Janez Kranjc explains the allure – and the challenges - of ice diving when he heads to Austria and Serbia on a photoshoot Photographs by Janez Kranjc and Ivana Orlovic
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ce diving - short to pronounce, but extremely challenging. It requires a bit of adventurous spirit, a lot of knowledge, a desire to get out of your comfort zone - and a crumb of madness. However, isn’t it a fact that every good diving day starts with the sentence ‘WTF am I doing here?’ At the start of 2022, the year was showing all the ‘charms’ of a real winter. The outside temperature had been in a serious minus for days, the snow had been falling and falling, with short intervals of calm, but still cold, weather. The ideal conditions to embark on an ice-diving adventure.
Weissensee Lake, Austria
As soon as you get out of the Karavanke tunnel, you enter Austria from Slovenia. It seemed to us that after coming out of the tunnel we fell into a real winter. The heavy amount of snow on the other side of the mountain seemed like the perfect winter scenery. Lake Weissensee was the target of our journey - one of the best places for ice diving in this part of Europe. The lake itself is of glacial origin, and is located in the province of Kärnten, 3,100 feet above sea level. The town of Techendorf is located on the shores of the lake, with only a few hundred inhabitants, most of whom live from tourism. The lake is seven miles long and half a mile at its widest part. In total, there are about 17 miles of coastline. The northern part of the lake is inhabited, while the southern part is a ‘Nature Park’, which is wild and untouched. It is in that part that the greatest depth of the lake is about 328ft, depending on the water level. The icy period begins in late-December and usually lasts until the first days of March. It is interesting that in that period, topside sports activities on the ice are very frequent. However, that is also the case under the icy surface... The main person controlling the ice is the ‘Ice Master’. He checks the condition of the ice sheet every day and directs activities on the lake. It is up to him to approve the opening of diving holes, but also to ban any activity if he estimates that the ice is in bad condition. However, when the ice covers the lake during the winter, it generally remains stable and solid until the end of the season.
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