It’s a perfect summer day. The sun is shining, the water is glistening and the temperature is just hot enough to warrant a dive off the dock. You climb up the ladder, reach for your towel, and then you hear it: “Plop.”
The sound of your iPhone dropping into the water. Your iPhone that was lying precariously on that towel, filled with all your photos and memories of the last year of adventures.
For the last six summers, longtime Whistler local and scuba diver Chris Hedges has been helping reunite locals and visitors who find themselves in similarly unfortunate situations with precious possessions lost in Sea to Sky lakes.
He has also worked for the mountain since 2000, where he's spent winters ski patrolling since 2009. Over the years, Hedges worked his way up to a volunteer coordinator position overseeing the entire Whistler Patrol volunteer team. But after 23 years in the resort and hundreds of objects found—from wedding rings and colourblind glasses to GoPros and drones—Hedges recently announced in a Facebook post that he’s saying goodbye to his business, Glacier Fresh Diving, as he, his wife, Jess, and their two boys pack up and head east.
Pique caught up with Hedges to chat about his time in Whistler, water clarity, and some of the more memorable items he’s found resting beneath the surface.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
PIQUE: So what’s the deal? Are you leaving town altogether, or just hanging up the oxygen tank?
Chris Hedges: My wife and I have made the decision to move to Newfoundland, where she was born and raised. She’s lived here 13 years, her family still lives there and we’ve just been pushed out of the real estate market, like so many other stories in the Sea to Sky. We just can’t do the million-dollar mortgage. We both do fairly well, but we have two awesome, fearless sons and we’ve made the decision for home ownership, to give them a better opportunity and a better life in the future. And that means moving to the East Coast.
What led you to diving and to starting Glacier Fresh?
I’ve been an avid diver since the early 2000s. I had the opportunity to go overseas and learn, and I carried the skillset all the way through and had a passion for being underwater.
Back in 2017, a woman … dropped her keys off of Blueberry Docks, so she was looking for somebody that could swim down and find them. A mutual friend of ours said, “Hey Hedges, you’re a diver,” and I’m like, “Yeah, you know what, I’ve got my own gear too, let’s make this happen.” So I went for a dive, she reposted it on Facebook and I guess the rest of history.
In your post [in the Whistler Summer Facebook group], you listed a few of the many, many items you’ve found, but what would you say are some of your most memorable?
There’s a lot. There really, really is. The first set of keys, [I was] obviously super stoked. It’s the feeling of helping somebody … It’s like I’m a treasure hunter, and instead of just treasure hunting, we’re returning this to the person that lost it.
One of the most sentimental ones was a young girl, her watch came off her wrist in Rainbow Park, in a really unknown little area between the two docks, and the story was it was actually her father’s watch, and her father had passed away, so there was some real heavy, sentimental attachment to this … I went back two or three times, just on my own accord and I found it and I was able to track her down and get it back to her. So that one kind of stands out … There’s been a lot of jewelry, a lot of iPhones. But even though it’s just the phone, it’s that thing where some of these people were here for the season, so they created a year’s worth of memories of photos or contacts … I always felt like I was giving them back their last, you know, 12-month adventure they’ve had.
I did have a rather scary thing happen at Alta Lake, where I thought I saw a hand sticking out of the silt. I shook my head and kind of ignored it. I was circling around, looking for whatever I was looking for. It’s very dark, very low-visibility, and all of a sudden I feel a hand kind of go across my chest, to which I took a deep, gasping breath and reached out and grabbed it, and yes, it was a hand. But yes, that hand was attached to a mannequin. I’m not sure how our fellow Whistlerite ended up in the middle of the lake, but I did leave him there to give somebody else a good fright. I sat him upright though, in a sitting position.
So out of all those dives, how many items would you say you’ve found—hundreds?
Hundreds, absolutely. I think I did a quick tally, just off the top my head in my Facebook post, but it’s in and around 50 iPhones, probably around 10 sets of prescription glasses … maybe a few dozen sets of keys, and then random jewelry, three wedding rings.
What are the best and worst lakes in your opinion to dive in, in Whistler?
Every lake here has its challenges. Green Lake is like diving in milk. In early spring, late winter, it’s pretty clear; by July, August, it’s like bright green milk—impossible to see a thing. In all the other lakes, there’s such rich sediment and organic matter on the bottom that once you stir it up, you’ve lost all visibility.
Lost Lake is absolutely terrible, it’s called Lost Lake for a reason. That’s my lowest success rate … Cat Lake’s pretty clear, Brohm Lake’s pretty clear, Nita’s pretty clear. But once you get down, Nita—shockingly, for our smallest lake in the area—Nita, other than Green Lake, is probably the deepest that I’ve been in. There was a group of people from the city that flipped their canoe or paddleboard or had an incident out there … and lost all their stuff. I got down to about 60, 70 feet. Pitch black. I used my light to look for what I was looking for but I had absolutely no luck. Super dark, super deep.
But they’re all fun. It’s all unique, it’s all an adventure. People usually put me over the spot where they think they lost something. If they do, I usually find what I’m looking for. But it’s 10-per-cent skill and 90-per-cent luck—like a needle in a haystack.
What’s next for you? When you head to Newfoundland are you going to continue the diving over there?
Apparently there’s good diving there too. I plan on continuing exactly what I’m doing in the east, in some form, either recreational diving, and if I get asked to go find something somewhere in the water on the East Coast, I am happy to oblige.
Amazing. Is there anything else you’d like the community to know?
It’s been an honour and a pleasure. I hope I was able to contribute, to make someone’s life a little better. For all the people that I wasn’t able to locate their lost item, I apologize, but like I’ve said to a lot of people, it’s just a thing. It’s just an object, it’s just a phone or a set of keys. They’re replaceable, so be kind to each other and stay safe and stay awesome.
I love this [f’ing] place. I think back to 23 years here, I’ve found a little niche market, and it’s been great that people have been so supportive. I wish things were different and we were sticking around. If anyone’s going to continue on this legacy of any kind, I wish them all the best. Just be safe and know what you’re doing out there.
