Quarry open in St. Cloud

[LKunze]

  Jeff Leech, Dan G, Dano, Elkman and I did a couple dives at Quarry Park today.  We did our first dive at Quarry #18, the closest one to the parking lot.  The walk is not too far and the trails are nice and flat crushed gravel making it pretty easy to wheel gear in with a two wheeler.  The entrance was decent at #18.  This Quarry is very small.  Like wtdrm said, you could dive this one with an aluminum 30  .  The vis was very clear, probably 30 to 40 feet.  Max depth was 47 feet, I think Jeff hit 50 feet but he had to go into a black layer to get it. > You can basically drop down to the bottom and see the walls on either side of the Quarry that's how small it is.  Not much to see, but there was a small sailboat wedged in on the rocks at about 20 feet.  It kind of gave me the impression I was diving in a small fresh water aquarium.  We did see a couple trout but that was about it.  There was very little trash in this quarry, just a few beer cans and beer bottles. 
  After taking a little break we headed down to Quarry #13.  This one is a bit narrower than #18 but is longer.  We did a giant stride entry into this one.  The viz was only about 15 to 20 feet here but there was more to see.  There is a lot of junk in this quarry.  There were some wooden cable spools, parts of a car including a car door, old lumber, cables etc.  This one had more beer cans and bottles in it as well.  Max depth on the entry side was around 37 feet and then in the middle of the quarry the rocks take you up to about 10 feet and then it drops back down to around 35 feet on the other side of the little rock wall.  All in all it wasn't too bad.  These are not the type of sites I could see myself going back to dive very often but they are worth checking out at least once for the avid local diver.