Chatfield Condition Report

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Mpscubatoytech

Registered
Scuba Instructor
Messages
37
Reaction score
1
Location
Aurora CO.
# of dives
200 - 499
Chatfield is getting better. There are definitely two pretty significant thermo clines right now. One is at around 10/11 feet above which it was consistently in the high 50's and below which is about 55 degrees consistently. The second thermo cline appears to be around 20ish feet and drop to the low 50's I had 52 degrees, and I think Mpscubatoytech had 50 or so.

Vis was interesting. Near the bottom, it was literally blocking out all light. I couldn't see the Oxycheq light in front of my face. Above 12 feet it was beautiful with the water having this pretty blue-green quality and at least 20ish feet of vis (I have *never* seen Chatfield water in that condition before we had really good vis with possibly even more distance, but it was just such a neat color). Between the bottom and about 12 deep it was roughly 5-8 feet of vis, rapidly degrading toward the bottom.
 
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Hi Gang,

We did an Open Water certification course this weekend, and a bunch of us were assisting (including my buddy Mpscubatoytech). I have personally never witnessed visiability like this...it had to be 30 to 35 feet in Chatfield...CHATFIELD! Holy Carp!

We could clearly see our 16-foot platform hanging from a very shallow angle on the surface (in fact, I *swear* I could see it standing on the bench with polarized glasses on on the shore).

These conditions were on Saturday...unfortunately, the enormous storm that rolled in that afternoon stirred it up a little and on Sunday it was down to about 20ish feet at the platform, but the horizontal vis in the epilimnion was still very high.

Note - below the thermocline (which is at 17 feet dead on) the temp drops 5 degrees from 64 to 59, and the vis below is down to about 3-5 feet...it looks like a dark cloud beneath you when you're down there (kinda cool, actually).

Just passing along the news. Happy Diving!


-S
 
SYONKER has this dead on the vis was the best i have ever seen in 9 years of diving rock pond
 

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