I just got home from Bonne Terre Mine, just south of St. Louis. If you're not familiar with the site you can go to
www.2dive.com and look around their web site. it shoudl be on every divers "to do list". I don't enjoy cold water diving, but I'd do this again tomorrow... if they were open! water temp is 57 degrees - don't let the balmy 65 listed on their site fool you, it's only 57! Dress code is simple - put on most everything you own. I wore a 2.5mm vest, 7mm farmer john, 3mm gloves and boots and 2 hoods. Now is the time to go Saturday there were 7 divers and 6 staff on this morning dive there were 2 divers and 7 staff. Nov thru Feb is their busy season as warm weather destinations and vacations are a thing of the past, during those months it's very much like a cattle boat op, with dive times very strict in order to keep things moving, but this weekend was slow and staff was plentiful, so it was near prefect. Viz is great - 100ft. It's a flooded mine, so the enormous columns supporting the levels above make you feel really small. The picture on their site is above water, but what you see above is more impressive as you dive past it. As you come off a shelf the floor drops out of sight below you and columns loom like Giant Seqorias above you. There are 10 "trails" that are guided with some tight overhead spaces and some "open water" where the floor is not visible.
Bonne Terre is about 12 miles north of Farmington, MO and is a relatively small town. Farmington is about 14,000 contrasting Bonne Terre's 4000. Accomodations and resturants are limited in Bonne Terre, but plentiful in Farmington. My wife and I celebrated our 26th anniversary over the weekend and stayed in the caboose rail car next to the Depot Bed and breakfast. The pic on the website is a little misleading as the depot building is definitely showing wear-though not delapidated by any means- the caboose was neatly furnished, but lacked a ref and microwave, but was an adequate place for a couple of nights.
the dive staff and dive op were top notch all the way. There was a couple of divers who were not very experienced and were not used to wearing so much neoprene and struggled with bouyancy issues during all dives, but 1 safety diver was assigned to them and got a work out when one started plummeting downward when going over open water ,but 2 safety divers responded and caught her at 60 feet. The diver was not panicking at all, because we were told during the briefing that if something like that happened the saftey divers would handle it, so the lady said, "I didn't panick because they said someone would come get me so I was just waiting on them to come get me." (she never did grasp the inflated / deflate thing very well).
One other great thing about the op - all divers had to flood their mask and share air on a 20ft deep floor, before we could do the first dive. the mask flooding was to prepare us for the shock of the REALLY cold water if our mask got kicked off and the share-air in case someone ran out. Also, there was a surface support in a kayak that followed above us throughout the dive.
it was quite a hike down through the mine to get to the dive dock, but the climb back up (especially with dive gear) was very memorable.
hope everyone gets a chance to dive this unique site
Todd
