My 12 day diving/camping extravaganza was cut short. First, we lost a couple of days on the front end because of My wife's work schedule, and then we lost a good 4 days on the end due to weather. We tried to stick it out in all the rain, but after 3 days of downpour we were down to only two dry sleeping bags between four people. At one point my wife and I were out and 10 pm trying to dig a trench around the tent with our kids sand toys to prevent being completely flooded out!:blackeye In the end, we were saved by our inflatable air mattresses.
I did get a chance to swim many lap around Crystal lake. It turns out my Triton Hyperfin is comfortable for hours on end if I wear it barefoot. I had it made to wear with 5mm socks, but that only works for 20 minutes or so. 3mm socks buy me extra time, but the fin really comes into it's own while barefoot. At one point I even put on a tri-suit and my kids Camel-back and did a couple of mile long swim. The system worked out pretty darn well and I was planning on hitting some new lakes when the trip got cut short. As it was I got to swim at least 2 miles a day every day that we were there and found plenty of frogs and turtles to show to my kids.
In the future I found at least 2 different lakes to try a decent hydro-tour on and I'm pretty sure that at least one would work out great for an overnight hydro-tour camping trip. Water temps were around 73F degrees and the thermocline seemed to be at 18'. Vis was decent above the thermcoline and somewhat crappy below.
It seems that they have big plans for Crystal Lake next summer. There is some kind of invasive rainbow smelt living in the bottom of the lake so they want to raise the temperature of the ENTIRE lake to kill them off. They have invented something called a GELI that will not only raise the surface water temp by one to two degrees, but also raise the temperature of the entire bottom of the lake as well! If it works out as planned we could dive warm water down to 67'. This will be a three summer process and it should make no suit diving in this lake quite nice.
The lake itself is pretty much just sand. It makes a great spot to take the kids swimming, and is easy to find lots of lost swimmer stuff, but not a lot of fish are going to be found. Here's a few pictures from the week.
Jon
I did get a chance to swim many lap around Crystal lake. It turns out my Triton Hyperfin is comfortable for hours on end if I wear it barefoot. I had it made to wear with 5mm socks, but that only works for 20 minutes or so. 3mm socks buy me extra time, but the fin really comes into it's own while barefoot. At one point I even put on a tri-suit and my kids Camel-back and did a couple of mile long swim. The system worked out pretty darn well and I was planning on hitting some new lakes when the trip got cut short. As it was I got to swim at least 2 miles a day every day that we were there and found plenty of frogs and turtles to show to my kids.
In the future I found at least 2 different lakes to try a decent hydro-tour on and I'm pretty sure that at least one would work out great for an overnight hydro-tour camping trip. Water temps were around 73F degrees and the thermocline seemed to be at 18'. Vis was decent above the thermcoline and somewhat crappy below.
It seems that they have big plans for Crystal Lake next summer. There is some kind of invasive rainbow smelt living in the bottom of the lake so they want to raise the temperature of the ENTIRE lake to kill them off. They have invented something called a GELI that will not only raise the surface water temp by one to two degrees, but also raise the temperature of the entire bottom of the lake as well! If it works out as planned we could dive warm water down to 67'. This will be a three summer process and it should make no suit diving in this lake quite nice.
The lake itself is pretty much just sand. It makes a great spot to take the kids swimming, and is easy to find lots of lost swimmer stuff, but not a lot of fish are going to be found. Here's a few pictures from the week.
Jon
