Ice Diving with Full Face Mask

Urisee (T/A)

Ice diving in Lake Urisee (near Reutte, Austria): snuggly packed we dived under ice ... that was more of a thick layer of snow than proper ice. One week ago, there was rain and later heavy snowing, so we ended up with this less-than-perfect situation.

But it was still a real pleasure, especially with my Dräger Panorama Nova Dive full face mask on the face, keeping the cold waters at bay. And the redundant reg system was also adding to the good feelin'. Of course, there is much more to safety than just the redundant full face mask regs.

This actually was my first ice diving ever and I really enjoyed it. Since I already gained quite some experience diving this full face mask it was the right decision to wear it when going under ice.

Warning! Do never attempt to ice dive with a full face mask without prior proper training and experience in diving a full face mask in less demanding situations. To believe that everyone can use a full face mask even in demanding conditions, such as ice diving, is plain dumb and quickly turn deadly! Of course, start ice diving only under training and supervision of a properly certified instructor.

Unexpectedly, the Dräger mask box turned out to be even of use in temperatures of -16°C: placed into the beautiful winter sun, it kept the full face mask at a convenient temperature level and kept it from freezing due to the black color the box is made in.

Above Urisee (T/A)

Also with me were my two cameras GoPro HD Hero 3 Black Edition. I'm really satisfied with the results under water: again, correct colors (as with the HD Hero 1, but even better, as there is no in-cam postprocessing anymore). And even under difficult lighting conditions very, very low color noise levels. Protune was enabled in order to be able to completely switch off white balancing. And since the sensor color noise is now considerably lower than that of the HD Hero 2, using Protune actually starts making sense.