Trimix diving between the years
Team: Max, Tobi, Flo, Steffen, Zeljka, Steffen B.
It has already become a kind of tradition in the Cavebase to go to Lake Garda between Christmas and New Year. So we did it also this year.
What makes Lake Garda so attractive for us? First of all, Lake Garda is very warm, it never gets colder than 10 degrees even at depth. Here the difference to domestic lakes is already clearly noticeable. In addition, Lake Garda has gigantic visibility of up to 20 meters in winter, which is further enhanced by the white rock.
For deep divers all over the world Lake Garda is a very special attraction, it is 356 m deep and has countless steep walls, some with overhangs. A perfect training area for us.
Many of our project caves have depths of 100 m or more. Therefore it is important for us to train such dives in the comparatively easy "open water" environment.
On December 27th we arrived in Riva del Garda in the north of Lake Garda with best weather, 16 degrees and sunshine. Steffen Burger, a friend of the team, was with us this time.
On the first day there was a familiarization dive to 80 m in the harbor of Riva, where also some world war bombs are to be found and in Dekotiefe a large Jesus statue stands. The evening program consisted of course of Dolce Vita à la Italia, with lots of pizza, cappuccino and tiramisu. Our families were also part of the party, so of course there was a vacation atmosphere.
The next day one of our favorite dive sites, the so called "Crack" in Tempesta was on the program. This is a large crack in the rock, which extends from just under 50 m to well over 90 m water depth. We found it right away and dived down the wall on the outside of the crack to the start of the crack at 110 m. Two hours later we were out of the water again and made some more videos in best sunshine.
The next day we repeated this really great dive again down to 130 m where there is a big plateau and great rock formations. At the edge of the plateau it goes clearly further towards the depth.
On the 30th the majority of the team went home again. Steffen B. and Max had not enough and made a scout dive on the so far unknown west side of the lake. This is where Luca Pedralli set the Italian deep diving record in 2017. This was the spot we wanted to visit. We followed the verbal description and dived right next to the road on a gigantic wall and did some bottom time at 50m before heading home in a good mood and full of new experience from the good training, where snow and bad weather was already waiting for us.
Surely we will come back to our favorite Trimix training area soon.
In this sense,
Your Cavebase