birthday cake magically appeared which was nice.

Sunday 29th January. BACK TO TOP

Breakfast at 8:30 again, this morning there was minimal faff and were were ready to go by 9:50. We headed off to Austria and the mountains! It took about an hour to drive there, the scenery became prettier and prettier as we got further into the Alps. There was snow everywhere.
We arrived at the dive site and piled out of the bus. It was cold here; the sun was still behind the mountains and it was cold. We walked to the lake; about 50m from where Thomas parked the bus. This lake was bigger than yesterday’s, some 100m by 500m. Again, the far end was clear of ice. We cut two holes in the ice as previous, again this was hard work cutting through 20cm of ice. B y the time we’d finished cutting the sun had appeared over the mountains; it seemed a lot warmer and the scenery was stunning in the sunshine.

Once the holes were cut Luuuke and I dived first.

This lake was very different to yesterday’s. Not only was it bigger, but also a lot lot clearer. The second safety hole we’d cut was clearly visible, 50m away from the first. Indeed you could see way past it; the viz had to be at least 80m. Coool. The lake was 6m deep at most, but the bottom had large undulations in it, making it only 2m in places. We swam out across the lake, snapping away merrily as we went. I stuck up to the ice, giving myself a nice ice-cream headache as I rested my hood up against it. The water is a lot colder up by the ice!

As we swam round towards the safety hole we could see the others jumping into it and taking photos. We didn’t know at the time; but Thomas had made a slide into the hole by sweeping a track clear of snow, then pushing water up over the track to make it smooth and slippy.

Our dive lasted about 20 minutes; plenty of time to see the lake to the extent of the rope. It wasn’t really cold in the water; well, no worse than any inland dive in the UK in winter.

Everyone else had their dives and it was good to see their grinning faces as they came back to the surface. I think everyone had a fantastic time.

We then walked off to the edge of the ice again. I tried to be less chicken than the day before and actually get to the edge. The ice didn’t make quite such scary noises as Saturday. The ice went clear toward the edge and the bottom was clearly visible beneath your feet, which was quite weird. The ice does not give way without warning; there were plenty of cracking noises. Indeed I could see cracks forming in the ice around me. Most scary! Eventually of course it gave way and I dropped with a yelp into the water. It was cold on my exposed head. Very cold! I now know that I can walk on ice thicker than an inch and it won’t give way. I don ‘t quite know what use this information is, but there we go!

Getting out was unpleasant; as soon as you lift yourself onto the ice it just gives way again, dumping you back into the icy water. Where it didn’t give way, it is so slippery that it’s impossible to pull yourself out. Thomas showed us the technique to help someone out of such a situation. The rescuer must lie on the ice with their legs within reach of the victim. The victim can then pull themselves out on the legs of the rescuer. A very effective technique.

Andy and Ricky dived again and then we called it a day. We packed the stuff back into the trailer and went back to Germany and the Taucherhof.

Sadly, it was then time to leave. We packed the cars and had coffee and cake. Luuuke went first as he was planning on driving to Chamonix to go skiing for the rest of the week. We then too left and drove 2 hours to Sindelfingen, near Stuttgart, where we stopped for the night.

Monday 30th January. BACK TO TOP

Up early for a quick breakfast and then the long road home. There were some miles to do today!
Despite Matt’s gps taking us on a roundabout (and expensive) route, we arrived at the tunnel two hours ahead of my predicted schedulen (but half an hour behind Andy and Ricky who had followed the predicted route). Good!