Altitude Diving at Clear Lake, Oregon

This past weekend I traveled south to Oregon to visit Clear Lake on the MacKenzie River.  I'd read about this location and even visited it briefly a few years ago.  So when the opportunity to do a trip to the lake was offered by Olympia UWS I decided to go for it.



Clear Lake is a bit over 3000 feet in elevation.  It forms the headwaters of the McKenzie River and is fed by natural springs of snowmelt.  The lake was formed by a volcanic eruption 3,000 years ago and has upright trees perfectly preserved from when the lake was initially created.  The bottom is composed of mostly a fine ash sediment, with some modest rock walls at the southern end.



At 43 degrees you need to be sure to have a drysuit with your warmest undergarments and drygloves if possible.  Even so, my fingers complained after about 20 minutes and our longest dive was only 40 minutes.

We started off with a couple of dives from the boat ramp at the south end.  At this location there's a wall of volcanic rock that extends down about 30 feet or so, with ash below going down to the bottom at nearly 200 feet.  (We only ventured as far as 70 feet).




There's not a lot of life to see in this cold water but we did run into a number of medium sized Brook Trout, mostly in patches of moss.



I had expected to see an occasional trout free swimming, potentially making them difficult to photograph. To my surprise they were for the most part sleeping on the bottom, to the extent that I could get as close as I wanted without their taking flight.  (Perhaps their trout-brain simply had no concept that a diver with a camera posed a threat of any kind).




These trout are planted by Oregon Fish and Wildlife for recreational fishing and so aren't native.  Its hard to see how these fish might be able to survive to reproduce in this cold water.  Because of the fishing activity just about every snag or rock is going to have a collection of fishing line and gear.  We even found two poles complete with fishing gear and working reels on our first dive of the day.



The highlight of the trip was the night dive from the shores of the resort at the north end, timed to a full moon.  After negotiating the somewhat rocky entry we turned off our lights to swim in the darkness.  At first, the descent was disorienting as the bottom appeared to be in motion.  Then I realized that I was looking at the surface ripples in moonlight reflected on the bottom.  As we swam along in the dark we could see ghostlike dead trees in an eerie moonscape of white, lit only by the lunar glow.  I had my camera with me but realized that no photograph could do this scene justice.

All in all, a fun introduction to altitude diving in a lake renowned for its visibility.  Worth the drive for a fun weekend away from the usual haunts.