Ice diving in the French Alps
There's a chilling kind of escape awaiting the moreadventurous tourist beneath ice-bound alpine lakes. Alf Alderson takes the plunge
Slowly, I sink beneath the surface of the frozen Tignes Le Lac in the heart of the French Alps and feel a cold, sinister squeezing around my rib cage as the pressure of the icy cold water increases. My breathing becomes more laboured, and the sound as I inhale and exhale through my regulator is amplified inside my neoprene helmet. Expelled air bursts forth in silvery bubbles and races upwards to become trapped under the ice sheet above me.
Unlikely as it may seem, I'm on a trip to one of the biggest ski resorts in the world and have somehow found myself being talked into having a go at ice diving. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone suffering from claustrophobia - it's cold, it's confined and if you don't like it there's no quick escape route.
But it is a remarkably beautiful underwater world all the same.
My guide and instructor David Monmarche hands me a waterproof torch and invites me to watch the air bubbles as they bounce off the icy roof above and scatter in all directions like globules of shimmering mercury. Those that fail to find their way to the hole through which we entered the frozen lake eventually coagulate and freeze to form pretty stacks like translucent dinner plates.
There's a strange, cold light down here, a diffuse icy blue that scatters through the opaque surface of the ice and then bursts through our entrance hole like a spotlight. As we weave around beneath the frozen surface, my hand brushes its underside and glinting daggers, glittering needles and shiny clear spicules break free and drift past.
I've only dived once before, in the warm, turquoise waters of the Red Sea, and this is about as similar as walking on the moon. Plunging through a small, dark hole in a frozen lake high in the wintry French Alps may seem like the act of a masochist, but it actually isn't such a bad option today. Most of the ski slopes are closed due to avalanche risk from the two-day blizzard we're enduring - since the skiing options are limited why not slide beneath a metre-thick layer of ice for a submarine chill out?
Anyone can do it, or so the adverts say. You don't need to have dived before, and Monmarche is a qualified Padi instructor who runs me through the basics that I need for my 20-minute underwater excursion in a matter of minutes.