One other notable thing that happened over christmas and I have to thank my colleague Bruce Alber, a fellow hiker, for his help with this.  If you read the blog of the epic one armed climb of Mount Elbert you will remember that I never did manage to get my 'glittering prize' for the climb.  The 'glittering prize was the 'I climbed Mount Elbert' coffee mug from the Alpine Hotel.  I would not buy it before I climbed the mountain in case it jinxed me but went I got back to the hotel there was nobody in the office to get a mug from.  Well, Bruce and his wife stayed there and bought the mug for me!  So now I can drink my coffee from my 'glittering prize' and be reminded of a great climb.  THANKS BRUCE!

 

What else is the Black Dog planning for 2012?  Aside from one weekend a month working as a dive master on the Fling, a couple of dives in San Diego, and going back to the Bonne Terre Mines for my diving fixes, I am going to focus on the mountain hikes.  This year we are going to get the Mt. Rainier team back together to climb Grand Teton in Jackson Hole in July, but before that we will climb both Mount Shasta and Mount Hood for training.  I also want to climb another of the Colorado fourteener's. More blogs comming :-)

 

Keep visiting the site - there will be a lot going on this year.  Email me with thoughts, comments, or challenges at andy@blackdogdivers.net.

 

 

 

I always want to let out a big WOOHOO when I get to dive in the PNW, but I am waaaay too English to shout out like that....so it is an 'inside shout'!  That area is so beautiful; this pic is Sund Rock from the water.  I have been lucky to see some unusual things underwater -- the squid run in La Jolla and hammerheads in the Gulf.  However, late on Thursday night I saw a sight that made my skin crawl. 

 

Starfish are voracious feeders at night, and a group of sunstars had grabbed and were literally pulling a large dead female octopus apart in an attempt to eat it.  The female octopus will stay in her nest and fan water across her eggs until they hatch; the octo will not eat and she will die.  Critters like starfish will pull the carcass out of the nest and eat it in their own skin-crawling way!  Lots of other pics of wolf eels, crabs, anemones, rockfish, etc.  Not much of a story to tell, just a great Thanksgiving diving in PNW.  Check out the 'HOOD CANAL NOVEMBER 2011' tab (or just click here).  

 

 

 

However, before I go diving, I have to say that I did go and climb the highest peak in Texas.  Clearly this great Lone Star State realized that it needed some decent mountains, so it went and annexed some from New Mexico - even my phone thought that it was in a different time zone!  Guadalupe Mountain Park is in the west side of the state, an ass numbing 7.5 hour drive from Austin.  At 8,700 feet Guadalupe Peak is the highest point in Texas, and it is a beautiful park.  Two days of hiking, two peaks over 8500 feet, some strange cooking, and a very wind blown tent - atmospheric wind, from the outside the tent!  Pics and story are in GUADALUPE PEAK tab.

 

The next crazy and highly age inappropriate stunt that I am training for is the Tough Mudder (click for link) event in SoCal in February.  A cross country obstacle course race that was supposed to have been based on Seal training runs that includes climbing over walls, through water filled tubes, running through fire, and ends with soaking wet competitors braving a curtain of hanging wires - some of which are electrified - was definitely someone else's idea of fun!  Expect to see another pic of me in a strange blue hat and another training blog that the kids should not read.

 

 

Finally the Black Dog Dive flag can be seen flying from the summit of Mount Elbert! With a business meeting in Denver ending on a Wednesday, there was no way that I was going to miss another shot at Mt. Elbert - even with my arm still in a sling from the bicep surgery!  So I booked Thursday off and headed back to Leadville. 

 

At 14,433 ft Mt/ Elbert is the second highest mountain in the continental U.S. and the highest point in the Rockies.    I was certainly not as well prepared physically for the hike as I would like to have been, but 'persistence and ego' beat out 'fatigue and good excuses to quit,' and I made it to the top. The story of the climb and pictures are in the MT ELBERT CLIMB tab.

 

 

 

No diving since August 28?? Alien dark dog abduction?? What happened? Well, there IS a story!  I have actually dived  in a lake at 4,800 feet up a mountain to look for boat parts, had another shot at Mount Elbert, traveled, and even partied in Vegas.....but that is not the reason for the disappearing.  I have also been diving on the Fling in the Gulf and well....errr.....that is part of the reason for the disappearance! 

 

 

I have made no secret of the fact that I love to dive on the Fling in the Flower Gardens.  I like the boat, the owners, the crew, and the location,so I plucked up courage to ask the owners if I could try out for a divemaster position on the boat.  They agreed, and I was scheduled to do my training on the boat on 23/24 September.  The manta pic is from a dive on Saturday on the East Bank - Beautiful creature!

 

I think that I did well until the early hours of the morning on Sunday when, returning to the boat after setting the bridle line with JT (my DM mentor), I made a really simple mistake getting back onto the boat in the dark, and that resulted in me tearing a right bicep ligament out of its little bony housing.  Not good!  Divemaster candidate to Doofus in a split second!  However, I soldiered on through the remainder of the day and think that I passed the tests. 

 

The injury led to surgery, and that means that another story will be written that you should probably not let your kids read.  It also resulted in this self portrait from post op....Pink Floyd sounds even better when you are still under the influence of a general anesthetic!  Nice hat, Dude!

 

So what does this mean for you?  It means that there are two stories coming!  The 'Divemaster to Doofus' story of the weekend on the boat AND the story of the subsequent surgery that left me unable to type for a few days.  For the time being (until I actually write the stories), the pictures that I did manage to take from the trip are in the 'DM to DOOFUS' tab!   

 

So, what does this mean for me?  It means teaching my left hand to do things that my right hand took for granted!  Teaching an old dog new tricks!

 

 

 

Black Dog got some pictures published in the Houston Chronicle!  This is a great write up by Pam LeBlanc who dives on the Fling.  I was really excited to have the opportunity to provide some pictures!  First time in print!! Click on the link below to read the article and see the pics.  Thank you, Pam.

 

 

 

 

There is a great song 'What a difference a day makes' - well, I am going to say 'What a difference a month makes' when it comes to my dive experience in Bonne Terre.  The first time that I was there I struggled with equipment issues and did not have the best diving experience. BUT, I went back on 8/28/11 and really enjoyed the people and the dives.

 

I went back to do trails 5, 7 and 8, and they were well worth the drive from Kansas City.  I got to see some new rooms and artifacts and learned a lot new about the mine, the organization, and the people that work as dive masters and safety divers.  As I said - what a difference a month makes.  I am also happy with the few pictures that I took that actually made it through to being up loaded onto the site. 

I take a lot more pictures than you see!    Check out pictures from both trips in the Bonne Terre Mines tab (click to go straight there) 

 

 

It was good to be back in cold waters off San Diego with Jim, Dan and Marjorie.  It was just like old times, even down to the trip to the Rockin' Baja in Old Town, but this time Jim made it to the boat! 

 

I have such good memories of San Diego and love to go back there to dive and hang out. 

 

We spent 8/20 on the Humboldt (click for web site) with a two tank dive in the Coronado Islands in the morning and a two dive in the kelp beds in the afternoon. It was a good ride out with great diving conditions and we all had fun. 

 

The pictures and the story are in the San Diego August 20 tab (click for tab).

 

 

 

 

Well that was a BLAST!  Sorry, bad joke, but YES, I really did get to dive in a Cold War nuclear missile silo in Abilene, Texas, and I really did enjoy myself. The silo itself was one of 12 built around the Dyess AFB outside Abilene in 1960.  The silo housed an Atlas F Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, 82 ft tall, 10 ft wide with the power to take a nuclear warhead to Russia. 

 

The site was activated in 1962 and decommissioned in 1964 when all of the structure (catwalks, ducting were cut down and dropped to the bottom of the 150 ft deep by 60 ft wide silo.  Over the years, water seeped in and today after a climb from the doorway near the top of the silo down to the water, you can dive 110 feet down and explore the wreckage of the structure on the bottom.  About 25 years ago the land and the silo were purchased by Mark Hannifin with a view to turning it into a home, but in the end he turned it into a dive center with a dive shop, Family Scuba, (click for web site) a few miles away in Midland, TX. 

 

The facility is available for dive shops and clubs to rent for the weekend.  I got the chance to dive the site with my friends from Tom's Dive and Swim in Austin.  It is a great experience; I enjoyed the diving and just hanging out in the silo and launch/control room (now a changing area), I could really feel the history and the almost sinister nature of the place.  I appreciate the fact that Family Scuba has not over commercialized the opportunity and the fact that a group of us could just dive and enjoy the place added to the experience.  More pictures and the full story in the Valhalla Missile Silo  tab to the left.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve and I were part of a team of eight climbers that included Lester, Ike, Robert, John, Ryan, and Brian. The climbing was harder than I expected, but the altitude was less of an issue for me than I expected. 

 

We set out from the Paradise car park on Wednesday morning in snow and low viz and climbed 4,000 feet to the Muir Camp at 10,000 ft. We slept that night in a small bunk house and woke to a perfectly clear morning with views out to Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens.  During that morning we were trained in the use of crampons and how to walk in the snow, then a crash course in harness and rope work, followed by learning how to arrest a slide using our ice axes.  With that rudimentary training out the way, we donned our helmets, harnesses, ice axes, and packs and climbed up another 1,200 feet to the high camp.   

 

High camp consists of tents in the snow, and that is where we slept for some of Thursday night.  Again, the views at High Camp were amazing and other than a little more training and eating, we were put to bed at 5.00 pm with alarms set for midnight to start the last 3,400 foot climb to the summit.  

 

After a bowl of oatmeal we turned on our headlamps and set out from camp at 1.20 am, and from there it was up, up, step over step, foot by foot, slowly and relentlessly to the summit.  At times it was very steep.  We crossed ice crevasses and narrow ledges 'round rocky outcrops, but eventually we stepped into the crater at the summit and walked across to the highest point.  I did not have a lot of strength left for celebration, but it was good to take in the view and before we knew it, there was a tug on the rope and we were on our way down again.

 

It was a great experience and I will write in detail about the climb and post that a little later, but for now I just want to thank the team - Garret, Rich, Sam, Matt, Lester, Ike, John, Robert, Ryan and Brian.  And Steve - thank you for planning this and seeing it through to its conclusion.  What next?  Kayaking down the Amazon? 

 

 

 

 

As our attempt to climb Mount Rainier looms ever closer, I am in the last stages of getting fit and getting gear together for the climb.  The training has taken me from fitness rooms, to climbing stairs in hot, steamy hotel stairwells in McAllen, TX and long hikes in the Texas countryside with a 40 lb weight pack on my back. It has been fun, but I wish I had gotten serious about this sooner!

 

The last part of my training was in Colorado this weekend; it was a stunning trip to face (and be beaten by) another 14,400 ft mountain (Mt Elbert).  The goal was to acclimatize myself to an altitude above 10,000 feet - I know what it is like now, and I am ready to come back down please! I also recommend the town of Leadville, CO as a place to stay.

 

During this rather short time of physical exertion and lackadaisical mental preparation, I learned a few things about myself and my surroundings that I really did not always need to know.  However, I now feel the urge to share my deepest thoughts with you in the blog in the 'Mount Rainier Climb'.  There are also pictures in the aptly named 'TX and CO hiking pics tab. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, somebody said to me before this most recent trip to the Flower Garden - "Don't you get bored going back to the same places so often?"  I have actually encountered this question many times from non-divers as I load my truck and head for the same dive sites and areas weekend after weekend.  I tend to compare diving to fishing in that when you cast your line out at a familiar fishing hole, you really never know what you are going to catch, and that is the excitement that takes you back there.  Diving is similar in that you never know what you are going to see when you drop over the side and slide under the turbulent surface into the 'silent world'.  If that is not enough, there are really three other things that I value or that makes each experience different for me. 

 

1.  Familiarity does not breed contempt as someone once said.  It actually breeds camaraderie and friendship, and that sums up my appreciation of the crew of the Fling.

 

2.  I get the opportunity to dive with new people and make new friends each time I go out on a dive trip, and you can read the trip logs to see how that works out!

 

3.  Having a camera in your hand really changes the way that you look at the underwater environment.  You move slowly, focus on small details, and constantly look for changes in the environment. 

 

However, this trip was mostly about whether Andy was a big growling tiger and the king of his own jungle or a juvenile cat that has not worked out what a sand box is and a haircut that made me think of a 60's English pop star.  Confused?  Read the blog below the pictures on the Flower Gardens May 7 tab.  It contains more information than you need or want to know about what goes on in my mind during a dive trip.  

 

My thanks as always to the owners, Captains, and crew of the Fling, the great group of people that I got to dive with, and Tom's Dive and Swim for allowing me to be part of their dive group on this weekend.

 

 

Once again I am ready to bow down to the Captains and crew of the MV FLING(click for web site) for yet another great weekend of diving in the Texas Flower Gardens, I had a blast! 

 

We had the perfect weather window, and I was blessed with more pictures than I really know what to do with!  The big deal this time were the hammer heads, but for me the pictures from the rig dive are the best. 

 

I want to thank Keith and Mark from International Scuba  for hosting me on the boat.

 

Suffer from Vertigo?  This is a shot looking down the risers of the High Island 389 rig at two divers looking out into the blue.  All the time that we were there silky sharks and huge shoals of fish kept us company.

 

From the rig we moved to the East Bank for our twilight and night dives and as always, the dive log below the pictures on the FLOWER GARDENS APRIL2 tab will expose what I was really up to on the twilight dive, and yes, it does have something to do with tiger sharks again!

 

I ALWAYS appreciate meeting and diving with new people, and the group that was diving on this trip were great divers and fun to be on, in and under the water.  Please take a look at the rest of the pictures in the FLOWER GARDENS APRIL 2011 tab and the blog of the trip under the pictures - it is worth browsing through. 

 

On this trip I was fortunate to dive with Todd Richard of Synergy Productions (click for web page) and he provided me with the following links for video's that he has made about the Fling and the Flower Gardens:

 

           THE FLING        Click for video         THE FLOWER GARDENS

 

 

 

Sometimes you get to dive with a character or two and you think 'Well, that was amusing'.  This was one of those trips!  Even before the Silver Prince (click for web site) hit the dock, the banter between the divers that would be on the boat had started. 

 

I am not normally one for commenting on or taking pictures of other divers.  Fish rarely worry about their profile or exposure - however, given that they cannot blink, I often wonder how long it is after I have taken pictures of them that they actually stop swimming into rocks.  But I fear that two people have to be singled out on this trip, and they are Eric 'The Pirate' and Jeff  'Captain Chaos', both from Dive Talk Now on AM Pirate Radio on AM 1240.  I think that the picture says it all.  Eric and Jeff are both wearing their Otter Bay Wetsuits (click for web site) . 

 

Captain Mike Minard braved tsunami warnings to put us on three great dive sites, and poor lowly deckhand Todd Temple kept us all amused, safe and well fed from start to finish (great carne asada!).  THANK YOU.

 

 

 

 

As we packed up to leave, Otter Bay Wetsuits, in conjunction with Silver Prince Charters, had a raffle for a 12mm wetsuit hood.  I was the lucky one to be drawn and look forward to sporting a new dive hood from Otter Bay.  How much weight do I need to offset the buoyancy of that hood??  Thank you all again.   There is a full dive report below the pictures in the MONTEREY 3/12 tab on the left hand side of this page.

 

 

 

 

This black dog is at his happiest when he has people to thank because that means that he had another great dive trip!  I have been looking forward to taking the MV FLING (click for website) out to the Texas Flower Gardens for the best part of a year and on 19/20 February I finally made it there.    

 

The Flower Garden Banks is a national marine sanctuary 100 miles off the coast of Texas in the Gulf of Mexico,  There are three distinct areas - the East Bank, the West Bank and Stetson Bank and all have their unique differences.  The banks are actually salt domes and they rise to within 70 feet of the surface where they have become covered in coral and have become a haven for large oceanic fish and smaller brightly colored tropical fish such as angel and butterfly fish.  More information can be found at http://flowergarden.noaa.gov/. 

 

So who do I have to thank?  Well the boat was chartered to Lone Star Scuba out of Dallas and Tom's Dive & Swim out of Austin (click on the shop name for a link to the store web site).  I called Tom's, and Kirk booked me up for what turned out to be the first trip of the season for the MV Fling. 

 

I joined the boat in Freeport on Friday night, and after briefings and the race for a bunk, we settled down to sleep for the ride out to the Banks.  We completed seven dives in two days, and the crew of the Fling had us all safely back in Freeport on Sunday evening.  My next set of thank yous is, therefore, to the Captains and crew of the Fling.  You did a GREAT JOB.  It was a GREAT TRIP - Thank you!

 

As with all dive trips, I got to meet and dive with a great group of people.  We relaxed and told lots of dive stories on the sun deck as the sun went down.  Please take a look at the pictures and dive report in the FLOWER GARDENS TAB on the left side of this page.

 

Everybody always asks me - did you see a shark?  Well, this is a 10-12 ft Tiger shark, and I can guarantee that he saw me before I saw him.  Sharks trigger a very primitive fear instinct in all humans, just by their shape and the movement.  They are truly the ultimate apex predators....they are silent, they are deadly, and we are guests in their world! (the specs in the water are shrimp)

 

 

 

I always feel that diving is a gift, and that it delivers something new each time I submerge regardless of whether I am going back to an old favorite diving spot like the La Jolla shores or the Hood Canal or somewhere new.  Whenever I submerge, there is always something new to see if you are looking hard enough or lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.  The trip to the PNW that is documented below is extraordinary for the effects of the oxygen depletion and the octopus interaction.  This trip to La Jolla was no exception. 

 

I knew that there had been a squid run, because I could see the egg masses and bodies of dead squid on my dives during the day and, as seems to be my strange desire these days, I decided to document the critters that were feeding on the carcasses.  The first night conditions were poor and I did not see any squid.  But the following night, as I slipped over the wall at 65 feet and shined my light down, I was met with a rush of squid that simply overwhelmed me.  In the tab opposite 'SQUID RUN IN LA JOLLA' I have tried to document what I saw during the night and the day.  There are shots of the squid fighting, mating, laying eggs, and dying.  Actually my favorite picture is one of a swimmer crab trying to make off with a carcass, but I guess that is a little morbid. 

 

In addition to the squid I got to see all the usual suspects: the octos, sheep crabs, rock fish, I got a couple of nice pics of a horn shark, my favorite sarcastic fringeheads, nudibranchs, and I got to take picture of a halibut for the first time.  I have included all the other critter pictures in the 'THANKSGIVING 2010" tab.

 

I would also like to thank TOM GOOSMAN from the DIVEBUMS Dive club in La Jolla.  We dove together one evening two years ago, and we met up on the beach for another dive that weekend.  Tom was also kind enough to send me a pdf map of the La Jolla shores underwater profile, which I have included below.  Please check out the Divebums web site http://www.divebums.com/, especially if you are thinking about diving the shores, but you are not sure about how to - lots of good information!

 

 

 

I got to go back to the Hood Canal in Washington and spend a few days diving and really taking the time to look at the canal and see what is going on there, and I am going to try and document what I saw and my thoughts in pictures and words in the HOOD CANAL SEPT 2010 tab.  BUT, there are a few things that I need to say about those dives.

 

It was a trip for big and small critters, but the octopus interaction was both amazing and sad.  These are big, intelligent creatures, and being able to watch them hunt at night is amazing.  But the Hood Canal is suffering from de-oxygenation.  It happens every year, and it is mostly associated with water movement in the canal.  The net effect is that there is not enough O2 for the critters, and there is a band between 20 and 40 feet where large quantities of critters have been pushed into in search of O2. 

 

In that area I found millions of spot prawns, swarms of mysid shrimp, all manner of sculpins and fish that would normally have been in deeper water, and rock fish in large listless shoals above 20 feet.  I have pictures in the tab that document all of this.  However, the biggest effect is on the large critters.  Wolf eels lay gasping on the bottom, and males will leave the den to let their 'wives' breathe, but saddest of all is the fate of the female octopuses. 

 

Female octos stay fanning fresh oxygenated water over their eggs.  They will not eat and will normally not leave the den until the eggs have hatched.  However, I have pictures of a female, white and close to death, out of the den working her way up toward shallow water.  Is it all bad? No, and in this case it is nature and not man that is at work here.  There are a lot of fabulous critters still there, and I got to see warbonnets, grunt sculpin, wolf eels, bay pipe fish, nudibranchs (see above), crabs, tubeworms and .......RON!.  Ron works in Hoodsport 'n Dive and has been a friend and source of local diving information since I started diving.  Check out http://www.hoodsportndive.com/, and if you are planning a dive in the NW, these guys will look after you.

 

 

This is the card that Margo Sercu made for Black Dog Divers as a thank you card for students that took classes with us.  I still LOVE this card and want to share it. Margo developed all the logos for the site and the T shirts.  Thank you .