Great day!!!
First, "end of Desert Tortoise Rd. Well, where is the end? Depending on the lake level, it could be anywhere! From a max of 1702 ft above sea level, the lake was at either 1632.4 or 1634.2 . . .
I went down Desert Tortoise, did a few off shoots, several turn-arounds, and finally a lovely young man with a scuba class pointed further down the ridge . . . that is normally underwater. :chuckle:
Turns out, that wasn't Inland Scuba . . . however, they got a HUGE crowd over there, so I suspect a lot of the folks that read this ended up with the All-Wet folks.
As I am not at all familiar with Lake Pleasant, I did a lot of loop-de-loops and turn-arounds before I found Inland Scuba. I think we ended up SE of the "e" of "Sunset Cove" on this map:
South Lake Pleasant Inset
I had a bit of fun with a reg - known, but it was a PITA today - and hose O-rings. Apparently, my set doesn't have the right size because the O-ring kept being cut. Time for a save-a-dive bag re-order.
Still, the first dive was a good shake-out, even thought I didn't find much trash. Snagged a few pieces, and some mono-filament with hooks. With the lake so low, most of the the trash was above the water line. Also, the vis was 12 - 18" . . . yeah, inches. It was a great opportunity to practice search patterns, buoyancy control, and non-silting kicks. I decided to 'run out' to the channel, to see how it was, and found a 'cloud' that sits at 15fsw. Once you drop down below 15, the water looks like the bottom. In the 'cloud', the vis was about 2-3".
The water was about 81 Sol degrees . . . Did you know that if you pour about a quart of lake water in your dry suit, you stay cool?
For my second dive, I went out a couple of the Inland Scuba guys. First, thank God for yellow fins! I couldn't see these guys . . . it was a wonderful opportunity to practice good buddy skills, staying right there without running into Steve, who was navigating. As we went along, he descended a bit . . . and was just GONE into the cloud.
We went about 3/4 (I think) across the cove, and with a general consensus of 'this sucks', turned around.
Now, the other gentleman
blush:, I forgot his name) had run a line from the Inland Scuba diver-down buoy to a marker buoy. I was hoping to observe his reel work . . . Yeah, ri-i-i-i-ght. We came back, found the line, and were to follow it to the diver-down flag and bring it in. We discussed this at the surface, then descended . . . And they were gone! What, wait -- really? (Dive plan was if I got lost, I am solo. I had two ind. doubles.) I came back up, located the bubbles, shot an azimuth, and went after them. I saw one large bubble, and that was it. Did I mention the vis sucked? I continued on because the dive flag was in the azimuth as well. Kick count said I should have been there. . . Surfaced again . . . Hey, wait a minute - the sneaky buggers had moved it!
:joke: It was the plan, I just didn't realize how far 'behind' I was.
I figured I'd had about all the fun I could stand, so shot an azimuth to the road and headed in. Wow, I'd used a whole 700 psi per tank. :laughing:
We had two large black trash bags full of 'treasure'; many thanks to the intrepid divers that came out to help, and their surface support that got the shore trash. It was good to help, even if only a little, and heartening to see that there was not a lot of trash.
Now, someone tell the story of the dog that tried to retrieve the divers . . .