INTO THE FREEZER
Snow conditions a bit dodgy? Head underwater…
By Alf Alderson
I’m in the French ski resort of Tignes where snow is falling heavily as I squeeze into a dry suit and prepare to dive beneath the surface of the frozen Lac de Tignes – I’ve long been intrigued by the idea of ice diving beneath, and this is the perfect chance to try it.
A select few French ski resorts (including Val Thorens and Morzine as well as Tignes) offer ice diving for beginners, and improbable as it seems you don’t actually need any diving experience to give it a go.
Ice diving is, admittedly, a pretty niche activity, but for major ski resorts like Tignes it’s no longer enough to just offer skiing and snowboarding, hence the introduction of such outlandish winter experiences.
Before sinking beneath the lake’s frigid waters I’m fully kitted out with diving gear and given basic instructions on how to use it by PADI instructor Alban Michon (who has dived in the Arctic and Greenland).
Then we make our way across the ice to a small, dark hole that has been cut into it so I can put this new-found knowledge into practice. I notice that the steel grey water I’m about to slip into is already starting to ice over, and Alban breaks up the thin surface ice with his flippers before entering the water, after which he beckons me in.
It’s not actually as cold as I expected – little worse than a wet and windy winter day back in Britain, with the dry suit doing a sound job of keeping the initial chill at bay. Alban checks my regulator once more, then slips beneath the surface and I follow…
I have a lifeline connecting me to Alban, but even so from within the confines of my neoprene helmet I can hear my heart thudding loudly as a certain level of anxiety grips me – I’ve only been diving once before, on a beginner’s day in the warm, aqua-blue Red Sea, and this is about as far removed from that as you can get.
There isn’t the sense of freedom here that I experienced on my Red Sea dive – the combination of grey, snowy skies and a snow covered icy lid over the lake gives an opaque light to everything and I have a feeling of being slightly constrained, as if I’m in a huge, underwater prison. My gaze is constantly drawn towards shafts of fuzzy blue light that indicate various escape – sorry, exit – holes that have been cut into the ice.
It’s not that I don’t have confidence in my guide, but I feel the need to be fully aware of where the exit holes are. As the chill of water that’s only a couple of degrees above zero starts to make itself felt my senses starts to focus almost as much on the cold pressure of the water outside my dry suit as the ice-blue world around me.
Not that it isn’t spectacular, mind. At one point Alban gives me a tap on the shoulder and points first to the air bubbles leaving my mouthpiece, and then follows them upwards. As they hit the underside of the ice, the bubbles coalesce then scatter like mini, iridescent Frisbees, racing along the frozen ceiling desperately trying to find somewhere to escape to the atmosphere above. Many make it to one of the exit holes, but many don’t, and they eventually freeze to create stacks of glittering plates attached to the bottom of the ice; in some places air still remains in them, and one end may be open, providing ‘pockets’ you can grip hold of to pull yourself through the water.
My torch reveals infinite shades of blue, aquamarine and green, until eventually we surface briefly in a small ‘ice cave’, a dome in the surface ice large enough for us both to poke our heads above water yet still remain beneath the lake’s frozen surface.
We dip down into the water again for a couple of minutes before Alban leads me back to the hole where we first entered the lake. By now, after 20-minutes underwater, I’m feeling an all-encompassing chill, not unlike sitting on a slow-moving chairlift in a blizzard, and I’m quite happy to clamber back onto the lake’s solid, icy surface.
Even so I’m chuffed to bits with myself for having taken on the challenge – the silent, almost dream-like world beneath Lac de Tignes is a million miles away from the vast, airy expanse of the surrounding mountains and like nothing I’ve ever experienced before…
More info on ice diving with Evolution 2 in Tignes at http://tignes.evolution2-divingcenter.com
