kylehorn
Registered
I got my girlfriend (and let's admit it, myself) three dives at Bonne Terre Mine for Christmas.
We both worked in scuba shops in the past and have been around people that cave dive and are into more technical diving. Consequently there was this natural gravitation towards checking out Bonne Terre. It seemed like a great way to introduce ourselves to cavern diving and experience some brief overhead environments.
I booked three dives, which I believe is the most you can do in a day. Everything is paid in full in advance. I was able to rent a farmer-john suit last minute at the mine (5mm + MK0 Undergarment wasn't going to cut it) but it's best to square any rentals away over the phone in case they don't have what you need. Since the diving is in a mine you'd expect there to be some decent to get to the actual dive platform. There are some stairs and a short walk (5 minutes one way). You'll enter and exit the mine for each dive so it get's progressively more tiring, especially after the third dive.
Dive Day:
We arrived at the mine at 7:30 a.m. and met our guide as well as some of the other divers for the day. Some final paperwork is sorted out, we showed them your C-Cards and got fitted for any rental gear we had. Then, we had to watch an SSI Risk Management video that is about 10 minutes long, regardless of experience. After that we spent about 20 minutes talking about the history of the mine, and some notable features. There is also a short dive briefing before the first dive as well that concludes once you get down to the dive platform. After that it was off to get changed and head down into the mine.
I will be brief about the dives themselves. They were 45-55 minutes each, and our max depth was about 50'. Water temperature was a toasty 58f. We had two surface intervals lasting about 1.5 hours. During the dives there was a leader in the front, a safety diver in the back and two air checks. If you were low on air the safety diver would see you up to the surface where you would swim back to the dive platform with a kayak, which held your weights:
First dive - Quick weight check, open water skill check (mask clear, buddy breathing), swim around to see some old mining gear, ore carts, etc. Of the three dives this was the least exciting but it was still cool. For me, this dive was more of an acclimation exercise than anything else.
Second dive - my personal favorite of the day - Overhead environments, ore carts; this dive revealed the massive scale of this place - it was enlightening to see all of the massive pillars staggered in the background while we swam over what looked like an abyss. We swam over the time keepers room where miners would punch in and out. We also looked at the stairs that the miners used to get down into the mine as well.
Third dive - another great one - here we saw what they call "the structure" which is the frame of the elevator shaft that would go down into different levels of the mine. We also saw the "smoke room" where rock and mineral debris stay suspended giving the illusion of smoke. There was some broken piping which was used to pump out a concrete like mixture of debris not being mined as well.
Some of the staff were pretty stern and I heard a few people getting yelled at for surfacing too quickly and not listening to some basic instructions. At first it seems like they're being rude but we have to remember they have the very stressful job of avoiding incident among the group of nine divers which included two new open water divers.
I read a lot about people complaining about the cost (yes, it's expensive but the experience outweighs the expense) and the conditions of the dive facilities. First, I think that if you want to be safely introduced to diving in a cavern environment without extensive training (which would be much more expensive), you don't have many other options, at least within the states, that I know of. Secondly, it's a mine - not a resort in mexico. Yeah the locker rooms are shabby and the lounge, where you can hang out in between dives, doesn't have matching furniture (really, that was a complaint!) None of this stuff bothered us because we were there to dive.
Overall it was a really awesome experience. It was a great introduction to diving in a truly alien environment. I don't think it's a place I would visit regularly just because of it's location and cost but I'll definitely be back at some point in my life. We want to see the other 50 trails we didn't get to venture into. I would say this is a great place to come if you're comfortable cold water diving, have good control of your buoyancy and can tolerate diving in dimly lit environments. Everything is guided too, so if you're a free-spirit diver, you might feel like you're being babysat. I think it's fair for them to lead us around because it would be extremely easy to get lost. Also there is virtually no life (we did see one small fish in shallow water from the dive platform) so if you're looking for life it's best to go elsewhere.
You can checkout a compilation of some of the footage my girlfriend shot with her camera on trails 2 and 4 here:
We both worked in scuba shops in the past and have been around people that cave dive and are into more technical diving. Consequently there was this natural gravitation towards checking out Bonne Terre. It seemed like a great way to introduce ourselves to cavern diving and experience some brief overhead environments.
I booked three dives, which I believe is the most you can do in a day. Everything is paid in full in advance. I was able to rent a farmer-john suit last minute at the mine (5mm + MK0 Undergarment wasn't going to cut it) but it's best to square any rentals away over the phone in case they don't have what you need. Since the diving is in a mine you'd expect there to be some decent to get to the actual dive platform. There are some stairs and a short walk (5 minutes one way). You'll enter and exit the mine for each dive so it get's progressively more tiring, especially after the third dive.
Dive Day:
We arrived at the mine at 7:30 a.m. and met our guide as well as some of the other divers for the day. Some final paperwork is sorted out, we showed them your C-Cards and got fitted for any rental gear we had. Then, we had to watch an SSI Risk Management video that is about 10 minutes long, regardless of experience. After that we spent about 20 minutes talking about the history of the mine, and some notable features. There is also a short dive briefing before the first dive as well that concludes once you get down to the dive platform. After that it was off to get changed and head down into the mine.
I will be brief about the dives themselves. They were 45-55 minutes each, and our max depth was about 50'. Water temperature was a toasty 58f. We had two surface intervals lasting about 1.5 hours. During the dives there was a leader in the front, a safety diver in the back and two air checks. If you were low on air the safety diver would see you up to the surface where you would swim back to the dive platform with a kayak, which held your weights:
First dive - Quick weight check, open water skill check (mask clear, buddy breathing), swim around to see some old mining gear, ore carts, etc. Of the three dives this was the least exciting but it was still cool. For me, this dive was more of an acclimation exercise than anything else.
Second dive - my personal favorite of the day - Overhead environments, ore carts; this dive revealed the massive scale of this place - it was enlightening to see all of the massive pillars staggered in the background while we swam over what looked like an abyss. We swam over the time keepers room where miners would punch in and out. We also looked at the stairs that the miners used to get down into the mine as well.
Third dive - another great one - here we saw what they call "the structure" which is the frame of the elevator shaft that would go down into different levels of the mine. We also saw the "smoke room" where rock and mineral debris stay suspended giving the illusion of smoke. There was some broken piping which was used to pump out a concrete like mixture of debris not being mined as well.
Some of the staff were pretty stern and I heard a few people getting yelled at for surfacing too quickly and not listening to some basic instructions. At first it seems like they're being rude but we have to remember they have the very stressful job of avoiding incident among the group of nine divers which included two new open water divers.
I read a lot about people complaining about the cost (yes, it's expensive but the experience outweighs the expense) and the conditions of the dive facilities. First, I think that if you want to be safely introduced to diving in a cavern environment without extensive training (which would be much more expensive), you don't have many other options, at least within the states, that I know of. Secondly, it's a mine - not a resort in mexico. Yeah the locker rooms are shabby and the lounge, where you can hang out in between dives, doesn't have matching furniture (really, that was a complaint!) None of this stuff bothered us because we were there to dive.
Overall it was a really awesome experience. It was a great introduction to diving in a truly alien environment. I don't think it's a place I would visit regularly just because of it's location and cost but I'll definitely be back at some point in my life. We want to see the other 50 trails we didn't get to venture into. I would say this is a great place to come if you're comfortable cold water diving, have good control of your buoyancy and can tolerate diving in dimly lit environments. Everything is guided too, so if you're a free-spirit diver, you might feel like you're being babysat. I think it's fair for them to lead us around because it would be extremely easy to get lost. Also there is virtually no life (we did see one small fish in shallow water from the dive platform) so if you're looking for life it's best to go elsewhere.
You can checkout a compilation of some of the footage my girlfriend shot with her camera on trails 2 and 4 here:
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