Hey everybody!
tl;dr - Let me know if you'd like to go diving in the Rocky Mountains.
Of all of the places we've had a Summit where one might reasonably expect there to be a possibility of Scuba Diving, the Denver Summit is probably REALLY low on the list.
But it turns out that there is a Dive Shop that does dives at the Denver Aquarium [0] (with all the fish and sharks and whatnot) The Denver Aquarium is also very close to the Convention Center.
I'm going to see about putting together a private group dive event for those of us who think that sounds like a fun idea. Due to cross-contamination concerns for the health and safety of the fish, the dive shop provides all equipment - so you don't have to bring gear. They will allow bringing your own mask - and I'm assuming if a well-scrubbed mask is ok then a well-scrubbed dive computer would be ok - but I'll be checking with them when I call to arrange things.
If you are Open Water certified and would like to join, please send me a response back (reply directly to me rather than the list is fine) so I can judge general interest level when talking to the lovely humans.
If you are **NOT** Open Water certified but are thinking to yourself "wow, that sounds like fun" - the dive shop does certification dives at the aquarium on the weekends. That's a bit out of scope for me to arrange, but if you want to show up in Denver early and do an Open Water class then join us, that's awesome. You can also get certified at home before coming ... but you'll need an Open Water certification to join us.
BUT WAIT - THERE'S MORE!
There is another interesting diving opportunity in the general Mountain West area - although not immediately **close** to Denver - that Sandy and I are going to be going to before the Summit - Homestead Crater. We're arranging to meet a Scuba instructor there to do our second Altitude cert dive, and also to do a 2-dive "Hot Springs Diver" specialty. We'd be happy to have folks join us.
Homestead Crater [1] is outside of Salt Lake City. It's a hot spring - the water is 96F/35.5C and it's also an altitude dive. If people are interested, we can meet at the crater on Thursday morning pre-summit, dive the crater, then drive to Denver on Friday/Saturday.
** If only a small number of people are interested in any of this - we'll likely just do the Denver dives the weekend before during one of the normally scheduled dive times instead of arranging a group outing, and shift Homestead, if anyone is interested, a few days earlier **
I will not have space enough in my car to get you from the crater to Denver, so if you want to fly in to SLC ahead of time and meet there, awesome.
Unlike Denver, the crater will require you have equipment, including scuba tanks. For anyone interested in coming, there are dive shops in Salt Lake where you can rent gear. There is a dive shop at the crater to do air fills.
Anyway - if anyone is interested in some or all of these things, let me know this week so I can get a headcount and then we can talk more off-list about logistics and figure out how to deal with things for people coming from far off (carpools, equipment, etc)
Monty
PS. If any of you aren't already using Subsurface for dive logging, I'll be happy to help you get set up.
[0] https://divedowntown.com/ [1] https://homesteadresort.com/utah-resort-things-to-do/homestead-crater/