Dive Condition Reports

[James R]

July 10 - Windy Pt Private
Viz is still hit and miss. Mainly miss at surface to 12-15 feet and miss at depths over 85' - from there it's pretty much 1' or so to 125'. The nice cool (cold?) water at depth, however, is still there. At 40-60' depth the water is warm and the viz is actually pretty good. Coming up from depth I recall thinking it was like a different lake.
Temp at surface 86
Temp at 124' was 55

 

[carlislere]

Lake Travis Mansfield Park Dive Area and Bob Wentz Park
Dive 1 at Mansfield Park:
Long damn way to the water in the single cylinder. I'll be nuts to walk that in doubles, but then again. . .
Max Depth: 103 feet
Water temp: 86 on surface, 79 at 60 feet, 63 at 103 feet.
Shallow sailboat is at 7 feet, sailboat below and to the right is at 25 feet as is the plane fuselage. The sailboat on the way to the dam is at 60 feet. Visibility below 70 varies; a couple of feet, but at 100 feet drops off. On the way back from 50-70 feet vis is 12-15 feet. Had a great time coming back from the dam. Stayed at 55-60 feet. Paid my respects to the Danny Faas Memorial.
Dive 2 at Bob Wentz Park
Max depth: 60 feet
Hoping for the same thing as at the Dive area, but not quite the same. Below 55 feet was milky and low vis of a couple of feet. Vis was 10-12 feet in the 40-55 foot range. Came back over the grotto route, so had fun checking those out.

 

[driftwood]

Spring Lake, San Marcos, July 21, 2011

Vis:
Temp: Same
Spring Flow: 99cfs

Spring flow dropped to 99cfs today. Looks like the pool that has been feeding the lake for the past couple months has lost its hydraulic head. If you want to dive the lake better get your request in soon.

Talked with Aaron after the dive. The latest rumor is that the Aquarena staff will get word in September when they are required to move. Demolition is scheduled to begin in October.

So the real question for us is what will shut down the Diving for Science program first. Will it be low spring flow or the demolition?

 

[cavemn]

July 23
Mansfield Dam
Max Depth 122
Temp at depth 57F
Viz 0-20' 1-2'
Viz 20-30 2-4'
Viz 40-80 10-12'
Viz 80-90 3-5'
Viz below 90 was best on the dam at 1-3'

First dive was not much to talk about. Second dive we started at the wall and went down past the sailboat and other garbage on the wall. We hit the first jailhouse at the base and found an empty bottle on a string(Coke or Diet Coke) I believe. I should have worn my hood on the second dive. It was colder than expected.
And Yes Ron, hauling doubles up and down the stairs is tough. It was even tougher dragging the second set up the stairs

 

[cavemn]

July 24
Mansfield Dam
Max Depth 121
Temp at depth 57F
Viz within 100 or so ft of the dam itself was same as yesterday in the heat. No one else diving the area. I wonder why? It's only 3 flights of stairs, some rocks and a steep gravel walk to the water. A little challenging given back doubles plus two stage deco. Plus, they turned on the generators on our second dive. What a great pair of dives given all the fun to get there.

 

[scubashawn123]

July 23

Bob Wentz Windy Point South Grotto wall diving

Big grottos at 45 feet deep

Water Temp at 88 degrees

visibility sometimes was up to 12 feet vertical

 

[driftwood]

Spring Lake, San Marcos, July 28, 2011

Vis: 50'+
Temp: Same
Spring Flow: 106cfs

Four of us did the Cream of Wheat to Catfish Hotel run. Lot of cut Coontail in the channel. Both transitions at Ossified Forrest are open.

I talked with Aaron, lake manager, about the Habitat Conservation Plan, HCP, and how it effects volunteers. When the spring flow drops below 100cfs, they staff is supposed to cut the number of volunteer divers by half. At 75cfs, all diving is the lake is suspended.

They have started construction on the new visitor's center so it looks like a temporary shutdown of the park from demolition will start in October. The Diving for Science Program will be the last to shut down and the first to start back up again.

Two weeks ago the flow had dropped to 99cfs. From the USGS site, USGS Real-Time Water Data for USGS 08170500 San Marcos Rv at San Marcos, TX, it looks like they either cleaned or recalibrated the guage. The new flow data is around 106.

 

[James R]

30 Jul 2011
1) Oasis Wall
This site had really good viz today. We dropped down to the big grottos around 60' and slowly made our way north to the grotto with the little stalactites at 53'. Viz was 10-15+ along the grottos, outstanding!

2) Starnes Island
We stayed shallow to treasure hunt, so viz was 3-5 and spotty...max depth 38 feet. It paid off though...the GF and I pulled out 19pr sunglasses (4 Oakleys, 2 RayBan, 3 no name but keepers) a hat, 4 hair ties, one wine cooler, one never opened bottle of Bacardi, a snorkel, a bracelet, a lighter, sandals, champagne glass, and $10 cash. I'd say that more than covered the cost of the charter...hit up Robert to try your luck @ www.Laketravisscuba.com

Temp surface was 86
Temp at 73' was 78

 

[Dave55]

Sun July 31, 2011
Bob Wentz LCRA Park (Windy Point Public)
Visibility was generally best in the 50 - 70 ft depth range. Usually around 15' but it would frequently drop down to 3' (highly variable)

Temperature:
87 degrees at the surface
70 degrees at 93 ft.

there are now at least 4 grottos with air pockets in the top-- generally around 40' from scoreboard to the southern point.

 

[driftwood]

Spring Lake, San Marcos, August 4

Vis: 50'+
Temp: same
Spring Flow: 105cfs

Peppermintpaddi and me did two dives and got to see all the dive sites. To cut to the chase, the lake is a mess and the low flow conditions hampers us from doing any heavy cleaning (they do like for the people on the boats to be able to see something). The worst was Cream of Wheat. Anything that gets cut in the headwaters drops there. Next was the north end of Deep Hole. There is a lot of sunken coontail that is covered in silt and red algae. When you try to move it, the vis drops to inches.