Ice (free)diving

[FreediveWI]

Chris,

If I could just figure out why I can no longer post pictures to this forum >

It would be a lot easier to just show you.

I use a set up similar to the ones used in competition freediving. It includes a weighted line that is suspended off the bottom a few feet so it can move around a little bit. I wear a wrist lanyard and am clipped in by a carbiner so that I can slide up and down the line. Once at the bottom I can move around and look at stuff, but once I start my ascent I get guided back to the hole. In the past I used a normal ice diving harness, but decided to simplify things a bit this year. Since htey use these wrist lanyards in constant ballast comps to over 300' of depth I feel pretty safe using it on an ice dive.

Today I had my freediving buddy out with me. When he was laying on the bottom I could see him from the surface. If there was ever a problem we would haul him up- just like in normal ice diving scenerios.

My normal spearfishing times are 1:30 - 2:00 minutes in the summer time. Under the ice it's about half. It's not really the cold, but every time you come up people want to ask you something and it kind of wrecks your breath-up. In freediving you kind of need to find you Zen. That's why you'll find you can hold your breath much longer after playing around in the water for an hour compared to when you first jump in.

When we spearfish in the winter time we find that we'll start out with 1:30+ bottom times at first and after a couple of hours in hte water our times will drop to as low as 20 seconds. THat's because we start to get cold and it really wrecks you breath hold if you start to shiver- still outlast the bubble blowers by more than an hour. 8)

Maybe I'll post show shots over on the MNSCUBA board and post a link. My buddy and I also got some really nice video today. Once he is done laying down a sound track to it I'll post a link to that as well.

Jon