ice diving, how many years/dives?

[DetectorGuy]

Hey Gravy, I started diving on May 19, 2007 and I finished my ice certification on 1-24-2009. The last dive for ice certification set of dives was on Mille Lacs Lake and the weather was really cold. We woke up to -20f and it warmed right up to -10f by 11:00 with a 25 MPH wind. This dive was #64 for me and I am only at 233 dives to date.

The only regrets I have relating to ice diving is not doing it sooner. Like Hydro said it is so relaxing while you are ice diving, but it is logistics intensive (at least the way we do it). I usually figure I am going to chew up 10 hours of the day just to get in two dives that only last 45 minutes to 80 minutes each. I am probably not the one to ask advice from about how we set up. Everyone has their own style and system. We tend to take our time and relax more than most ice divers. We plow off a space for the shelter if the ice thickness allows a plow truck, if not we shovel. Then one guy starts the water boiling in a big kettle over a turkey cooker while the other guy cuts the one single hole for the day. The hole we usually cut is exactly 4'x4'x4'. I know this is true because we use a 2 piece plywood template that also doubles as something to stand on while tending. If the ice is really thick (like 14"+) we use the plow on the truck to hoist the ice block from the hole. if the ice is <14" we cut the triangle block into thirds and pull each block by hand using an ice screw in each and a rope. Lately I have been cutting grooves in the surface of the ice 2" deep from the sides of the hole  toward where the end of our shelter will be. This allows water to run back into the hole, and not pond up on the floor inside the 60f degree shelter. Once the hole is cut we put up the shelter. This only takes a few minutes to set up but we take another couple minutes to shovel snow on the edges and tie the shelter down if its windy. We light the sunflower type heater in the shelter and start to warm it up. By now the water is warm so we bring it in and dump it into a cooler for later. We plow or shovel rays from the hole to let more light penetrate the ice and we dump buckets of water on the rays to make the ice crystal clear (better light transmission). We haul our gear inside the toasty shelter and shut all the window flaps to make it dark inside for a minute. Nate takes a couple of coins from his pocket and tosses them in the hole one at a time. We start counting the seconds from the time it hits the water to when we cant see the coin flipping in the water anymore. The amount of time in seconds is the exact footage of visibility. Even though the coins are different sizes, nickles, dimes, and quarters fall through the water at 1 foot per second. If we see the coin falling for 13 seconds, we know we have 13' of visibility. Now that we know the visibility, we can adjust our plan of what search radius interval we will use for the day. Then we open up the window flaps and do "rock-paper-scissors" to see who goes first.

This set-up and tear-down method is not really that time consuming and I think it makes for a very comfortable, casual, relaxed day. Like I said before... everyone is different and some ice divers actually enjoy being miserable > ;D