Oct 30th, 2002

Brian Grigsby

FREE DIVE AT 4300 METERS!

Today we met another goal, to free dive at 4300 meters. Nathalie, Andy, David and Marc tested safety procedures and methods. The training took place in Laguna Verde in preparation for our summit dive at the top of Licancabur.

Everyone was excited that they were able to swim, dive and test the wet suits for the summit. From this activity, we learned 3 things: (1) that the wet suits are good for this climate and warm, (2) no one had any physical problems, and (3) each will probably spend about 15 min or less in the water at the summit lake. David mentioned how nice it was that the dive team worked together to prepare for the dive. We took a lot of footage that will be shown on our website later. Laguna Verde is so salty that each diver had trouble getting under the surface of the water, even with weight belts! They could hardly see 10 cm in front of their faces. At one point David tried to dive under the surface, but the water was so murky, that he bumped his head on the bottom!

Nathalie mentioned that she found it comforting that the wetsuits were adequate for this altitude and none of the divers experienced physical problems.

Edmond said that the location was absolutely beautiful with the white beach, the green water and it was nice how each diver worked together.

Everything that was done was methodical: Safety first. The divers rehearsed getting divers out of the water and warmed up quickly. This worked out great.

Part of team B visited today. Keve Kiss and Istvan Grigorsky took water samples of Laguna Blanca and sampled water algae. They placed a plankton net in the lake to retrieve it at a later time.

Lorena was taken to San Pedro because she was sick, and we were concerned about altitude sickness. It turns out that she just had a cold and returned the following day rested and ready to complete more science.

We have been through all of our training procedures for safety and tasks, and we feel strong and ready to climb. Even though we have had to delay our ascent because of weather and logistics, we have built in a margin of error. As a team, we are ready for what we came for: Licancabur.