St. James Pit

[LKunze]

  A group of us dove St. James and Miller Pits on Saturday.  There is a path that leads down to the access.  The pits are separated by only 10 feet or so.  You have Miller on one side and St. James on the other.  The path is a bit of a haul with your gear on but an easier hike than the Madeira path in my opinion. This access for St. James didn't have a wall like the public boat access site has.  It's more of a gradual decline down to the 100+ foot range.  There wasn't much to see.  There were more trees over at this site though.  Some of them were uprooted and laying down.  Some of the trees were very tall.  I prefer the public boat access site though with the wall to this site.  Viz was good though.  It was easily 40+ feet in many spots.  There was a cloudy layer in some spots in the 50-60 foot range but it was kinda spotty and not consistent. 
  After our dive in St. James we decided to give Miller Pit a try on the other side.  Big mistake.  This pit had horrible viz.  It was probably 15 feet viz if you were in 15 feet of water but once you got down past 20 feet or so it was like being in a blizzard.  It was so damn milky you could barely see your hand in front of your face.  We tried to see if it might clear up at depth but gave up after feeling our way down the slope slowly to 51 feet with no clearing in site.  Needless to say I don't think I'll be diving Miller again but St. James still has the best viz I've seen in any pit within reasonable driving distance of the twin cities.