Diving the BonneTerre Mine 11-28-2009
This Thanksgiving weekend my buddy Andy wanted to do something different so after we ate the turkey and pumpkin pie we packed up our scuba gear and headed out to Bonne Terre Missouri for a unique diving experience, diving in a partially flooded mine. The Bonne Terre mine has been the subject of at least one TV program that I have seen. It was an episode of Weird U.S. on the History channel. Bonne Terre is just south of St. Louis and is only a 4.5 hour drive from my house. We got a basic room at the Super 8 motel right there in Bonne Terre less than a mile from the dive site. Diving the mine was a unique experience to be sure. The water is 58 F year round and the air temp in the mine is 62 F year round. The diving is very structured and is organized into trails. Andy and I did the first three trails that you must complete before you can do the others. You will be guided by a lead diver and trailed by a safety diver on every dive. No cameras or lights were allowed on the first dive but are ok on the next two. Most of the time it is all open water above you and the only certification you need to dive is an open water certification. Because of the minimal requirements to dive the guide will make you perform two skills at the start of the first dive, flooding and clearing your mask and sharing/receiving air from your buddy. I have posted some pictures of the trip here on my page. One important thing to note, everything you take into the mine is carried in and out by you so plan accordingly. It is about 60 stairs and a ¼ mile walk downhill into the mine and you guessed it uphill all the way out. Our group was six divers when we started out for the first of three dives for the day. It was an interesting group and I hope to see some of them here on divebuddy.com before long. We did our dives and saw the sites including lots of left behind mining equipment and rock formations. You can check out all the particulars on the mine’s dive site at http://www.2dive.com/. It was certainly what we were hoping for which was a different diving experience on a long holiday weekend in the Midwest.
Enjoy and Dive Safe
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