[Nisquaww]

Yea, you read right. After taking a dive mask with me once to look around an alpine lake I got to wondering..Has anyone ever hauled an entire scuba rig into a Washington backcountry lake?

[Ski]

I would guess your list would be much shorter if you were to track the things that had not been hauled to a Washington backcountry lake.

[Dalekz]

Not sure if it counts as a backcountry lake. On my first job out of college for the UW fisheries dept. I helped carry scuba tanks into Findley Lake ( Seattle's Cedar River Watershed) To try and recover a very expensive water collection device that one of the researchers didn't attach right to the line and it fell to the bottom. We could see the divers 100 ft down looking for it. Too much debris to find it.

[glenoid]

Always thought it was a cool idea, but just thinking of carrying all that stuff up to a lake tired me out. (And I certified in 1971 when we hardly had any gear!!) There was an "Oregon Field Guide" TV show about diving Crater Lake that was interesting. Watching them carry all their gear, tired me out again!!!

[Randito]

Seems like a lot of work. Carrying snorkeling gear would be lighter. Even so the cool thing about diving is seeing swarms of multi-colored fish at a coral reef. An alpine lake is going have minnows, trout and maybe some frogs. I guess I'm jaded.

[Dante]

There are a few lakes where might be really cool. I know of one lake in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness that has an airplane at the bottom. Even if you didn't find/see any cool artifacts, I think it would be a cool thing to do once or twice. I may be wrong, but I assume the bottoms of the lakes would mostly be fairly similar. Of course, I'm judging from looking at the bottoms through the water from above the surface.

[Nisquaww]

The weight concern is obvious. I'm just wondering if anyone has ever been so far off their rocker that they actually attempted this. With gear split between two people, hauling a charged tank in for a day is feasible.

[ScottP]

IMO, the cool thing about diving lakes would be the topography. I've dived walls in Lake Tahoe and house-sized underwater boulder fields on the Smith River in Northern Cal. I did a dive in the pool below Eagle Falls on the Skykomish. Lots of steelhead and big boulders. One cool artifact was a railroad rail wrapped around a boulder by the current that was sandblasted clean of iron oxide.

[Malachai Constant]

Most alpine lakes are not all that deep, just cold, I would think a snorkel and go pro would suffice.

[touron]

How warm would a wet suit keep you in an alpine lake?

[ScottP]

A good fitting quarter inch farmer john with a step-in top and attached hood, quarter inch boots and 3/8's inch mitts keeps a person pretty warm down to the mid-40's over the course of a 40 minute dive, assuming you are moving throughout the dive. How you prepare for a coldwater wetsuit dive goes beyond just the suit, however. Such things as a substantial high-carb meal, avoidance of diuretics and inhaling smoking products, and being well rested can make a considerable difference. Also, filling the suit with warm water before entry reduces the need for the body to heat the ambient water that would enter the suit upon entering the water. How deep you dive also affects how warm you stay. The deeper you go, the more suit compression, and less insulation, you experience. This also is affected by thermoclines that get colder as you descend. I'm 6', 190 and wearing a wetsuit I describe requires, for me, 27 to 30 pounds of lead (depending on the goal of the dive) to offset the buoyancy of the suit, so that has to be factored into what weight is transported to the dive site. Filled 80 cubic foot SCUBA tanks weigh about 35 pounds. The above-described wet suit weighs upwards of 15 pounds. Buoyancy compensator, regulator, mask, fins, and snorkle can easily take you above a hundred pounds of gear.

[Slim]

[kbatku]

Awesome photostream! I've always thought about boating around the lake on my Big Agnes inflatable sleeping pads. Now, add a snorkel mask and it gets interesting.

[Bedivere]

[Nisquaww]

Someone do this. And take pictures. Hahah