Mont Blanc Ice Diving

Tangfish · Post by **Tangfish** » Sat Sep 09, 2006 10:47 pm

I was watching a Nova episode on PBS today and I came across what is definitely the most extreme diving I've ever seen/heard of. These glaciologists are charged with finding hidden lakes within the glaciers of Mont Blanc, Europe's tallest mountain.

They did a dive to 80' within the glacier via a 'water well', looking for cracks in the glacier that could lead to or indicate a hidden lake. It was crazy, the water was actually just below 0 celsius and they had to rappel themselves and all their gear down into a giant hole in the ice and then saw through 6' of ice. In all, it was part cave dive, part extremely cold water ice dive, and part altitude dive (I think they were at around 10,000', not to mention the ice climbing and crevasse travel to get in and out. To top it all off, emergency support was tens of thousands of vertical feet away. Insane.

Here's the episode.

DiverDown · Post by **DiverDown** » Sat Sep 09, 2006 11:24 pm

Yeah, I saw that one also,BRRRRRRR.. Kinda takes ice diving specialty to the next level!!

Joshua Smith · Post by **Joshua Smith** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 6:36 am

Holy %*&#! That's some new kind of extreme sport allright!

diver-dad · Post by **diver-dad** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 5:18 pm

Wow! That's pretty hard-core diving. .... Talk about slim margins for error!

Sasquatch · Post by **Sasquatch** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 6:59 pm

I completely admire their dedication to their science but I say, without hesitation, I'd not like to try it.

Wow

lamont · Post by **lamont** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 7:23 pm

i saw that a few years ago... was it 80 feet or 80 meters?

DiverDown · Post by **DiverDown** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 8:28 pm

If I remember right,It was 80fgw $\:D/$ ...

Sounder · Post by **Sounder** » Mon Sep 11, 2006 10:13 am

I saw it too - wouldn't mind being the guy who's camping out waiting for the pink dye to show up, but they had 6 regulators between the three divers... by the time they finished, all but one were frozen.

Altitude+Climbing+Cold+Overhead/Dynamic Environment=?! I wonder if DAN would cover it.