TRINITY'S 1st Annual 2010/2011 Icing/ Anchoring Challenge

[DetectorGuy]

Impressive anchors! Looks like a target rich environment. My 7mm hood is off to Team G.

Our team did not fare so well yesterday. I picked a nasty location for yesterdays dive. We went to the South end of Knife Lake and cut our hole over the old dam site. There were stories from fishermen that the rebar and concrete left on the bottom was snagging anchors like mad. I figured it would be a good spot to go... WRONG! The location was about 300' upstream from the bridge and thinking there would be current, I plunge cut with the chainsaw every 20' on the way out to verify ice thickness. The ice was clearly getting thinner as we got near the rivers current. We cut the hole and were again depressed at the 2' visibility. Not a lot of particles in the water but stained dark, dark brown. We toyed with the idea about going to another lake and salvage the day, but decided to set up and try it. Nate jumped in first and descended to the bottom. He came back to the hole and told us that there were 3' long vertical rebars coming up from the bottom all over that were cut on a diagonal so they were pointy. He made a decision that I am very impressed with... He called the dive. I was next in rotation and after several warnings about taking it slow, I went in with the plan of following the ice sheet into the current and then dropping to the bottom away from the dam. This worked well... for a while. I found some trees sticking up from when the dam was in place and got snagged up on them about 50' from the hole. I worked through that and made my way upstream toward the dam. I found it with a massive pile of rebar and concrete chunks the size of cars. I was getting into looking for anchors in the rebar mess, when my inflator on the BC stuck and popped me to the ice sheet before I could unhook my inflator hose. I thought about continuing the dive for a second, but then came to my senses and went back to the hole. Art went last and he went out the other direction and crossed over the dam several times. He came back to the hole 3 times to drop off anchors. on his fourth time back to the hole he was scouring the bottom and came up to the concrete structure of the dam foundation and went up to get over it. Thats when he noticed he had a slab of concrete over his head (Double overhead environment). He backed out of that and got snagged several more times when he came back to the hole. Nate and I did not find any anchors. We wrote this location off as being miserable and dangerous to say the least. Here is a pic of Arts 3 anchors with the bridge in the background.