Toucan Dive’s Ice Diving Tour was a rousing success story. The difficulty of pulling off a weekend of ice diving requires a great deal of planning and a lot of luck. Many years in the past, the ice can be too thin or nonexistent. At other times, the surface conditions can be so difficult with subzero temperatures and high winds can make it nearly impossible for divers to assist in setting up a base camp. It can also be difficult for surface support to assist at tending for the ice divers in the water. A great deal of preparation is at stake in planning a weekend such as we just had. The fact that the weather assisted us by being in the mid forty degree area, and the sun being out helped out immensely.
Ice Diving On Deep Lake
Our choice of dive sites was Deep Lake in Lake Villa, Illinois, a stone’s throw from the dive shop. By doing so, many of our ice divers geared up at Toucan Dive. Upon getting to the site parking lot, we had to cover about 500 yards inward on the lake to get to an area deep enough for our ice diving candidates to do their skills. By having a snowmobile, and a pull behind sled, we were able to get all our gear, and equipment out to the Toucan Dive Base Camp.
Ice Diving Is Fun
Interestingly, many divers believe that ice diving is a miserable experience, but it is quite the opposite. Not only is the diving interesting, and unusual, but we make sure to have our many creature comforts. We had a make shift warming area set up with heaters for our ice divers. The Toucan barbeque stove was keeping hot chile, and brats at the ready for our diver’s consumption, as they exited the water. Jimmy Buffett played in the background as our artificial Corona Beer palm tree’s fronds danced to the music, in the breeze. It was really quite a sight! All in all, a really great time was had by all, and there are now four more PADI certified ice divers. Check out the gallery below:
