Lake Dives around Portland/Vancouver

[selkie]

Sorry, the 14th is out for me, I will be at Salt Creek that weekend. I may be able to do the 28th if every thing goes well on the 26th when I have my wisdom teeth pulled.

[spatman]

ORdiver and i are on for sunday morning. we're going to check out lake merwin.

if anyone's interested in joining us, PM or email me.

[Leithius]

See you Sunday Reverend...

[spatman]

i got some additional info about merwin from a guy at my LDS. sounds like the stairs are to the far left past the swimming area. but to the right is a wooded cove where there's an entry near a tree stump. apparently, a local tech diver has laid line trails down. info on the line trails is sketchy, but worth checking out maybe?

[spatman]

lake merwin was exactly like FlyingV said in his original post. easy entry, good spot for students, not a whole lot to look at. viz was 15' or so above 20-25ffw, and maybe 5' below. temps were 64 near the surface and a noticeable thermocline to mid-50s also around 20ffw.

i added a dive site listing here.


here's a few pics from today:

ORdiver:
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a bunch of these sculpins were around:
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spatman:
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"squawfish"??
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ORdiver geeking on some control box thing we found, the "electronic demand"
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lethius:

oh wait, i didn't get a good pic of lethius due to the silt bomb following him around.

[FlyinV]

Good report and nice pictures!
I look forward to going farther up the hill and checking out Yale and Swift lake.

Any idea how it compares to battleground lake? I have never been there.

[ORDiver]

I've never been to Battleground Lake either. We may have to do an exploratory dive there too. One thing I noticed about Merwin was the extreme lack of golfballs compared with some other lakes I have dove. I hope that pollution or habitat degradation hasen't caused their numbers to begin to decline here .

[spatman]

the folks at seven seas scuba take some of their classes to battleground lake. from what they describe, it sounds pretty boring.

gooch, you reading this? ever been there?

and yeah, i'd like to check out yale lake next. though i could do merwin again, just in a different direction. maybe try to find those lines that were run on the south side of the parking lot.

[Leithius]

Alas - I make havoc everywhere I go. I have to say the preserved beer cans from the 80's were my fav part

[no excuses]

Dove Battle ground lake years ago, saw about a half dozen trout and pretty much nothing else, not worth the drive for me to go back lol.

[Gooch]

I dove Battleground lake as part of my rescue dive class. It was murky and mostly muck on the bottom. We didn't see a lot but the class was the thing there. I hear there is a burnt out skate rink at one side.

This weekend, we dove one of our campsites; lost lake around Hood River. Its a high lake at around 3k elevation so like Clear Lake in that regard. It was relatively clear (viz was at least 30 ft) and we saw trout, crayfish and salamander. One crayfish was really huge and many of the salamanders looked preggers. We picked up some lures/hooks and weights lost by fisherman and even one Squirt bottle that looked to be from the 70's or older....it was only a 7.5 oz bottle. There was a huge thermocline around 20-30 feet that really got cold --- surface water was around 63 degrees. There were some rock structures and logs to keep things interesting. All in all, it was a fun dive.

I'd like to know who has dove waldo or crater lake and what they think of those.

[selkie]

I dove Waldo back in the early 80’s. I was certified in Bend and we dove many of the high lakes because they were close. From what I remember of Waldo the water was clear but it was a long swim to find any depth from were we entered. Sorry my memory barely goes back that far so I can’t say were we entered the lake from. There is a guy in Bend that dives the high lakes often. Here is his review of Waldo. http://www.codiving.com/home.asp?pageID=123

I dove Battle Ground Lake a few times this winter the vis is maybe ten feet and the bottom is nice a deep oozing mud substance that swallows all dropped gear. The last time I dove Battle Ground was spring and the place was packed with fishermen.

[WylerBear]

I hear that Crater Lake is a 45 minute hike in full gear-no wheels allowed on the path-and that once you get there, there's not much to see. As cool as it would be to dive Crater Lake it doesn't seem worth it to me.

[Bric Martin]

I have heard stories that I can't confirm about Lake Billy Chinook. The story is that before they flooded that area there was a campground and a Boy Scout Camp there. I have heard at about 80 feet there are huts, a childs playground, and the campground is still there.

If anyone has any info I would be interested.

[Gooch]

I feel the same about Crater Lake. It's like one of those do-it-to-say-u-did-it things. The prospect of moving that gear up and down leaves me pretty cold on the idea.

I did hear about a town that was flooded when they did the Foster/Greenpeter reservoirs but I cannot remember its name or if they razed it first (probably)

[selkie]

I have heard about Crater Lake, if you can get a scientific research project approved the park service will drive your team and gear down to the lake and back. I am not sure if you can use their boat but that probably depends on the project. I know of a few archaeologists trying to think of projects so they can dive the lake without taking the half mile thousand foot in elevation change walk.

[spatman]

I have heard about Crater Lake, if you can get a scientific research project approved the park service will drive your team and gear down to the lake and back. I am not sure if you can use their boat but that probably depends on the project. I know of a few archaeologists trying to think of projects so they can dive the lake without taking the half mile thousand foot in elevation change walk.

let me know when you get that approval, dude! i'll be your "research assistant". :biggrin:

[Gooch]

Right! You can assemble a large dive team due to support, logistic and safety needs. Maybe we can get some funding to chopper into the place or just get paid for our diving, er, I mean, research.

[jokeborn]

I've gone into Yale Lake twice this year. The motor boats did make me nervous at first, but I found a depth that was okay. If you go to the right of the boat launch it drops off nicely into 40-70' (must have been a pond before they made the lake). I drug a flag with me, but people on the surface said the boaters either ignored it or powered up to it like they didn't know what it was.
Vis is decent, some fish, a lot of stumps in varying forms, crawfish also. The temps in July and August were warm. You can also enter closer to the swim area, either in the swim area or the little bluff leading up to it. It drops to about 20' quickly but stays at that depth for the dive if you go to the left. Same stuff to see, you just notice the boats motoring a lot closer.

[FlyinV]

Thanks for the info!

hmmmm I have nothing planned this weekend I wonder if I can dig up a buddy to do a lake dive Saturday AM so I can practice with my new drysuit I feel so bored not having a dive trip lined up this weekend

[Gooch]

Dude---we are going to merwin I think on sunday----the wife is helping with a 7c's rescue class so we will be there anyway and I was thinking of doing some dives....wanna go? Maybe my girl could join us (maybe)

[Gooch]

I left the camera behind for these dives...

FlyinV, John and I dive a dive in Merwin today. It was actually pretty cool. We saw this old growth stump that was bigger than any stump I have ever seen....must have been something like 6-8 ft at the base. The roots coming out looked like big trees themselves! There was a caver line strung out near there that went out -and out and out and out...I heard from a friend its like a mile long. If you follow it, watch your gas. FlyinV found a nice dive slate- no electronic controls though

My wife was there doing some training dives with 7c's and we got to go in with the kids at the end of that and get them a few dives. Lots of sculpins and clams (fresh water? Pinch me..) We saw a big crawfish and played with him for a bit, a few trout and another larger fish but no musky (I really wanted to see one- like a 40 pounder)

Beautiful weather- warm water and good company.....what more could you want? I even recovered a decent anchor...

[FlyinV]

It was a cool dive - I look forward to doing it again sometime.
This dive was just one to get some more experience with my drysuit and I am happy to report nothing out of the ordinary happened to me

To get to the big stump -- Enter the water on the other side of the boat ramp. There is a trail down to a little rocky beach.
Drop down to about 15-20 feet and head out down the shoreline towards the main lake --- Swim about far enough to think ... where the heck is the stump its just past that Perhaps someone will run a line from the stump to a point closer to the entry point to make it a little easier.

As gooch reported we saw a few critters but mainly its a structure dive.

I asked the park ranger how often he sees divers at Lake Merwin and he said at minimum every other weekend there are 6 to 8 divers up at the Lake. When we got out a couple more divers were getting ready to head in. Nice easy place to burn some gas and get a quick dive fix. If your carefull you can have some decent viz but then we encounted some waves of bad viz for no real reason.

[spatman]

thanks for the report, dudes. what was the viz like? how deep did you go?

some one told me that a lot of that line was placed by Jeff Waugh. i think he trains some of his students there.

[Gooch]

In would say the viz was about 8ft (?)...it got worse deeper at around 40ft. We only went to about that depth just because we weren't seeing much deeper and the light was going away a lot. The line was fun to trace along. The rock structures and old growth logs were pretty cool but there wasn't a lot else. The camp host was telling me about some other interesting sounding things to dive in the lake so I'm trying to get a little info from him about what all might be there.