IRAP Administrator
08-03-2007, 11:08 PM
Captain John’s Blue Water Lake: The Steam Engine Room
I have been to Joplin, MO several times to dive, and each time I have been there I have wanted to find this elusive steam engine room close to the bottom of the lake. From what I heard there is a large cavern/cave area (mostly cave because of the lack of sunlight at that depth) that was home to a large steam engine that they used to keep water pumping out of the mine when it was active. Of course now the mine is shut down and filled with water, but the steam engine apparently still sits at the bottom of this tunnel at approx. 160’ fw. I have made three other attempts at finding this tunnel since it is not marked on the dive map (nothing below 130’ is), and my first attempt was a failure, my second attempt we were too low on air once we had located it, and my third attempt I was solo and by the time I found it I didn’t feel comfortable doing it alone. This past weekend I had my fourth attempt at it and this time I was successful. My buddy and I made the long swim across the lake and did a direct ascent, following the bottom contour, to approximately 150’. It didn’t take long for the nitrogen narcosis to set in (given we were both diving air) and begin affecting my decision making process. We had planned that we would get to the entrance of the tunnel and check our gauges to make sure we had enough gas to go in as well as I would be tying off a reel for us to use as a guideline. Well, once we had reached 150’, we kept the rocky wall to our left and swam until we found the entrance of the tunnel. Before I knew we had found it, I realized we were already in it! I looked up and realized we had a nice ceiling of rock over our heads and that there was barely a glimmer of green light from the outside of the tunnel. With the narcosis hard at work, I decided it wasn’t important to look at our gauges, so we continued in. The reason I looked up to find the ceiling was that I saw a thin line running in the cave, so I then decided it wasn’t necessary to run my own reel in since this line ran out into open water. Unfortunately, whomever ran this line originally ran it pretty much at the ceiling of the tunnel, so as we swam in we had to keep looking up and to our right to find the line, which disappeared easily into the rock since it was covered with silt. I could feel my brain going into perceptual narrowing and focusing only on swimming straight along the line and checking my computer regularly. We were two minutes into deco when I noticed my buddy’s ok signals with his light were becoming very delayed. As I swam on thinking that is something I’ll need to keep an eye on, I noticed we were swimming into a bellowing cloud of silt coming our way. I tried to clear my head and think, “who would be in here, there can’t be anybody…why are we swimming into a silt trail?” I didn’t know what to make of it, but I then decided it was time to call the dive. We had swam over some large wooden planking and I felt that if we were going to find this steam engine it would be pretty soon, but it wasn’t worth the risk, so I gave the thumbs up to my buddy and we turned to head out. As I was swimming out I began to get stressed thinking if I was just swimming into a silt trail and nobody was there, I must have been swimming into a silt trail that we created and now we are swimming back into the cave! I noticed that the line was on my left as we were exiting, which is exactly the opposite of when we came in. For second thoughts of never making it out flashed through my head before I said to myself, “remember your training idiot?” We made it back to the open water with no problem, but we both were wide-eyed and narced out of our heads. We began our ascent and leveled off around 80’ where I popped a lift bag for practice and headed us back toward the shore. Swimming so close to the rocky wall, I didn’t realize that the bag I popped actually slipped up into an overhead environment and up through and air shaft to the surface, so we had to follow the line into this little cavern area and do our ascent up through this water filled air shaft. It actually turned out to be pretty cool, but it kind of freaked me out when I didn’t know where my bag had gone. We ended up with about 4 minutes of deco on the whole thing and a total bottom time of about 35 minutes. After completing this dive I now realize why a mix class is so important, especially when dealing with an overhead environment.
As it turns out, after returning home and putting a few posts on the forum, I corresponded with a veteran diver of this lake who said it is not uncommon to have debree and rocks cave in and fall from the ceiling, which is what I assume caused the silt trail we swam into. I am very glad we had not gone any further, as we may have become part of that cave in.
I have been to Joplin, MO several times to dive, and each time I have been there I have wanted to find this elusive steam engine room close to the bottom of the lake. From what I heard there is a large cavern/cave area (mostly cave because of the lack of sunlight at that depth) that was home to a large steam engine that they used to keep water pumping out of the mine when it was active. Of course now the mine is shut down and filled with water, but the steam engine apparently still sits at the bottom of this tunnel at approx. 160’ fw. I have made three other attempts at finding this tunnel since it is not marked on the dive map (nothing below 130’ is), and my first attempt was a failure, my second attempt we were too low on air once we had located it, and my third attempt I was solo and by the time I found it I didn’t feel comfortable doing it alone. This past weekend I had my fourth attempt at it and this time I was successful. My buddy and I made the long swim across the lake and did a direct ascent, following the bottom contour, to approximately 150’. It didn’t take long for the nitrogen narcosis to set in (given we were both diving air) and begin affecting my decision making process. We had planned that we would get to the entrance of the tunnel and check our gauges to make sure we had enough gas to go in as well as I would be tying off a reel for us to use as a guideline. Well, once we had reached 150’, we kept the rocky wall to our left and swam until we found the entrance of the tunnel. Before I knew we had found it, I realized we were already in it! I looked up and realized we had a nice ceiling of rock over our heads and that there was barely a glimmer of green light from the outside of the tunnel. With the narcosis hard at work, I decided it wasn’t important to look at our gauges, so we continued in. The reason I looked up to find the ceiling was that I saw a thin line running in the cave, so I then decided it wasn’t necessary to run my own reel in since this line ran out into open water. Unfortunately, whomever ran this line originally ran it pretty much at the ceiling of the tunnel, so as we swam in we had to keep looking up and to our right to find the line, which disappeared easily into the rock since it was covered with silt. I could feel my brain going into perceptual narrowing and focusing only on swimming straight along the line and checking my computer regularly. We were two minutes into deco when I noticed my buddy’s ok signals with his light were becoming very delayed. As I swam on thinking that is something I’ll need to keep an eye on, I noticed we were swimming into a bellowing cloud of silt coming our way. I tried to clear my head and think, “who would be in here, there can’t be anybody…why are we swimming into a silt trail?” I didn’t know what to make of it, but I then decided it was time to call the dive. We had swam over some large wooden planking and I felt that if we were going to find this steam engine it would be pretty soon, but it wasn’t worth the risk, so I gave the thumbs up to my buddy and we turned to head out. As I was swimming out I began to get stressed thinking if I was just swimming into a silt trail and nobody was there, I must have been swimming into a silt trail that we created and now we are swimming back into the cave! I noticed that the line was on my left as we were exiting, which is exactly the opposite of when we came in. For second thoughts of never making it out flashed through my head before I said to myself, “remember your training idiot?” We made it back to the open water with no problem, but we both were wide-eyed and narced out of our heads. We began our ascent and leveled off around 80’ where I popped a lift bag for practice and headed us back toward the shore. Swimming so close to the rocky wall, I didn’t realize that the bag I popped actually slipped up into an overhead environment and up through and air shaft to the surface, so we had to follow the line into this little cavern area and do our ascent up through this water filled air shaft. It actually turned out to be pretty cool, but it kind of freaked me out when I didn’t know where my bag had gone. We ended up with about 4 minutes of deco on the whole thing and a total bottom time of about 35 minutes. After completing this dive I now realize why a mix class is so important, especially when dealing with an overhead environment.
As it turns out, after returning home and putting a few posts on the forum, I corresponded with a veteran diver of this lake who said it is not uncommon to have debree and rocks cave in and fall from the ceiling, which is what I assume caused the silt trail we swam into. I am very glad we had not gone any further, as we may have become part of that cave in.