In Juli 2023, I’ve participated in Altitude Diving Training organized in Tauchclub Zug. That training included diving in 2 High Alpine lakes: Totensee on Grimselpass, and Lago di Cadagno.
Totensee
Totensee is an artificial lake on Grimselpass. We’ve met them at 11 AM and prepared for dive. The consent was organized by our instructor, so all we needed is to prepare and get into water, and not forget to set the diving computer to high altitude mode - in case they didn’t do that automatically. The air pressure at over 2000 masl is about 80% of sea level, which triggered low oxygen PPO on my Shearwater computer - it was showing blinking 0.16. But under water, it was happy again about PPO. It’s a great example, how special altitude diving is.
Under water, there was nothing spectacular. We’ve found some ‘canyon’ made by water current, and although the maximal depth is 34 meters, my buddy team hasn’t found a place deeper than 14 meters.
Rest and travel to next location
We’ve eaten lunch at the nearby restaurant. Then we’ve driven to the Lago Ricom through the Nufenenpass. And here’s another specific. Normally, you should avoid mountain passes after diving. But here, diving was already on mountain pass, and we were staying at the similar altitude, with air pressure compared to that on pressurized flight.
Lago Ricom and Lago di Cadagno
We’ve spent night in Rifugio Laco Ricom - a mountain hotel for hikers on Lago Ricom. Next day, we’ve made a trip to Lago di Cadagno for second dive. This was a narrow one-directional mountain road, with alternating traffic, so you have to learn about which hours you’re allowed to go in which direction. This road is a part of hiking trail, so you need to go slowly and yield to hikers.
Our instructor has informed us about 3 layers of Lago di Cadagno, that doesn’t mix because of high amount of minerals solved in lower layers. First 7-8 meters are high visibility full of life layer, typical for mountain lakes. Than we have 2-3 meters deep brown layer with very low visibility, and under it, the water should be clear, but without life. However, nobody of us managed to find a place where the water was deeper than 10 meters, so we haven’t seen the layer below. Probably you’ll have to go to the oposite side of the lake to find such place. It was nevertheless an interesting dive.
