Bonne Terre ('Good earth')
There are two sets of pictures and stories here. First below is my dive on 8/28/11 and I have to say that I loved this dive. Was it something in the air on my first visit or my attitude because of my own gear failure? I don't know, but I am VERY glad that I went back, because my experience on this trip was 360 degrees from my first. Everybody was happy and cheerful and I enjoyed the company of the staff and my fellow divers.
I am so happy that I went back and can really recommend the dive and the people. Immediately below are the pictures from the most recent dives, and they are followed by the original report. On this trip I did trails 5, 7 and 8, and there are some great pics. Dives 1-4 felt a little like I was just going in figure eights round the same halls (and looking at the map - I was), but things started to get more interesting on this trip, more overhead, more interesting rooms and artifacts. I am definitely planning to come back and hit the next set of dives including dive 10 when we get to see the small coal train. I will persist and work my way through the trails.On the pictures you will see a drill in the wall and old shovels and dynamite boxes. Very cool!
It was an excited Black Dog that boarded the plane to Kansas from Austin on July 29th. I have always been interested in diving the Bonne Terre mines, and I was finally going to get the chance. However, before that happened I had to schlep two large roller bags of dive gear and clothes for the three days of meetings in Kansas that would follow the diving.
I actually have the equipment carrying process down to an art! My primary equipment bag weighed in at 49.5 lbs and the second at 40 lbs…sweet! I then had a small roller bag with my camera gear (that weighed another 25 lbs) and my computer bag with work files! What is fun is that this lot would travel with me for 3 weeks as I run about the country!
I am going to write a blog about ‘people who sit next to me on airplanes,’ but I have not done it yet. However, the girl that sat down next to me on the first leg out and proceeded to fan her sweaty self vigorously with her ticket holder will be in it. The plane is hot and believe it or not, I do not need you fanning all your odors and germs in my direction, thank you! However, the flights were uneventful, and I arrived in Kansas, grabbed my car and started on the 6 hour drive from KC to Bonne Terre, MO.
There is always a good chance that there will be a story brewing when I arrive with no hotel for the first night and a Super 8 for the next night. Margo always books my travel, and there is a distinct difference between my hotel choices when I am working compared to when I am diving! So, I generally get a ‘dive’ hotel when I am diving and that has resulted in several cockroach stories! But Super 8 it is; we will see how that goes!
The drive across from Kansas City took 5 hours and having come from drought ravaged Texas, I was almost blinded by the green color of the land, the flooded rivers, and corn standing shoulder high in the row. What a difference a state can make! I enjoyed the drive across to Bonne Terre which is located 59 miles south of St Louis in Missouri. The drive was gentle and uneventful, and I was pleasantly surprised with the condition, cleanliness and service at the Super 8 on my arrival at 11 pm. I messed with my gear until midnight and fell asleep thinking about the days of diving to come.
The Bonne Terre mine was once the largest lead mine in the world, and to this day remains the world’s largest man-made cavern. Mining started at the site in 1860, and it remained an active mine until 1962. There are 5 levels which penetrate down over 500 feet into the earth, and we were told that somewhere below 250 feet there is a ‘city’ with mule stables, a cinema, and a bowling alley. There are parts of the mine that still have not been explored due to the depth.
When the mining operations were discontinued, the pumps that were used to clear water from the mine were turned off and the 17 miles of caverns filled with clear (100 ft plus viz), cold (58 degrees all year round) water forming a ‘billion gallon underwater lake.’ There are several artifacts left in the mine including drills, ore carts, wooden elevators, shovels, etc. Jacques Cousteau spent a week diving and filming in the mine, and National Geographic voted the mine as one of the top 10 adventure spots in the country.
On arrival at the mine you enter what could best be described as a walled compound. Inside are several well-maintained buildings and a selection of refurbished pieces of mining equipment placed thoughtfully amongst the buildings. There was a dive shop, a store, a dive locker room, and a ‘surface interval lounge for divers. In the middle there was a red building with Mule Entrance written on it, and I guessed that was the point that you entered the mine. It was 6.45 am on Saturday morning, and the place was dead as a door post.
As our designated meeting time of 7.00 am approached, another car arrived with a diver. I asked where he had come in from. “Texas”….it is a small world. Next a van arrived and out of it poured eight fun loving Canadian divers. I was immediately glad to see that their heads did not open when they spoke….I guess that South Park has it wrong. During this time three people walked past us and headed to the shop, and we all assumed that these must be staff but were vaguely surprised that they made no attempt to communicate with the ‘customers du jour.’
We all wandered over to the store and were provided with the obligatory paperwork to complete and requests that we leave C Cards and driver’s license with them. The next request was for credit cards as most of us needed weights or some sort of equipment. I have never been to a diving operation that charged for the rental of weights separately from the tanks and cost of the dive. But the team in the shop was very focused on getting the cards and getting those items billed before we went on.
It was hot and humid and there was no AC in the shop, so when we were invited into a small room to watch the safety video, I was tempted to go and get a towel. But we all filed into the room and were shown a safety video. I am used to the dive team giving a verbal briefing that covers standard safe diving practices and relates them to the dive environment, but as the video started up we realized that it was a PADI/SSI video from the early 80’s. We watched divers with porn star mustaches in strange colored wet suits swim through coral gardens in open ocean and all winced at the sight of a man running in silky shorts that were three sizes too small in the ‘fit for diving’ section. I was sweating profusely, and along with everybody else, wondering what this had to do with diving in a mine!
We did head outside for the verbal briefing which was a relief. While that briefing did cover some basic description about how we were expected to dive as a team, the function of the group leaders, and safety divers, I was still a little bemused about the whole process. In the end I asked about the history of the mine because that really interested me, but I just got a short answer. I think that we were supposed to pay the $25 for the walking tour to get the history. I made a note to myself to read up on that.
With a basic understanding that we were diving in a group and that there was coral and bright shiny fish in the vast open blue water cavern below my feet, I grabbed my gear and walked to the door of the building with Mule Entrance on it. I have to say that I was both bemused and excited at the prospect of heading down into the mine to dive.
Once inside the mule entrance – which really was where they led the mules down into the mine – we moved rapidly from the heat of the day and down the steps into a rock-walled tunnel. After about 100 feet, we emerged into a cavernous hall with huge pillars hewn by hand out of the rock. The temperature dropped to a very nice 60 degrees, and we walked quietly in the orange glow of the lights, listening to the water that drips from the roof of the cavern some 80 feet above us. It was very impressive and to think that the miners worked by hand to make this!
We followed the concrete path down a gate that welcomed us to the “Billion-gallon lake" and the dive deck that was built out into the beautifully clear, and thankfully, cool water. The dive deck consisted of a tank filling and storage area with a small workshop from which we grabbed our $21 weights and a tank. The area for gearing up is spacious and well maintained, so we all spread out along the sturdy benches and started putting our gear together. The view out over the water was equally as spectacular as the rest of the cavern to me, and I could look down over 100 feet to the bottom. I was very happy to be back in my dry suit and in cold water. Don’t ask me what it is about the cold, but I love it and this was setting up to be the perfect diving conditions.
The tour leader and safety divers once again reminded us that we were diving as a team, that we should follow the leaders that had lights, and that they would be checking our air regularly. All of the Bonne Terre dive team were pleasant and gave me a sense of confidence, but they somehow lacked a personal connection with the divers. I think that I am spoiled because it seems that everywhere I dive, the dive masters are keen to share knowledge and enthusiasm.
Once the team leader dropped into the water, the ‘pool’ was ‘open’ for us to take our giant stride off the dock. Immediately after dropping in, I looked around underwater at the viz and the view; it was spectacularly different from anything that I had seen before. But the first thing that I noticed was a bubbling from my low pressure inflater, and I could see that the bubbles were coming from round the inflater button. The good part of that was that it was not coming from the tank; the bad part was that it was coming from the bladder so I would not be able to keep it fully inflated. However, I could use my dry suit to support my surface buoyancy and would not need to fully inflate the bladder underwater, so I was happy to proceed with the dive.
Before we could set off on Tour 1 we were taken to a shallow area and asked to demonstrate a mask flood and clear and an air share using an alternative air source. This was a good safety feature, and we were told that even Cousteau had to do the demonstration before he was allowed to dive in the mines. With that completed, we were off.
Tour 1 is a shallow, get acquainted tour, and we followed Buzz, the tour leader, around rock wall, past dark tunnel openings and through underwater caverns that were lit from above. We looked at a drill that was still sticking out of the wall and other pieces of mining equipment that remained there under the water. We seemed to move in several figure 8’s as we moved through the tour.
The first thing that I noticed was the close proximity of all the other divers; there was plenty of opportunity to take a gentle fin kick to the head or to bump into someone in the darkness, but that was actually part of the fun! The tour brought us back to the underside of the dock where there were bars at 15 feet for people to do safety stops, and with those completed, we climbed two at a time up the creaky steps and back onto the dive platform. Once our gear was off, we were led as a group back out of the cavern via the mule entrance. As we approached the top of the stairs and the exit point for the rock tunnel, the heat and humidity hit us again and then we were outside again, squinting into the bright yard.
It was at this point we discovered that there was no real food anywhere at the place. There were, however, candy bars, cold drinks, and chips in the souvenir shop – when the shop was actually open. Once again, it would appear that a little effort on the food front would have added to the experience and the feeling that the team really cared about the divers who had spent over $500 (plus the $21 for weights to dive there). I am not saying that they should provide free food, just that it would (on the face of it) seem easy to get a local store to make up some sandwiches and then sell them to us. By the end of the 3rd dive, I would have very happily paid for something more than a candy bar to eat.
With an hour and a half surface interval completed, we headed back down to the cool of the cavern and geared up for Tour 2. Using defined tours is a very good way of getting divers accustomed to overhead environments, entering a new cavern via a keyhole, and the general darkness of the dives. I can certainly see that without knowing what you are letting yourself in for that it could be unnerving. There are 52 trails, each one getting a little more complex or requiring more time in overhead environments or tunnels.
I was allowed to take my camera on the second dive, so it felt like someone had given me my arm back! However, the low light makes it very difficult for the camera to focus and to get pictures that do justice to the size of the caverns.
Dives 2-4 were similar; lots of rock, some ore carts and equipment, a big wooden elevator shaft, pipes, rail tracks and…..rock! The thing that struck me the most was swimming from a tunnel where you felt huge and cumbersome out into one of the enormous caverns where each diver looked tiny as we wound our way around the massive rock arches, suspended over precipitous drop off’s. We saw a bench where miners had hidden from supervisors; there was even an old magazine on the bench!
Another really interesting feature was watching the metal parts oxidizing in the very calcium rich, hard water. It actually looked like blue smoke in the water. As we talked in surface intervals, we wondered if we were going around the same route but using different combinations of figure 8’s and often questioned whether this would ‘get boring’ after 4-5 dives. However, it is clear that the tours get more ‘intense’ as you move through them, more narrow tunnels and overhead environments and small swim- through.
We ended the day by meeting ‘Donna, the bass.’ There actually is one living fish in the whole underwater complex, a large bass called Donna. I came to understand that 20 bass were put into the water as an experiment and Donna was the only survivor – it made me think of the story of the Donner Party! The reason for the low survival rate was the lack of O2 in the water and I have to assume – a lack of food. I guess that Donna stashed the bodies of the other fish and has been living off them for the last few years, and she looks pretty healthy for it!
After the last dive we exited the mine and all agreed to meet for dinner at the local Italian restaurant, but before that I went back to the Super 8 for a shower and to change. I have to report that the Super 8 was very nice, and I would recommend it. The Canadian group stayed in one of the two buildings that are owned by the people who own the diving operation. It sounded like their accommodations were clean and comfortable.
I really enjoyed my evening with my Canadian friends at the Italian restaurant. We sat outside and ate good and reasonably priced food; the service was great, and it made a nice end to the day. With a belly full of lasagna and a smile on my face, I headed back to the Super 8 for sleep. We had a 7 am start for diving on day two with three dives scheduled, and morning came very fast.
We were now used to the routine of getting ready, entering the mine and getting set up on the dock. I put all my gear together and turned the air on. The DM’s did the gear check that they always did before each dive, and I stood up to zip up my dry suit and put on my neoprene hood and gloves. Once all geared up, I put on my dive computers and sat down to slide my arms through the shoulder straps of my BCD. Within seconds of cinching down the straps and with my head right next to the first stage of the regulator, there was a huge BANG and violent hissing sound.
Instinctively I knew what had happened and calmly slid back out of my BCD and turned the air off. What had happened was that the high pressure hose to my air pressure gauge had blown out and split almost completely in half!
At this point there were divers in the water and getting ready to go. Ken Holliday of NW Divers was the leader of the Canadian team, and he kindly tried to get me set up with a transducer and computer that he had, but we could not set it up in time and I did not want to hold up his dive or delay the group so I told him to go dive and that I would see if I could get my gear fixed for the next dive.
That first dive turned out to be the ’cursed’ dive because within moments of dropping down, one of the group was back on the surface. I helped him back up on the deck, and he told me that things did not feel right to him on the descent so he terminated the dive. What a great decision; too often people continue to push on regardless of what their gut tells them, and that is when accidents occur. An instructor once told me “If it feels wrong, it probably is wrong – end the dive and get out.” That is good and very correct advice.
Within a few minutes another diver was on the surface having faced buoyancy issues; then one of the safety divers popped up with an issue. I went from being totally alone on the dock, listening to the water dripping from the roof onto the ‘lake’ to having to slide my gear up to make room for people. After about 25 minutes another person appeared and then the whole group swam back under the dock to the safety stop line, and I watched bubbles rising erratically and then bursting on the surface.
Again, I assume that I have been spoiled for all the other 1000 dives that I have done because in almost every situation that I have been in, dive masters have always made an effort to help other divers with equipment problems, and it is true that the guys at the mine may have assumed that someone else was helping me, however, as we were gathered up and escorted out of the mine, there was never a question or comment from the dive team.
During the surface interval I resigned myself to the fact that I would not be completing any more dives that day. I will not lean on others for gear and had it in my head that I should just get back to Kansas City early and work on my presentation for the next two days of meetings. So I reluctantly removed my drysuit and started breaking down my camera. As the time for the second dive of the day drew near, one of the team from West End Diving asked why I was not making another dive. I stated that it was because I did not have a high pressure hose for my pressure gauge, and I was casually told that I could rent one from the shop. I wondered why nobody had told me that and why I had never asked, but by that time it was too late to put my gear back together and get into the mine without holding everybody else up so I continued packing up my gear. You might ask why I did not just go to the dive shop and ask about equipment. Well, the dive shop was closed most of the time that we are on the surface, and there was really no gear on display there so I was really not aware that I could rent gear.
So, as the remainder of my Canadian friends made their way down the mule entrance to the mine to start on Trail 6, I packed up and drove out of the compound wishing that I had completed one of the day’s dives, but I was ready to go and my presentation was concerning me and I headed back to KC.
Will I go back? Yes I will, but I will bring an ice chest with food and drinks and plenty of spare parts. The guys on the Fling dive boat laugh at me because when I dive, I carry at least one spare reg. set, a spare mask, and often a spare BCD!
Black Dog’s thoughts:
- The mine is spectacular, and the dives get better as you progress through the trails.
- The briefings will not really prepare you for the diving, especially the safety video! Be comfortable with overhead environments, tunnels, and low light conditions, but also expect to be amazed by the scale of the caverns!
- The underwater dive teams (leaders and safety divers) were friendly and patient.
- Bring food or get food from one of the garages before heading to the mine or you will be hungry.
- Make sure that you have your credit card handy!
- Note to self - change out all my hoses and service my regs!
Dive profile:
- Dive 1, 58 ft for 55 minutes
- Dive 2, 52 feet for 52 minutes
- Dive 3, 51 feet for 54 minutes
- Dive 4, 54 feet for 43 minutes
- Dive 5-7, did not complete
