cold water quarry diving

[Coldiver1]

Coldwater diving varies from person to person. I have a drysuit and a 7mm wetsuit. I have been under the ice in both and "chilly" but not uncomfortable in both.
The game changer is out of the water.
Standing in a wet 7mm wetsuit after a dive on a frozen wind whipped lake is brutal, Standing in a drysuit after a dive on a frozen lake and having to pee is equally as brutal!

I now have a long dive coat that goes over my wetsuit and it works great.

 

[Doby45]

The quarry here in north GA is called Kraken Springs and that bad boy goes down to like 185'. The water down there is like 38* year round and crystal clear but it is black black black. At that depth my HP50 can light just gets eaten. I would not do that dive without my drysuit.

 

[stretchthepenn]

The quarry here in north GA is called Kraken Springs and that bad boy goes down to like 185'. The water down there is like 38* year round and crystal clear but it is black black black. At that depth my HP50 can light just gets eaten. I would not do that dive without my drysuit.

You're on the right track, and the Kraken is a drysuit dive for sure, but I think you may be exaggerating a tad; the Kraken goes down to 158' at deepest, and it's consistently 48F at the bottom.

You're mostly right on the viz; oftentimes it's black-but-clear, but a few times, my buddy and I have skimmed the bottom at arm's distance from each other and could only see a faint glow from each other's can lights.

No matter if the rest of the quarry is clear, though, crappy viz is consistent at the Kraken's 155-158' area. There's a little ridge to the SW of the 140' platform (to the east of the old access road), and once you go over it and down into the deeper section, BOOM, pea soup all the way to the south wall.

It's a bummer that the owner closed public access and turned Kraken into a private pond for his shop...

 

[Doby45]

It's a bummer that the owner closed public access and turned Kraken into a private pond for his shop...

It is not public any longer? And you are right on the depth, I went back and looked and I have 154' and 48*, not 38*.

Date on that dive was Oct 2018, so details were fuzzy, glad I had the log.

 

[stretchthepenn]

It is not public any longer? And you are right on the depth, I went back and looked and I have 154' and 48*, not 38*.

Yup. The owner, whose name I shall not utter here, closed the Kraken last year. A lot of drama went down, and now the Kraken is a shop-only pond.

This year, there's gonna be a one-day-only public opening on May 7, but the rules are pretty restrictive. No CCR, no solo, no runtimes longer than 60 minutes, no depths below 130'. Oh...and no grilling.

(That last tidbit was mentioned twice on the announcement. It's pretty clear who it was aimed at...)

 

[Doby45]

Yup. The owner, whose name I shall not utter here, closed the Kraken last year. A lot of drama went down, and now the Kraken is a shop-only pond.

This year, there's gonna be a one-day-only public opening on May 7, but the rules are pretty restrictive. No CCR, no solo, no runtimes longer than 60 minutes, no depths below 130'. Oh...and no grilling.

(That last tidbit was mentioned twice on the announcement. It's pretty clear who it was aimed at...)

Damn, I reckon if your doing any "local" stuff now it will be DiveLand.

 

[stretchthepenn]

Damn, I reckon if your doing any "local" stuff now it will be DiveLand.

Yup. It's either Dive Land or Loch Low-Minn for us, so we're at one or the other pretty much every weekend. Philadelphia Quarry is about the same distance, but it's too shallow for my purposes.

 

[rob.mwpropane]

Since I started diving I've witnessed 3 major quarries in my area close (Bainbridge, Hyde's and now Dutch Springs) and a 4th opened for a short time and then had to close... hoping it opens soon.

Some days I really feel like I live in a black hole for diving and it's only gotten worse since I "joined the club".

I also read about the large Quarry in Tennessee closing. Martha's Quarry? Really sad all around.

 

[Marie13]

My local quarry used to open first Saturday in April. Then came covid. They opened early June 2020. After Easter last year. April 30 this year. I have to drive 5 hours one way if I want to dive before the local quarry opens.

 

[Ulfhedinn]

I just wish there was a quarry local to me to even dive. Cold or not.