Ore B Gone

[flyboy65]

Drove up to Gilbert today and dove Ore B Gone.  Very cold, misty, and windy day for diving.  As Paul and I were talking on the phone making plans, the sun was shining.  How deceiving! 

The water level is down at least 4-5 feet.  It was a bit alarming looking at the swimming area. The floating dock is mostly sitting on land, at this point.  Looks like the city did some work on the swimming area, and laid a layer of fine gravel which looks nice.  It will be nice when the water levels come back up again.

Viz was a bit milky still.  39 degrees below 30 feet.  We dove left of the skeleton platform, and hit 102', made a u-turn, and worked our way up.  Saw a VERY nice walleye on the way up in about 30 feet of water.  By the time I got Paul's attention, we barely made out a tail fin.

Ya know, access  is just as tricky as it always has been, barring the swimming area.  My problem is, immediately having to deal with gravity as I take a step up out of the water. 

All in all it was a great dive.

Anyone ever been to any of the other pits up there?  There's one just NW of Biwabik, but it looks like it's ATV trails back to it.  Also, I remember Google Earth pics of a mine pit just outside of McKinley...looks like there are trails to the pit...Could be interesting.  A weekend of camping and exploring....?

[innerspace]

We dove OBG today.  I've seen better vis, but it's still not all that bad, at least off the former beach and in the speeder area.  Thermocline at ~20 feet.  About 72[sup]o[/sup] on the surface and 41[sup]o[/sup] at 102'.  We had 4 Advanced Open Water students doing a deep dive, and 2 did the navigation dive and finished up their AOW Certs!  While Joel took the 2 on the nav dive, my son and I did his first OW cert dive over at the speeders.

Bill (flyboy65) and Kevin went into Petit Pit<?> and said vis there was really bad, then after lunch Bill took 2 divers over towards the bus, but he can tell you more about the conditions there is you ask him.

All told we had 10 divers in the water and eating lunch in the pavillion enjoying the nice day!

[LKunze]

I did one dive at Ore Be Gone yesterday.  Viz was decent out in front of the beach in the bolder field but over by the plane it was pretty poor.  We did most of our dives at Lake Mine and St. James.  Viz was good at both of those pits though I've seen much better at St. James.  All in all it was a great weekend of diving.