mike_s
Contributor
Rocketman, ScubaLuke, and myself all had plans to head out to Vortex this weekend with our LDS. ScubaLuke for some reason opted to go to work Saturday instead of going diving and couldn't make it, so it ended up just being the two of us.
We arrived at Vortex Saturday just in time to eat lunch with SuprBugMan who had just finished diving Morrison Springs. Vortex was plenty crowded weith several LDS's set up doing open water checkouts. You had to park a pretty good ways from the area where you geared up. There were enough divers in the water that I'm betting you could walk across them from one side of the basin to the other without getting wet.
When we did get in the water, with so many divers submerged, it was easy to get disorientated as to which way your buddy went. But later in the afternoon though after 5pm we pretty much had the entire basin to ourselves, so that was nice. Only a small handful of people (maybe 3-5 ) did a night dive, but it was pretty cool out temperature wise.
I also got to try out my new Aqualung Legend LX Supreme, which was one of the purposes of the trip. Boy that is a a sweet regulator!
Diving conditions were good though. The water had a little particulate stired up though by all the open water students doing checkouts, but it wasn't too bad. Water temp was it's normal 67-68f and air temps that afternoon were aroudn 70-72f with a light wind.
After diving the LDS had a grill-out for everyone in our group.
We stayed at Vortex in their Pineview (or Pinewood) Lodge. The rooms weren't anything fancy but were fine for us. As long as you know what to expect when staying in one and know they are just "bunk house room" then you should be fine with the "accomadations". However, they must have had a mildew problem or something because several of the rooms really stunk from the odor of mildew and "deodorizer" meant to mask the smell. It was some deodorizer "package" they had hanging up on the clothes rack. The people in the units beside us said theirs had it also. It made the room smell like one of those portable chemical toliets that used to much deodorizer to mask the smell. The odor was about the only drawback though. When I got home I opened my clothes bag and everthing in it now smells like that room... *uggghhhh*. Luckily the clothes washer will fix that.
Overall, it was a good weekend trip and any weekend diving is better than spending the week at work.
We arrived at Vortex Saturday just in time to eat lunch with SuprBugMan who had just finished diving Morrison Springs. Vortex was plenty crowded weith several LDS's set up doing open water checkouts. You had to park a pretty good ways from the area where you geared up. There were enough divers in the water that I'm betting you could walk across them from one side of the basin to the other without getting wet.
When we did get in the water, with so many divers submerged, it was easy to get disorientated as to which way your buddy went. But later in the afternoon though after 5pm we pretty much had the entire basin to ourselves, so that was nice. Only a small handful of people (maybe 3-5 ) did a night dive, but it was pretty cool out temperature wise.
I also got to try out my new Aqualung Legend LX Supreme, which was one of the purposes of the trip. Boy that is a a sweet regulator!
Diving conditions were good though. The water had a little particulate stired up though by all the open water students doing checkouts, but it wasn't too bad. Water temp was it's normal 67-68f and air temps that afternoon were aroudn 70-72f with a light wind.
After diving the LDS had a grill-out for everyone in our group.
We stayed at Vortex in their Pineview (or Pinewood) Lodge. The rooms weren't anything fancy but were fine for us. As long as you know what to expect when staying in one and know they are just "bunk house room" then you should be fine with the "accomadations". However, they must have had a mildew problem or something because several of the rooms really stunk from the odor of mildew and "deodorizer" meant to mask the smell. It was some deodorizer "package" they had hanging up on the clothes rack. The people in the units beside us said theirs had it also. It made the room smell like one of those portable chemical toliets that used to much deodorizer to mask the smell. The odor was about the only drawback though. When I got home I opened my clothes bag and everthing in it now smells like that room... *uggghhhh*. Luckily the clothes washer will fix that.
Overall, it was a good weekend trip and any weekend diving is better than spending the week at work.
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