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Colorado might not have oceans to boast, but you can still get a scuba diving certification right here in the Mile High City.
By Ashley Kay Mauer
Colorado is known for outdoor activities, the Rocky Mountains, and…scuba diving? Okay, maybe scuba diving doesn’t really come to mind with Colorado, but it wouldn’t be out of place if it did. Despite being landlocked, Colorado has the most certified divers per capita in the United States.
Not having an ocean at home makes diving a more appealing pastime when traveling, and Colorado is also well known for having outdoorsy people, which goes hand in hand with wanting to really see the ocean when given the opportunity. Many people start their certification in Colorado and then finish it on a trip.
Taking the Plunge
What does it take to become a certified diver? The first level of certification is called Open Water Diver. You will read and watch videos to learn about dive equipment, what it is for, and how to maintain it. Then you’ll get into safety topics like surfacing slowly to avoid decompression sickness (commonly known as the bends), how to share air with a buddy should you or they run out, and diving within your no-decompression limits. All of these scenarios sound scary, and they should be treated with a healthy respect, but the point of the class is to prepare you for scenarios you will hopefully never experience so you are prepared if you do.
Once you have completed the academic portion, you will need to do confined water dives. In Colorado, this pretty much exclusively means a swimming pool. There is a brief swim test—a 200-yard swim (or 300-yard swim with a mask, snorkel, and fins) and a 10-minute tread (floating counts). You’ll set up and tear down your equipment multiple times until you are comfortable with it. Then you’ll learn how to enter the water with your gear on. From a pool’s edge, you will usually be taught to enter via a giant stride. This is a fancy way of saying you’ll take a big step to get your body away from the edge before gravity takes over so that you don’t hit your scuba tank on the edge of the pool.
You’ll get used to breathing through a regulator and obeying the number one rule of scuba diving: Never hold your breath. You’ll take your first steps to achieving neutral buoyancy, which is when you have the right ratio of weight to keep you underwater and the right amount of air in your BCD to maintain your position in the water without swimming, floating up, or sinking down.
You will demonstrate skills to your instructor, like clearing water out of your mask if it floods, how to ditch your weight, and sharing air with a buddy. The thought of these might make you nervous, but you will be shown how to do these skills beforehand so there are no surprises, and if you don’t get it quite right the first time, you can try again.
After you have succeeded in the pool, you have to demonstrate your skills during four open water dives. In Colorado, this is certainly trickier than in coastal areas where the ocean is an obvious choice. If you want to stay local, open water dives can be completed in Aurora Reservoir, Chatfield Reservoir, or Coral Key Sea during the summer. They are cold, and the visibility isn’t very good, but if you can master diving in those conditions, you will be a much better diver in easier conditions. If you’re lucky, you might even glimpse a sunken plane in Aurora Reservoir or parts of an underwater navigation course.
If a reservoir doesn’t sound appealing to you, you’re not alone. Most Colorado shops offer trips to Homestead Crater in Midway, Utah, or the Blue Hole in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. The crater is thermal, so it is nice and toasty all year round at an average of 90 to 96 degrees, and it is protected from the elements in a manmade cavern. While the Blue Hole cannot boast warm water, the visibility is stunning. When people haven’t stirred up silt, you can see all the way down to the 85-foot bottom from the surface. The Blue Hole is reminiscent of Ariel’s collection of human artifacts because people have decorated the bottom and sides with knick-knacks.
Odds are that if you’re learning to dive in Colorado, you plan to do most of your diving outside of Colorado, and you can jump right into it if you take referral paperwork with you on a trip. Complete your academics and confined water dives at home and hit two birds with one stone by doing your open water dives in the ocean where you were planning to dive anyway. Just be sure to align the teaching program you start with and the shop you plan to finish with.
Colorado has an abundance of dive shops teaching both PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) and SSI (Scuba Schools International) programs. Both associations offer lifelong certifications, but if you’re out of the water for a while, it is always best to refresh your skills before getting back into it. Both programs are widely accepted, and you can switch back and forth between them if you so desire (Example: You can be an SSI-certified Open Water Diver and then do a PADI Nitrox class.) There are other diving associations out there, like NAUI (National Association of Underwater Instructors) or GUE (Global Underwater Explorers), but PADI and SSI are the most common in Colorado.
If you are already an Open Water diver, or if you fall in love with it after taking your Open Water class, there are continuing education classes to hone your skills, like buoyancy, and to expand the type of diving you can do, like the depth you can go to. As an Open Water Diver, you will be certified to dive to 60 feet; as an Advanced Open Water Diver, you are certified to 100 feet.
The typical track after Open Water Diver is Advanced Open Water Diver, Rescue Diver, Divemaster, and Instructor. There are specialty courses that can be taken at any time, like Nitrox or Enriched Air Diving, Dry Suit Diving, Altitude Diving, Deep Diving, Peak Performance Buoyancy, and so many more. If becoming a professional isn’t of interest to you, being a Rescue Diver with 5 specialties will earn you a Master Scuba Diver rating.
Even if continuing education isn’t on your itinerary, there are dive opportunities in Denver proper after you’re certified at the Denver Aquarium. They offer a shark dive and a fish dive with moray eels, rays, groupers, and more. What better conversation starter than, “I dove with sharks at a mile high?”
PADI Shops
Concierge Scuba - They come to you!
303-960-6496
Flatirons Scuba & Travel - Broomfield
303-469-4477
Underwater Phantaseas Scuba & Travel Center - Lakewood
303-988-6725
SSI Shops
A-1 Scuba and Travel Aquatics Center - Littleton
303-789-2450
Coral Key Scuba & Travel - Arvada
303-431-5911
Denver Divers & Swim School - Denver
303-399-2877
Ocean First - Boulder
303-444-7234
One World Dive & Travel - Greenwood Village
303-220-8282
Planet Scuba - Castle Rock
303-688-1551
Ashley Kay Mauer was born and raised north of Denver and took to writing after coming to terms with being unable to get a job reading sci-fi and fantasy novels.
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