Snow and nearly freezing temperatures are no deterrent for Lake Tahoe’s dedicated scuba divers.

“Wintertime diving — I feel like you have to be a special person to want to go diving in the cold,” says Phill Abernathy, who leads Tahoe Scuba Diving, an informal network of roughly 20 regular year-round divers in the basin. “You have to love this. I hate cold. I despise the cold. But I love diving, so here we are.”

With a surface water temperature of 41 degrees that day, cold water diving offers its own unique set of both danger and benefits. Divers face not just increased discomfort, but also higher equipment expenses, logistics and risks. 

In return, however, they get a calm lake with nearly nobody in the water. In summer, the lake fills with boats, swimmers and recreational divers from the area and afar. At 41 degrees, the water is cold enough to take your breath away at first submersion, but going in winter allows the divers to experience it in its natural, undisturbed state. 

Less traffic equates to more clarity, while marine life which might be less active with heavy human presence, swim uninhibited. 

Less tourists, lower temperatures mean higher precautions

Venturing into the unknown and having an element of risk is what brings many divers back, and in winter with less people and patrols on the water, that means less of a chance that divers have of being spotted if something goes awry. 

The primary human precautions they take are having a buddy system in the water and ensuring that a person on land knows their location. “I tell them, if you don’t hear from me within a certain time, call for help.”

Divers should also be prepared with specific awareness and gear for the extreme temperatures. “So there are regulators — your breathing apparatus —that are for cold water, and then there are regulators that are warm water equipment that really don’t like cold, and they can freeze up and cause a free-float, which if you’re not expecting it or you’re a new diver, that can be a scary thing,” said Abernathy. 

What that looks like, he says, is that “the thing just starts bubbling and bubbling and bubbling. Some people freak out.”

“Thermal contraction expansion is a thing, especially with gases and compressed gases,” he added. For those who really like to stay comfortable, divers can also elect to have internal heaters in their suits — a luxury, but not a necessity in the cold.

Abernathy, who dives in a custom-made purple-orange suit with bright orange Converse, says diving in Tahoe is mostly for geological sights, and even with still waters, divers shouldn’t expect to see as many fish as they would in a more tropical area. “Here we get nice rocks, we find cool things, we’ll see nice, you know, formations down there in Tahoe.

Embracing the unknown

Lake Tahoe’s waters, particularly at greater depths, are shrouded in mystery— which is another one of the draws for many divers.

Rumor has it that oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, a pioneer of underwater exploration, claimed to see corpses clad in Victorian garb, and said he’d never return. However, little evidence substantiates that he ever even visited Lake Tahoe.

Abernathy says that such claims of bodies at the bottom may not be completely unfounded, however. “Human remains have been found in the lake. That said, they are also found in many bodies of water. As for how they got there, that is another story.”

While he hasn’t quite ventured deep enough to find out the answers to Tahoe’s long-lost myths, he has had his run-ins. One time, he was pursued by a bear, when his dive partner had to readjust his gear and was “floundering on the surface making flopping noises” which could have resembled the movement of a fish. Bears “swim like dogs with their big claws out in front,” he said. “If you’re encountering a bear on land, get big and make a lot of noise. Well, underwater, you can’t get really big,” so Abernathy and his dive partner shouted and the bear eventually turned around. 

It’s unusual to be followed by a bear while swimming, but bear sightings are somewhat common, even in the water.

Abernathy hopes that his club will help connect other divers in the area, open opportunities for new divers to try new skill sets with a community around them, and expand their interest in diving within the region. “You get out of the water, the mountains are white instead of green,” he said. “It’s an untold beauty not understood until you see it.”