cave diving yellowstone National Park

[MichaelAngelo]

Ok here's a question for you. My wife while going thru her late parents photos found some of 1960's ish photos of natural springs they were visiting. two of these photos show very clear water with a cave entrance, Photos are marked fountain paint pot spring, yellowstone. Wife asked me if divers ever explored this so I am passingit on here. Anyone ever hear of cave divng at Yellowstone or this spring?

[MichaelAngelo]

is it a geyser? seems to be in an area of therma activity

[Attchoum]

Why do I have a funny image of a guy in a double tank at the top of a geyser explosion????

:smt102

[outofayr]

It's a beautiful area, but a little warm for cave diving. Last time I was there, water looked to be boiling....Of course, this is one place you probably wouldn't need a drysuit OR a wetsuit:yawinkle:

[MichaelAngelo]

perfect a really short warm deco

[outofayr]

And one of the few places you could cool the water down by peeing:smt081

[Webmaster]

Cave diver, parboiled, with drysuit garnish. Side of tanks. All you can eat.

Besides the fact that most of those are way too hot to get into, there's no telling what is dissoved in there or bubbling up at any one time. Also many fluctuate, so even if it happens to be tolerable one minute, you don't know if it might be significantly hotter a few minutes later.

I believe they've lowered cameras into a number of them. If I remember correctly they all pinched down to a fairly small size pretty quickly.

There has been diving in Yellowstone Lake, I think there was an article about it in ADM or somewhere a while back.

[FW]

Another issue is all the "red tape" involved with getting a permit to dive in any national park.

[Tegg]

I looked at all of them and almost thought it would be worth melting the mask to my face while getting a quick glimpse inside...

The water looked so inviting... well, except for the steam and heat coming from it... other then that... I wanted to grab some tanks and take a look...

[MichaelAngelo]

We couldn't tell water temperature from photo. I had googled it and it said the temperature fuctuated from 90 to 190 degree depending on the year. Then went on to mention diving to 60 feet in a near by swim hole. but question answered

[MORGAN]

I used to work with a guy who had been a US Park Service ranger in Yellowstone - he said that every once in a while they'd have some drunk half-wit decide to go hot tubbing in the thermal springs. If they picked the wrong one they'd be severely or even fatally burned.

Mike

[rjack]

I used to work with a guy who had been a US Park Service ranger in Yellowstone - he said that every once in a while they'd have some drunk half-wit decide to go hot tubbing in the thermal springs. If they picked the wrong one they'd be severely or even fatally burned.

Mike

Man the Ginnie drunks really get around! :D

[Webmaster]

Apparently there have been several people that have died from burns over the years just from chasing their dog in to try and get them out.

[tomhauburn]

There have been a lot of stuff found in the lake in the past since its almost freezing except at the thermal vents on the bottom. The springs I was told were all too hot to get in and at the time it was interesting to see how close to the spring that bacteria was growing. Some of it just down from boiling temps yet just like in the bottom of the ocean near the vents they have life.

[aleksi]

<offtopic> This is not diving in Yellowstone but I thought to let you know that a Finnish film crew dove in a boiling geysir in Iceland in 1997. They did not get very far in anyway. They solution was to use a tethered hot water suit like to ones used on deep commercial dives from rigs, only with cold water flowing in. Here's a link to info about the film.
http://www.matilarohr.com/tuotannot/dokumentit/vedenalainen-islanti-0
</offtopic>

-aleksi

[FW]

We couldn't tell water temperature from photo. I had googled it and it said the temperature fuctuated from 90 to 190 degree depending on the year. Then went on to mention diving to 60 feet in a near by swim hole. but question answered
Look at the picture again. They are wearing coats, and that looks like snow on the ground, yet the water isn't frozen.

[Gene Powell]

<offtopic> This is not diving in Yellowstone but I thought to let you know that a Finnish film crew dove in a boiling geysir in Iceland in 1997. They did not get very far in anyway. They solution was to use a tethered hot water suit like to ones used on deep commercial dives from rigs, only with cold water flowing in. Here's a link to info about the film.
http://www.matilarohr.com/tuotannot/dokumentit/vedenalainen-islanti-0
</offtopic>

-aleksi

Sunrise Earth has an episode from yellowstone that shows the Paint Pots. My favorite one though is the one on Iceland Geysers. WHEW! Some awesome footage and beautiful springs!
I also saw a show on the discovery channel where they have discovered trace amounts of gold around thermal vents. They were demonstrating how they could level a mountain valley to get the gold. Kinda Scary.

[KarsticGator]

Here's 27 pages of why you would need some serious PPA to dive these things...

http://tbi.montana.edu/media/book/1_4Nordstrom.pdf

[LiteHedded]

can't we ice those suckers down or something? I mean, I didn't major in science but...
we need to get our top men on this ASAP.

[DA Aquamaster]

It's been awhile since I have been there, but in general Lake Yellowstone is really cold and all the springs run from really warm to extremely hot and many of then are sulferous.

The closest I have come to a cave dive in that area was in a spring between the the bear lodge range in eastern WY and the black hills in western SD. There is a coldwater spring (50-52 degrees year round) that is clear down to about 65 ft, then has 20 more feet of bubbly looking sulfure dioxide until it appears to pinch out. There could be something that goes down there some where but I was never inclined to hang out long enough to look.

[Randy Thornton]

A few years ago, I was contacted by a law firm in Salt Lake City who had been retained by the family of a young man who died while trying to dive in one of the hot pots in Yellowstone. They were looking for an expert witness in their lawsuit against the dive shop where the kid had been trained. I declined to get involved with the suit. It was amazing to me however to learn that the kid was fatally burned almost instantly upon doing a giant stride into the water.

We have several underwater caves in Utah that are geothermic. They are too hot to dive in. Some of them are well over 100 degrees, and the thought of spending more than just a few seconds in them exploring makes me feel ill just thinking about it! Most of them are located up in the area surrounding the Homestead Crater that we use for training Open Water students. It's 94 degrees year round. Bearable in the winter, but gets a little uncomfortable in the summer if you are in there for more than a couple of hours.