Northwest Dive Club

I am looking at continuing my diving education. I have my AOW and needing drysuit and deepwater training. However, I live in Ellensburg and there are no dive shops here. Getting over the mountain several times for training does not appeal to me. So, I am wondering if any of the reputable shops are offering remote learning, i.e. Zoom, Teams, Skype for the classroom portion of the training. Crossing the mountain to get wet is never an issue. I would also consider a two day course, but would like to do both at the same time if possible.

Hi. I'd think most shops would have this option. Especially for drysuit for which there's not much classroom. Call around!

I am a PADI instructor and teach for a PADI shop (Evergreen Dive Service in Everett). We currently do most of our classroom sessions via Zoom because of the pandemic. For the dry suit specialty you have your choice of elearning and a short Zoom meeting or the printed manual and a longer (2 hr) Zoom meeting. The printed manual is significantly less expense. The specialty requires 2 dives which can be accomplished easily in 1 day. If you have not logged dry suit dives you will also need a confined water session. Assuming you do not have your own dry suit there is the issue of fitting you in a suit and obtaining the rental early enough in the day to complete your dives.

The deep diver specialty requires four dives and two days. Again you have the choice of elearning or printed manual. Since you will be making four deep dives over two days you should not drive over the pass that evening.