OP
primalchaos
Contributor
nauifins73:
I'm back, and what a rush. The trip was a very good time. The mine is a truly unique place, nothing like what I expected.
My instructor and I did the normal drills on each of my ow dives, but since I was the only student, and we had a safety diver/guide already, after I did my 3-10 minutes of drills, we got on the move. I got of visit the "Shallows" on two trips, which is kind of an open bowl they use for training/ow. Pretty rocky, but does have an open end that allows you to fin out into another shallow area that has an ore cart with various mining implements you can see and touch. The visibility in the deeper transition areas is clear to the bottom (60-90ft).
The other shallow area is the balcony or ballroom (I'm not sure), but it was a surface swim over for me, and then a descent to 25 feet or so. Run through the drills and explore a bit more. I got to see the tipple, or ore cart dump, and more ore cart tracks, and another ore cart. They also took me to a shaft that they have divers ascend through one at at time. I had some stress going on crossing the deeper areas since it is so blue and so much visibility, but did ok with it.
I did one more short dive on Saturday, and got out very tired
On Sunday, one more ow, then my fun dive. On the fun dive, we hooked up with the rest of my group, and I got to go with them on the end of trail three, and we met them as they ascended up the shaft one at a time. The best part was crossing underneath a very large ceiling area following the guide. I swam on my back at about 40 feet and the guide diver from the mine was pointing their light at the ceiling where the air bubbles looked like puddles of mercury trapped up there. The water is so clear it is almost like it isn't there at all. On the other side of the overhead, the guide turns off the spotlight so you can look up at the pillars supporting the various levels, and it looks like lots of blue windows in a very large room. Anyway, I came home very tired but excited.
