Diving Roubidoux (Missouri)

[b1gcountry]

This is a cross post from the Midwest Forum, but I thought I'd share it anyway...

I managed to get in my first dive "After Parenthood" yesterday..."Hello Father, it has been 12 weeks since my last dive..." I met up with a good buddy, Jim, and we filled up his truck and headed out to the middle of Missouri to Waynesville. It was a really crappy morning in Mizuraville with a bunch of rain, mist, and fog, but we're planning on getting wet anyway, so whatever! We both checked into the 911 dispatch center before heading down to the county owned park.

The Spring is located in a county park under a large bluff just on the outside of town. It's not too impressive topside. The spring pool is rather small and shallow, and there is a small footbridge crossing over the bridge. There is also a 15' concrete retaining wall directly above the spring opening that was put in so the road doesn't wash out (anymore). The opening of the spring is about 5' below the surface, and is low, but wide.

Jim and I gear up and drop in. The flow is way down compared to what it normally is, so swimming in didn't required much pulling. The opening is just tall enough to fit an out of shape diver, a set of doubles, and a couple stages with minimal scraping. Once through the opening though, the cavern opens up considerably. The cavern area is easily the size of JB, and with visibility in the 20-30' range, it feels much larger. The first thing you notice inside the cave is the abundance of fish life. Everything from catfish to bluegill to rainbow trout was inside the spring getting away from the frozen river water.

The first part of the cave is very spacious passage with many ore deposits in the walls. This creates an interesting stratification as the softer rock erodes leaving the gnarly looking ore deposits sticking out of the walls haphazardly, similar to what you see at Hole in the Wall. Around 200' back the main line jogs around an outcropping in the wall. The outcropping has a large window in it so that you can make a jump from the mainline back to the mainline by taking the shortcut through the window. The cave through this first section is about 20-30' tall, and maybe 40' wide, and has a lot of interesting features, but soon the passage opens up dramatically, and you reach a set of "stairs" that drop off into a large room extending well beyond the limits of visibility. We reach the first set of stairs, and drop off some tanks at 70', then we head down the stairs as the walls to either side of us disappear into the darkness. Finally, as we head over the last stair, we see a large rocky pit, and the line makes a U-Turn into the lower tunnel.

The dome room is so large, and the entrance into the lower tunnel is so small, and well formed, it gives the impression of entering another cave. Indeed, the cave changes dramatically. Instead of the wide spacious passage, you enter a low, wide area strewn with large boulders that look like they were made by gluing together a million tiny pebbles. We swam on a short distance and came to a small duck-under, which is a comfortable size for backmount. We keep swimming, and the visibility seems better in the tunnel. Portions of the tunnel pinch down to short openings that look like someone in sidemount could squeeze through for 10-20 feet, but I doubt any of them go anyplace.

I turn the dive around 1000' in. We are still a good 5-600' short of the next notable feature, "The Big Room", but the plan for today was just to do a short, leisurely dive, and see how far we get on the mainline. The view exiting the tunnel is more impressive than the view coming in, as the Dome Room looks that much bigger when compared to the lower passage. We head up the stairs, which also look much more impressive on the way up, and pick up our cylinders at 70'. We make a slow, leisurely exit, and we spend about 10 minutes checking out the cavern area that looks so bright now that our eyes are adjusted to zero ambient light.

We exit after a 70 minute dive, and shuck some gear in the spring basin before making the hike up the hill, and back to Jim's truck. The surface conditions have gotten better, and there's some blue sky poking through. We had lunch, and did a generous SI before getting back into the water for Dive #2. For the second dive, it was back to the Dome Room where we stayed shallow, and checked out the upper section of this large room. Jim and I got mixed up on some of our signals, and we both thought the other was calling the dive, so we headed out the way we came.

We packed up our gear, and signed out at the 911 center, then made the 2 hour drive back to St Louis. This was the only day I could devote to diving, but Jim and some other folks will be diving it the rest of the week. Meanwhile, I get to make faces at the little guy, and I'm writing this in between feedings and wet diapers It was a real nice dive to be able to get in after the long hiatus.

Tom

[diverdarren]

Great post, Tom! I didn't make it to Roubidoux in 2010 but your post has me wanting to dive it again real soon. And congratulations on your new future dive buddy! Is the aluminum habitat still in there?

[scububa]

The habitat is still there. As of yesterday the flow has come up enough to make it undivable. Perhaps with a scooter.
Tom and I dove it Wednesday.
Bill and Michael Angelo dove it Thursday.
I ran over to dive with Michael Angelo and the water in the pool was up 6 inches and the flow was kicking pretty hard. It would have taken a lot of work to get in, might have been doable, might not. In addition lots of rain in the area the night before and then on Friday. The water is up over the concrete pad an inch or two (Wednesday it was 6 below.) The flow is pretty treacherous looking. MA decided it was likely not worth trying (given the closing dive he did with Bill yesterday where it was picking up inside the tunnels.) At that point the tornado sirens started going off and the lightning got pretty intense.

Side note - On the way up I-44, I saw lots of cars off the road, a couple on their sides with emergency vehicles at or arriving to the scenes. I had a lot of rain, but never felt much wind really. My brother called from Montana to ask where I was as he was seeing what was coming on the Weather Channel. In Missouri, Ft. Leonard Wood got a lot of damage, Rolla got hit (one person killed, two killed in Dent County), Robertsville got hit (two story house collapse), Sunset Hills, Fenton and South County areas got it, and 1.5 miles from my house in Ballwin a couple of houses got smashed. (This is also the path from RBD back to St. Louis.) The sirens were going off when I came into my neighborhood. Somehow I got thru it without any real incident. No wind, hail or anything falling around me.