This past weekend (well Saturday anyway), Darin and I went to Travis for some good old lake diving. The past year and half have been some what difficult in terms of diving at Travis. First the lake is 40+ feet low, then in the course of less than 3 months it transitioned to flooding conditions with the lake closed for several weeks.

Travis is finally back to a good normal, full level. The diving is strange though. Anyone that has been to any depth in Travis KNOWS there will be a pretty extreme temperature difference between the top and the bottom, and most of the change occurs in 1 or 2 10F+ degree thermoclyne. It isn’t unusual to have 85F water on the surface and 56F water at 140′.

We dive Travis knowing the temperature situation and that unless you where a dry suit (which involves likely death by heat stroke in the 95F-105F temperatures and full later summer sun), you will freeze at the bottom if you go deep. Some of us even enjoy this experience of hitting the last thermoclyne at depth, at least for a little while.

For this trip, Darin and I arrived around 10:30 Saturday morning, hauled our gear down to the lake, and suited up in our wet suits fully expecting to freeze at the bottom, even as we struggled to drink enough water to keep from dehydrating in the 95F air. We began our first dive intending to head straight down the chain at stair one and then onto the rive bottom, at around 140′.

As we descended, something was strange. It wasn’t the visibility, which was near 0 at the top, but a pleasant 40′ to 50′ below 50′. What was strange was the complete lack of any thermoclynes. As we approached the river bed, I had to double check the depth on my computer to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. Aside from the first 10′ of very warm (90F?) water, the lake is a uniform 80F all the way to the bottom. Very strange!