Divers Take the Ultimate Cold Plunge Under Frozen Otsego Lake

By DEBRA MOFFITT
SPRINGFIELD

If you’re going to cut a hole into the middle of Lake Otsego and scuba dive under the ice, you can expect one question from the rest of us: Why?

Readying for his first ice dive in Otsego Lake, Christos Galanopoulos sat on the shoreline on Saturday, February 14, maybe asking himself the same question. He dangled his finned feet into the water, heavy tanks of air on his back. By day, he’s district manager of the Otsego County Soil and Water Conservation District.

“Oh,” he said, “this is another level of cold.”

But he slipped into the water and, after 15 minutes or so, returned to the surface and pumped a fist into the air. Volunteers quickly helped Galanopoulos out, covered him in a blanket and offered the gift of hot water warmed in a turkey fryer. Divers could dunk their frigid hands into a warm tub or ask for a pour over their heads or down their backs.

Aquatic biologist Sarah Coney was the first one in the water on Saturday, and equally quick to answer why she ice dives.

“Right now, it’s admittedly bragging rights,” she said.

If ice diving is a flex, it was well-earned by the three divers who took steps toward their certification last weekend. Even in pleasant conditions, learning to scuba dive (scuba, an accepted word in its own right, is an acronym for “self-contained underwater breathing apparatus”) takes a degree of physical courage. Ice diving turns it up a notch. Spending too much time under seven inches of lake ice in 34-degree water could be deadly. Regulators, a critical piece of scuba equipment that makes it possible to breathe underwater, sometimes fail in cold temperatures.

Panic is to be expected as the body absorbs the shock of cold that even a dry suit can’t fully block. Divers feel it in their face and hands. A profound “ice cream headache” hits in the middle of the forehead.

For a bit, divers can forget the chill while they complete their underwater tasks. But when you sense the cold starting to dull your response times, that’s your cue to get out—while you still have plenty of breathing gas, said Paul Lord, a SUNY Oneonta professor, longtime environmental researcher and scuba instructor for 40 years. A retired U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel, Lord organized the ice dive certification training north of Cooperstown—something he has been doing on Otsego Lake for about 20 years.

Lord, 75, took several dives himself Saturday to monitor his students. In addition to bragging rights, Lord says ice diving offers adventure, year-round access, research capabilities (his focus is freshwater pearly mussels), search and recovery skills, an entrée into underwater photography, and “no boats threatening to run over our divers.” In a nod to warmer seasons, the team poked a dive flag into the top of the hay bale wall that blocked the wind at the dive site.

Just stepping on a frozen lake has its risks. This winter in Otsego County brought sustained cold temperatures but also a lot of snow, which can insulate the lake ice and make it unstable. Lord studied the conditions, monitored cracks in the ice and made the call that February 14 was a go. The good-humored crew of volunteers, including Lord’s current and former students, hauled out toboggans loaded with air tanks, first aid kits, toolboxes, and measured lead lines.

Even bystanders needed to be cautious there in the middle of a mile-wide lake around a man-made cavity in the ice. (I was handed a life vest and advised “Don’t go near the hole.”) Were you to hover from a drone’s eye view, you would see that the hole—an equilateral triangle carved out with a chain saw—sat in the epicenter of a spoked wagon wheel made by artfully shoveling snow from the lake’s surface.

From beneath the ice sheet, the wagon-wheel design functioned as overhead lighting to orient and guide the divers. What was it like under there?

“You can hear the ice cracking, which I guess is unnerving,” said Coney, who has six years of ice diving experience. But the view inspires tranquil awe. “I’ve always likened it to a cathedral with the light filtering down through the wagon wheel.”

After his exploration under the ice, Stephen Root, a biology master’s degree student at SUNY Oneonta, tried to put it into words.

“The water was crystal clear. I can’t describe it,” he said. “The wagon wheel—it just glows.”

Over their zipped-up dry suits, the ice divers wore yellow harnesses so they could be leashed to “tenders” who stood outside the water and monitored their diver’s progress, making sure no one wandered too far or too long. They watched the surface for too many bubbles, which could indicate a problem regulator.

Diver and tender communicate via pulls on the lead line. Volunteer Elizabeth Hoag, a sophomore at SUNY Oneonta, wrote a cheat sheet in Sharpie on the back of her hand. Two tugs on the line = release more line. Four tugs = out now.

Serving out of the water as a tender or safety diver is step one in getting your ice diver certification. The full course of study requires three ice dives over a minimum of two days, Lord said.

His students, who simply call him “Lord,” say he can be a tough professor who challenges them to fully commit to their studies. In their academic lives, they’re undergrads training to be biology teachers and grad students looking into parasite life cycles and the impact of knotweed.

But on February 14 at the dive site, they were on call for whatever was required. One diver needed a new O ring installed ASAP. Another beckoned for a wrench to fix a leaking valve. They were on it.

Even small tasks merited close attention. Someone checked that a line was being neatly gathered into a bucket to avoid tangling. Another was sure to bring zippered plastic bags to protect documents.

And when it was time to make an important phone call from the middle of the ice, a student volunteer stepped up to do that, too. She ordered pizza for the afterparty, with anchovies of course.