Ruskeasannan monttu

2021-01-30 D794 Ruskeasannan monttu

This was actually my first ice dive ever. On many past winters I had intended to do ice diving, but many past winters were too warm, so there wasn’t enough ice to do it. Then on many winters I was traveling so much that I missed the few opportunities that were available. Finally the early winter 2021 was cold enough, and due to corona pandemic it was impossible to travel. Olli Jarva was arranging the workshop and training event for our club. Mikko Koskinen agreed to be our instructor.

I attended the ice diving workshop arranged by my diving club Kupla the previous week before this ice diving training. I made the diving event and rescue plans. Originally 9 divers plus Mikko our instructor were planning tom attend the event.
The location was selected to be the Ruskeasanta quarry pond just behind the Helsinki-Vantaa airport. It is only 30 min drive away. The pond is only 7 meters deep.
I had just bought a new dry suit, and had not been able to test it before. So this was also going to be the very first dive with the new dry suit.

We had agreed to meet at the site at 11:00. On that day it was -5 C and snowing quite heavily. We had to tow all equipment from the parking lot with sleds down to the pond. I had two sleds myself and had to make two rounds to tow all my gear, and some of the common gear: ice drill and saw, oxygen and dive marshal kits.

I used by D12 tanks full of Nitrox 31%. I had also 2 liter suit inflation tank of plain air.
I used 8 kg of weights and that worked ok.

On the pond there was also another diving club, Helsingin Urheilusukeltajat, and theyr made one opening to the ice for themselves. We made two openings to the ice and planned to have 2 divers under the ice concurrently with a dive time of 30 min each. One diver per each opening. It took almost 2 hours to drill and saw the triangle openings, because the ice was quite thick, 20 cm, and the ice blocks we cut were very heavy.
Only 8 divers eventually came to the site, so we planned to do 4 sets of dives. There were me, Olli, Petri, Juha, Ulla, Ukko, Heikki, Santtu. For every diver there was the surface buddy attending the safety lines. Then there was a rescue diver and dive marshal. I was the first dive marshal and the first divers went below ice at 13:01. The first set went fine. Apparently the visibility was not so great.

I was going to dive on the 2nd set from the 2nd opening. When I had fully kitted up, I noticed that the inflation valve of my brand new dry suit had detached from the suit. Apparently at the factory they had not tightened the valve properly. So then I had to take all gear off, open the suit and reattach the valve. This caused considerable delay, and it was only at 14:31 when I finally got under water. Olli was my surface buddy. I had taken my underwater camera with me, but decided not to dive with it. The bottom below the ice opening was only 6 meters deep, water was +4 C. The dry suit felt pretty warm. However, after a while some water did leak in. I suspect that the inflation valve did not seal 100%, so it was maybe where water was leaking a bit. But it wasn’t too bad and I felt pretty ok for the entire dive that lasted 27 min. Visibility was indeed not so good, maybe 2 meters at best, and the bottom was buddy and silting a lot. Lot of small trees were growing from the bottom, and there was a lot trash. I could find two shopping carts, a TV and a couch that had been dumped there. The diving itself went ok and I had no issues.

After I got to surface, there were only a few divers to dive and around 16:00 everyone had made a dive. Only Ulla had to skip as her neck seal tore just before she was going to dive. Then it was time to tow all gear back to the parking lot. I took my tanks to Kuplakammio and filled them up. The dry suit and undersuit I took home for drying.