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When divers begin to get eager for the freshwater diving season to start in Ontario, Canada, they start inventing all sorts of excuses to get wet. The yearly Ice Floe race which takes place on a weekend in March in Peterborough, Ontario, began over four decades ago and… |
… are an effort of the local dive clubs to give their members an excuse to get in the water. A little healthy and fun competition between dive clubs doesn’t hurt either.
The objective of the race is simple; move a huge block of ice along the river to an end goal. The team that moves the ice blocks from start to end in the least amount of time takes the medals home.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Well, just ask the divers who participated in the derby that lasted an average of 40 minutes of pushing and kicking. It’s a little exhaustive to say the least!
In order to get the ice prepared, a special team of ice-cutting experts — whom I suppose have gained their expertise from doing the task for so many years — cut the ice carefully from the partly frozen river. The trick is not so much cutting the ice, but rather keeping it from floating away once it is cut. As you can see from this picture, you often just have to jump in and hold them together until they can be secured. This can be quite dangerous if the currents change directions and push the ice block back towards the diver.
The participating teams of 12-16 divers each meanwhile prepare themselves by putting on their dive suits as the water is particularly chilly this time of the year (low 40s) and a cold wind could make it even worse. Most divers as a result choose to don their dry suits, if they have one. However, several cold-blooded (literally!) divers somehow make it with their 7mm wetsuit. The hot chocolate offered after the dive goes by fast as you can imagine.
To maximize speed divers leave their regulators, tanks, masks, snorkel and of course most of their weights at home.
The diving team take turns kicking and taking breaks — no amount of stairmaster work could really prepare a diver for all this intensive exercise.
One by one, the exhausted but happy dive teams breathe a sigh of relief as they hear the boat horn, that tells them they have finally reached the finish line.
Hot soup, hot chocolate and hot dog lunch gets gobbled up in a blink of an eye as dive teams recap their high and low points in the race… and are already working on the strategy plan for the following year.
The winner is announced and celebrated.
And all the divers go home with a smile at the indulgence of having donned their dive suits and dipped in just a tad bit early then mother nature truly wanted them too.