Depth, Doubt, & Mosquitoes
Minnesota is full of lakes. One Great, lots of lesser, and a few man-made. St. James Pit, where Heather and I headed on Monday, is one such hole—a relic of the Iron Range mining boom when people thought nothing of gouging 300-foot chasms in the earth just to get at iron ore.
This was no casual endeavor, by the way. Mining towns like Aurora sprung up in the early 1900s, built almost entirely on the assumption that men with dynamite and shovels could keep pulling wealth out of the ground forever. Of course, they didn’t, and now these pits are full of water so cold it could stun Babe the Blue Ox, which, naturally, makes them ideal destinations for people like me who think strapping on 100 pounds of life support and plunging into near-arctic water is a pleasant way to spend a day.
The pit itself is small—just over a hundred acres—but plunges to 381 feet. To put that in perspective, if you dropped the Statue of Liberty in there, she’d be waving from about sixty feet below the surface!
The lake is glassy, the air is damp, and every mosquito within five zip codes has RSVP’d to this dive.
We parked Heather’s car fifteen feet from the water’s edge, which was handy because the moment we opened the doors, we were swarmed by mosquitoes. Now, I’ve dealt with mosquitoes before. We all have. But these weren’t mosquitoes in the traditional sense—those dainty, mildly irritating summer sprites. No, these were black ops mosquitoes: highly trained, possibly unionized, and deeply committed to their craft. At one point, I’m fairly sure they were trying to unclip my bolt snaps.
The dive itself started with a narrow descent—a slot in the rock that opened like an elevator shaft. Two minutes in, and we were brushing 100 feet. The wall to our left rose like a fortress, a vertical drop carved by men who probably never imagined two idiots would be finning along it a century later, pondering whether to go deeper.
Nearing 100 feet, Heather's 'OK' check was really asking 'have you begun your usual quiet inventory of everything that could theoretically go wrong?' The answer was yes, but I was managing.
Heather did, of course. She’s braver—or more optimistic—than I am, hovering at 130 feet like she was inspecting real estate. I hung back at 118, which is not only the deepest I’ve been but also precisely the point where my brain starts whispering, This is fine. Everything’s fine. We’re fine. I stayed there long enough to feel accomplished without feeling like a future headline.
One of the joys of CCR diving is time. The machine does its quiet alchemy, letting you linger without the tyranny of an SPG ticking down like a time bomb. We spent a half hour along the wall, moving like astronauts on a lazy orbit, then meandered back to the shallows for another hour of exploration. There wasn’t much—some mining cables, a few pieces of equipment, and, oddly enough, a pair of patriotic sunglasses that I wore on the back of my head for the remainder of the dive because, frankly, you have to make your own fun down there.
A century ago, miners dug this out with shovels. Today, we glide past like smug aquatic tourists.
Once back at the car, we peeled off our drysuits under conditions of full aerial bombardment and managed to kill the hundred or so mosquitoes that managed to get in the car before admitting defeat and heading for Aurora, which turned out to have a coffee shop wedged between two bars like Switzerland between warring nations. I ordered a jerk chicken wrap with pineapple jam and a beer—Heather was driving—and it was so unexpectedly delightful that I left a Google review, which I have not done since roughly the invention of Google.
The rest of the week was decidedly more low-key: a day of snail diving on Whitefish Lake (which is exactly as glamorous as it sounds), followed by an afternoon with Jacob, a brand-new diver who moves through the water like he’s filming a GUE promo despite having only a dozen dives to his name. Together, we toured Ore-be-gone—a pit with more sunken vehicles than a dubious insurance claim—before parting ways. Later, I slipped in a short solo dive to practice DSMB deployment, mask drills, and diluent flushes, all while quietly questioning the decision to sign up for an Air Diluent Decompression course.
Someone had apparently forgotten to tell this sunfish that Minnesota lakes aren't supposed to look this exotic.
The deco course looms ahead like a tax audit for the soul—distant, inevitable, and slightly menacing. I picture myself at 130 feet, squinting at my handset, trying to calculate decompression like a nervous student who studied the wrong chapter. So I practice. Thursday’s dive was half drills: DSMB launches, hovering at ten feet, doing my best impression of a calm, competent diver. In truth, I looked like a man attempting origami in a gale. I can pull it off, just not with anything resembling elegance, and it’s that lack of grace that gnaws at me long after I’m out of the water.
Jacob had mastered his trim faster than most divers learn to fog their masks.
So yes, technically, this was a good week: a new dive site, two hours on a sheer wall, unexpected culinary triumph in Aurora. But as summer ebbs and winter creeps in, I find myself wondering whether October will bring a shiny new certification card… or just a very expensive lesson in humility.
Either way, along the Bifrost I go.
