Hiking and Diving in One Weekend

Two of my favorite things to do in this life are SCUBA and hiking/camping/backpacking. Okay that's four things, but I can combine hiking with camping via backpacking. This past weekend I was able to go hiking and go scuba diving. Talk about a great weekend. There's scant little that could have made it better, but I'll keep that to myself. Today I feel like I've been hit by a bus.

I lead a group hike out to Parson's Spring in the Verde Valley. The trail goes along a year round spring with a number of good swimming areas. It was a little nippy out there to be swimming, at least for adults. At one point when we stopped for lunch at an overhang to a deep water hole there were some kids jumping in and screaming when they hit the water.

The day started out kind of chilly and remained that way until later afternoon. Of course we were going to the higher elevations and therefore it was even colder. The last time I did this trail it was later in the spring and way too hot. It is difficult to determine when a great time would be to hike in this area as it does get really hot, and the water is inviting and beautiful but the hike would kill you with heat. Then when you go when we went this past weekend of April 4, it was cool enough to enjoy the hike but you really can't get in the water with anything less that a dry suit unless you're a teenager.

I had at one time a full hike as Sierra Club only allows 20 people on a hike, and that is for good reason. Impact on the environment, and as a leader, wrangling more that that becomes too much of a challenge. As usual, I ended up with 8 people showing up. Some were courteous enough to call and bail, others just blew it off. So, next time you want to sign up for one of my hikes and you don't give a shit about commitment and responsibility, save your strength flakester. Go with Meet Up or some other slap dash irresponsible disorganized group if you can't even be polite enough to notify the organizer that you're too boozed up and partied out from Friday night to go on the hike. I don't care. I just don't like being stood up by rude, irresponsible amateurs. Neither do the other outings leaders, makes us not want to bother organizing these outing.

Anyway, enough of the soapbox pet peeve rant. The people that did show up were of the finest quality. They were good sports about precarious river crossings and hanging on the edge of a small cliff. There was an alternate way of going through one part of the trail but I like the narrow ledge because it's more fun. I was subject to a stoning from the other hikers, but they survived as I knew they would.

The trail goes on for about 4 miles then gets really hard to follow. I usually stop at a certain point when the hikers become whiny and ask how much further. Further to what? I ask....you can keep going forever. We turned around and headed back to the cars. Afterwards we went to Jerome to eat the The Haunted Hamburger, a popular restaurant that was once a guest house in the mining days. Jerome was mining camp established on the side of Cleopatra Hill in 1883. It was named for Eugene Murray Jerome, a New York investor who owned the mineral rights and financed mining there. Eugene Jerome never visited his namesake town. Jerome was incorporated as a town on the 8th of March, 1889. Local merchant and rancher William Munds was the first mayor. The town housed the workers in the nearby United Verde Mine, which was to produce over 1 billion dollars in copper, gold and silver over the next 70 years. Jerome became a notorious "wild west" town, a hotbed for prostitution, gambling and vice. There has never been a more wretched hive of scum and villany.

The town eventually deteriorated and today it's a quaint retreat with B&B's and art and craft shop, and oh yes, The Haunted Hamburger. Many of the towns buildings are reputed to be haunted.

It was late getting back and I barely had time for 40 winks before I had to get up and go hit the lake for a morning of scuba diving. Lake Pleasant is an articial resevior first created by the Waddell Dam, which was finished in 1928. The lake originally had a surface area of 3,700 acres and served as a private irrigation project. At 76 feet high and 2,160 feet long, the original Waddell Dam was, at its completion, the largest agricultural dam project in the world. The lake was filled by the Agua Fria River, capturing a large watershed throughout Yavapai County.

A new dam was completed in 1993 which tripled the surface area of the lake. Lake Pleasant is used as a major water sports recreation center for the Phoenix metro area, as well as serving as an important storage reservoir for the rapidly growing region. A number of boat docks make the lake a popular destination for water skiing, jet skiing, sailing and other water sports, and the lake is stocked with a number of fish for angling purposes. The lake is also popular for scuba divers in the Phoenix area, as it is the only lake with marginal visibility. As it is an articial lake, there is a lot of silt and frankly, it's is kind of neat in a creepy way to see a flooded canyon. It's like going on a hike under water. Many desert plants are still there and if you go too shallow you end up picking burrs off your wetsuit. Palo Verde trees and Ocotillo plants are still down there and it makes for an interesting dive. There are also some fish as evidenced by the fishing people who boat around the lake and have no clue what a diver down flag means. At one point when a fishing boat was going over the top of our bubbles, Karen who was on surface support, mentioned to them that there were divers right below. They smiled affably and said, "Oh, is that what those bubbles are" and continued their motoring with the fishing lines dangling in. Stoooopid!

The lake was very choppy when we started out on the pontoon craft. There are a couple of operators who the local dive shops use to take students getting their open water certifications and today I was with The Scubateers. They are really nice people and provide tanks and weights and a boat. Shore diving on Lake Pleasant, at least in my experience, really sucks. So it's worth it to get ona boat. I was thinking about buying a couple of tanks, but I can't even look after my regulator properly so imagine how badly I'd treat a cylinder.

I set up my gear and lo and behold, my reg was all jacked up. The spare air was free flowing so we ended up taking the low pressure hose off and putting an octo on. I have a regulator with two hoses, one for the second stage and one for the low pressure hose that attaches to my BC providing my spare air. So I was going to have to inflate my BC manually. (A BC is the vest where all your scuba crap attaches and it inflates to compensate for buoyancy). Then I get geared up and ready to splash and my second stage won't allow me to exhale. Fuck. So I stepped back and began troubleshooting. I guess I had not really rinsed my reg out well enough after my last ocean dive and there was some salty buildup. I soaked the thing, as you do, but not well enough. We got it cleaned out and I was able to hook my low pressure hose back up and even though the second stage was still hissing (leaking) I was able to complete two dives. So, Mr Regulator will be back in the shop today for service to make sure it's all working properly for my real dive trip to Grand Cayman next month.

The lake is good for testing gear like that. Better to find out then if your gear is wonky then out in the ocean on a dive boat on a trip where you can't do anything about it but rent gear from a local shop. My new fins worked out really well though and I think I will be able to ditch the additional ankle weights that helped keep my legs from floating upwards. It's a double edged sword in the idea that I won't have to bring the additional weight on an airplane where they charge you for wearing shoes these days, but the new fins are heavier and so I end up with as much weight as if I brought the ankle weights. But, I don't have to mess with wearing extra gear.

The water was cold and murky as usual, but I had a great time, as usual. I'll probably go out for one more dive on the lake before going to the Caymans.

Until the next adventure,

The ScubaJedi

For a full pictorial of this adventure, click HERE