Posted by Mark Gilmour in : Dive Reports, Scuba diving abroad
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Our family holiday this year was a return to Utah to visit with family and friends some of whom we had not seen for 5 years and so didn’t know the children at all. We had figured this would be a no-dive holiday as hey we were going to the desert and the rocky mountains. So first tip for the scuba addict is always check the internet before you go. If I had then I would have found Utahdiving.com. which tells you there is diving to be done in Utah. Once over in Utah though we were told about The Crater, a hot spring crater formed over 10,000 years by the snow meltwater from the Wasatch Mountains which had seeped deep into the earth. Two miles below the surface, the earth’s interior heated the water and sent it skyward. As it percolated upward, it picked up minerals and they eventually formed the beehive shaped limestone deposit called the Homestead Crater. The result a 20m deep pool of 34deg C clear water which replenishes itself every 3 days.
After our trip to the water park on Friday was canned due to it not opening till Memorial day weekend we decided lets go diving. We packed ourselves in the car at Salt Lake City and headed up the Parley Canyon to Heber City and Midway to the Homestead Resort.
Second lesson of the holiday, a scuba diver should always have his certification cards with him. I had brought mine along, (just in case) but Lisa had not bothered….. so a few fantic calls back home to the neighbours and we had her cert n
umber so we could both dive. We arrived and checked ourselves in. The Crater is part of the adventure centre at the Homestead Resort and has a seperate checkin area to the left of the hotel.
After checkin we wandered down to the entrance which is a hollowed out tunnel to the waters edge. Through here you pick up all the rental gear/tanks you may require and head down to the waters edge which is served by a pontoon built onto the surface. On the day we were there Ralph was running the dive centre and brought with him a really chilled and relaxed atmosphere to it all. He sorted out our rental gear and then after chatting and discovering that I was into a bit of underwater photography he lent me the centres Sea&Sea camera to take a few shots. (
Follow this link).
Once we were set we dropped in and so did Lisa’s mask all the way down to the bottom. All of a sudden we had a plan for the dive, search and recovery….. No problem said Ralph if we don’t get it, there are others who will bring it up and he passed Lisa a replacement.
This was my first experience of diving in just a pair of swim shorts and a BCD. 34deg water meant we didn’t need anything else, maybe just some soap for a bath!. It took me a few moments to get used to the temperature and the looseness of the kit. Wasn’t used to that much freedom.
There isn’t any life in the crater to speak off, although look out for the added critters in the water, but that is not the reason for diving the crater. One goes to dive to experience the hot natural spring and for me to enjoy the beams of sunlight dancing in through the crater roof causing shafts of light into the 20m pool. There wasn’t quite enough light at the bottom to get shots of each other, the internal flash just created backscatter but once I worked out how to turn off the flash we managed to get off a couple of decent shots looking up into the light.
This was a thoroughly enjoyable one-off dive. A very unique experience to be able to dive in the heart of the rocky mountains and the Salt lake desert in 34/94deg water. In the end we spent about an hour in the water lazing around enjoying the water and the way the light danced around in the cavern.
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