Trip Report: Powmill Quarry, Perth and Kinross (8/6/2013)

Background

Today I went to do a dive at a Powmill Quarry, I went today on my own to do some solo-dives – I’d had a horrible week at work, so some time alone to concentrate on just myself sounded perfect! I would be diving my twinset, twin-12’s as they have about 170bar in them and from research on the internet, that would be oodles of gas for a day of diving. I had found the site on dive site directory (http://www.divesitedirectory.co.uk/dive_site_uk_scotland_inland_powmill_quarry.html)
I had been doing a bit of hunting on the internet to try and find a local dive site to me (Fife, Scotland). I’m not a confident diver in the sea, I’ve only done about 3-5 sea dives and I get very anxious about it, because I get seasick and the stress of kitting up in a rocking boat, worries about buoyancy are exaggerated with the salt water etc. And having not dove for a good 9 months, I feel that I’m going to be like an Open Water student!

The Quarry

Powmill Quarry, located just outside of Powmill in Perth and Kinross. Unfortunately, accessibility isn’t one word that is associated with diving at the quarry! First of all, parking. Well you don’t have a car park! You need to park on a main road, thankfully the verges are quite large and there are a few paved sections that you can park in (I forgot to take my own photo, so this is a Google Street View shot, but its exactly how its shown, apart from the fact that the gate now has boulders behind it, so there is zero chance of driving through it).

Gated entrance

Parking in front of the gate is ideal, from the picture shown above (and indicated below), you need to head off to the right hand side across what looks like it used to be a car park. As I’ve tried to show by the little yellow car (parking place) and the red arrow in the Google Maps image below:

Crossing the car-park

 That’s the easy bit! Now you have to carry your gear up a fairly significant hill. It is steep but it is do-able. I tried to carry my twinset (on my back, fully rigged up with 2kg on lead on too) and my dry suit and fins and a 2l bottle of water up, but I got about half way (about where the path kinks just before the bottom of the image) and had to drop the dry suit etc. and come back for it. If you are diving a single tank, you probably could carry it all in one go, but for me personally it’s a two trip job.

The full route

Once you are up the hill, you come to a flat area that overlooks the quarry. Once out of the forest there is a shrub area of small tree’s. If you walk through the brush area, there is a great little ledge. There are a couple of big boulders that are good for kitting up on, there is also a little shelf for getting in and out of the water. The boulders are not ideal like a full kit up bench, but its certainly better than the ground! There is one boulder that has another one leaning against it which  is ideal for a twinset because I could lean the set against it while I got in.

Kit up & entry area

Dive 1

Max-Depth: 8.5m
Time: 30 minutes
Air Temperature: 22 degrees
Surface Water Temperature: 13 degrees
Bottom Water Temperature 11 degrees
When I arrived, there were a large number of “youths” enjoying the sun and swimming in the quarry, so I assumed the water temperature was quite high - 15+ degrees), so I was diving in just the dry suit with no under suit. This turned out to be a mistake as I ended up turning the dive on temperature.
Jumping in,  and then dropping down, at this end of the quarry the bottom is at about 5m. Viz was about 3m. I started to swim along the the left hand edge of the quarry and the bottom slowly dropped to about 6.5m. I came across a few cars and a tent. At this point I conducted a valve drill, I wanted to make sure I could still do it, and  I did, it was a doddle without and under suit! I was roughly at the neck of the quarry now, so I turned right to try and head counter-clockwise around the quarry wall. At this point I was up to about minute 12 of the dive.
Coming around the wall now I came across at least a dozen cars that had been pushed in. I had a good nosey around each of them, I could see that like many inland quarries, the site had “shelves”. I was at about 7m here but I could clearly see that there was clearly a more central shelf that was at least 5m deeper. At this point I was now at about minute 18 and getting cold so I turned back. I found the initial cars and a table with some DJ mixing tables on, launched a bag and did a nice steady 1m/minute ascent and surfaced.
With the cold, I’d sucked about 30 bar out of the set, given that and that it was my first proper dive in a while, that accounts for the hefty SAC rate.
During the interval, I fetched my 200gm under suit, I used it as makeshift towel and spent the next 45 minutes sunbathing and relaxing. This is the life eh? Do a dive, and then sunbathe!

Dive 2

Max-Depth: 12.3m
Time: 60 minutes
Air Temperature: 25 degrees
Surface Water Temperature: 13 degrees
Bottom Water Temperature 10 degrees
The plan for this dive was to try and do another valve drill now that I had an under suit, but generally bumble about again. I did hope to try and do a complete orbit of the site. I remembered that I used to use a few extra v-weights when I was diving in my dry suit, but I left them in the car accidentally so I knew I would be a bit floaty, especially with the set running down (or planning to).
The dive started in the same way as the first, i swam to the neck of the quarry, turned right and started my counter-clockwise orbit. I was feeling massively more comfortable now that I had that extra layer on. I found a pile of about 4 cars and moved out in front of them to conduct another v-drill more “mid-water” than last time using the car exhaust as my reference. Damn, it was hard now that I had an under suit on again! But I managed it, knee’s dropped a bit and took a bit more effort and a resulting amount of extra chuffing but did it.
I decided to drop down into the “pit” and see how far down it went, it didn’t go that much further, about 12m in the bit I was in, another few degrees colder down here though! The bottom is extremely silty, its almost like a soft sludge, but if you touch it then the viz is destroyed. Good thing I only did it intentionally eh?
Bumbling on,  I came across dozens more cars and a caravan as well, everything is in fairly good condition so there is stuff to see, not just tiny scraps of metal sticking out the ground. I was getting towards 45 minutes and about 70 bar left in the set, so I decided to step up the pace a bit to start heading “home”. I started to come across a few cars that I thought I recognised, and looking on the gauge I’m now down to about 60 bar. So I looked off to my left and see the pit, so I decided that I would drop down so that I could chew through my gas a bit quicker but so that I could launch my SMB.
Bag was launched and started to get set for my ascent, I felt the reel pull in my hand a bit. Confused I put it off to there being a slight bit of wind that might be causing a chop and the resulting pull of the bag. I then started swimming on up the wall to the next level winding in the spool as I go, I came up to the next level and just as I was coming over a car, I felt the spool pull violently in my hand, OK that's far more than just the wind doing that, even in my few sea dives I've felt what the chop does to a bag, but it was nothing like that. It pulled again and again! I had no idea what could possibly be doing it but I was worried that getting unexpectedly pulled up during an ascent wouldn’t be the nicest thing to happen to me, I did think I was worried about possibly getting bent, last thing I wanted to do was cork it after nearly an hour.
So I dropped down to the car, I looped the line under the axle and started to pull in the line bit by bit. I felt the line really pull violently, there’s no way that was natural, it must be someone on the surface pulling at it. Are they trying to bend me or something?! I decided that I would wind in the SMB and surface somewhere else. I must admit this shook me up a bit, especially with being under-weighted I didn’t like the idea of just corking it.
I had already picked up a few chunks of rock but they were not enough now, I started my ascent steadily up the wall bracing myself under ledges to try and vent as much gas out of my suit as possible. I got to about 6m and thought I’d do a check on gas, I went to unclip my SPG, but accidentally unclipped my reel that I was carrying. So I had to drop down and get it, thankfully just a few meters. I finally got the SPG out, 50bar left and feeling very floaty. 2 more kilo’s would definitely help! I worked my way up steadily and very anxiously, I was certainly sucking a lot of gas at this point, and my mask which has a slow leak throughout the dives decided to come very loose with my exhaust bubbles blowing over it! A bit of panic did start to set in now, but I forced myself to stop, I got the mask reseated and cleared. Right that's one problem down, now I can focus on getting up these last few meters!
I was now at about 3m and holding for at least 3 minutes and I heard the most horrifying noise, it sounded like something exploded, wasn’t loud or overwhelming, but still, pretty scary and on top of the anxiety I already had, I was getting extremely uncomfortable. I couldn’t wait to get out of the water and have some normality back in life. 2m, and stop for a minute, 1m and stop for a minute. Looking up the surface was tantalisingly close …. one more minute and then I will surface. Timer timed down and off I went.
I surfaced to a group of about 20 youths and a “waaaaay!”. One guy in particular had his IPhone and was recording me. One guy in the water said how he was wondering what the yellow bag was, I said, so it was you pulling on it then. I was really mad. And getting about 30 questions a second. I got pissed off with it and decided to start the surface swim. Looking about, I realised I wasn’t anywhere near the neck, I had got confused with some of the other things I had seen underwater and surfaced at about the 3 o’clock position. The guy was still recording me, I made him put his phone away. And started swimming back. I started getting a load of “scuba Steve” banter, I wasn’t in the mood for it so just ignored it. It took about 10 minutes to get back.
The weather had changed dramatically. From clear skies to grey and overcast with the threat of rain! All in one hour! I managed to carry all my gear down in one trip thank god! Got the car loaded up and headed home! I took this photo from the car to show how beautiful it was:

Now its lovely again!

Final Thoughts

I had a perfect day, most of the time the locals were OK, as per usual its the teenage guys that are the problem. The women were all nice and friendly.
The trek to the waterside wasn’t too bad really. It would be much better if you had a buddy or a group of you, then one of you could stay with the gear and provide surface support but to also keep the locals off you when you are diving!
It’s the kind of place you want to make a full day trip out of, if the weather is good then take a BBQ and some music and make a day out of it with a bit of diving and general swimming. I will definitely be going back with a full twinset and the right weighting. It was perfect to see that I was better in the water than I thought I was and with the right weight I will be perfect! Just what I needed for a check out dive. There was an awful lot of rubbish in the site, so I will certainly be trying to get a lobster bag so that I can pulled out the litter. But definitely a good site.