Both Saturday & Sunday (2/16 & 2/17) of this past
weekend found members of NOVA TECH doing practice
dives at my favorite local winter dive site, Mt. Storm
Lake (AKA: VEPCO Lake) in Mt Storm, WV.  The lake has
many features that makes it attractive for practice
dives, not the least of which is the temperature of
the water.  Constructed as a cooling pond for a coal
fired power plant the lake rarely gets below 50
degrees in the dead of winter and often is in the
60's.  It also has depths to 130 ffw and platforms at
23 ffw, 50 ffw & 90 ffw. 

Water temperature was 60 degrees both days up several
degrees from last weekend.  The elevated temperature
allows for much longer dives and much more practice
time than one would normally endure in a 35-45 degree
quarry in mid February!  Both days saw the teams run
times in the 70-80 minute range.

Todd, Allyson & Allysa Clagett and Dave Dalton braved
the cold winds to dive the lake on Saturday.  While
stiff winds lowered the effective air temps into the
teens, the water temp couldn't be beat!  Todd spent
his time working on the weighting of his new Gavin
scooter.  They come slightly buoyant and require the
owner to trim them out to get them just right.  Todd
had added weight to the scooter but found that
although the overall buoyancy seemed right he needed
to shift the weight to the rear.  Dave and Allyson
worked on general dive skills including reel work,
lift bags and s-drills.  Allysa worked on rock
skipping!  As stated water temp was a pleasant 60
degrees and viz varied from a low of about 10' to a
high of about 30'.

On Sunday Todd, Allyson, Allysa & Dave were back, this
time joined by Johnny Morris, another of the NOVA TECH
crowd.  While the water temp was still a pleasant 60
degrees, we found icy roads for the last 5 miles and
lots of snow (ow you know where the name came from). 
So much snow in fact (6" in the parking lot) that Dave
opted to ferry gear for the Clagetts in his 4 X 4 so
that Todd's 2 X 4, F-150 didn't get stuck.  The wind
was howling, fog blew in along with snow, but the
diving was great.  Todd found that 3rd time was charm
with the scooter weighting and it couldn't have been
better. He spent time towing others and couldn't have
been more happy with his acquisition.  Johnny worked
on some changes to his gear configuration, jury is
still out on some of that.

Next weekend some of the NOVA TECH crowd will be
headed to Lake Rawlings to join up with the VB-TECH
crowd for more practice.  Come on out and join us!

Dave Dalton

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