In the middle of Washington state’s farm country, is a unique dive that I learned about when researching the Valhalla missile silo in Texas. Once I found out about this Titan missile silo dive, I added it to our map and hoped to get to the area eventually. The site is fairly remote from any major cities, but as luck would have it, it ended up being near our route from Portland to Spokane, Washington.

The Titan Nuclear Missile

This Titan missile silo complex is much larger than the Atlas silo that I dove previously. It also had much more of the original equipment inside. I only did 2 dives here, but I could easily do more to explore other areas in the complex. You can even make your way through horizontal tunnels underwater into other parts of the missile complex if you are properly certified and equipped.

This is a painting of the missile complex. We entered through the vertical shaft near the center.

Traveling by motorhome made this dive a lot more accessible. We spent the night in town before the dive and then drove the motorhome right down to the dive site. It was nice to have the AC running and the awning out in the 90-100 degree heat while we suited up into our dry suits for the mid 50-degree water below.

The dive shop has set up some benches and tables on the surface to make it a bit easier to gear up. Here we are receiving our pre-dive briefing before heading down into the tunnels.

The entry down the old emergency escape hatch. This shaft would have been filled with sand to protect the workers inside from a blast above. If they needed a quick escape, it could be opened and the sand would fall into the room below and then they could climb out.

The dive shop rigged up a pulley system so we could easily lower gear down into the staging room below.

I’m heading in!

Here you can see the sand from the escape shaft covering the floor. We made our final gear checks and prep in this room before we headed into the tunnels.  These are the last lights we will see other than the lights we brought with us.

The shop keeps a small kayak in the prep room so we can drag extra gear with us through the flooded tunnels. The tunnel behind the kayak is our entry into the silo complex.

Our group heading into the silo.

The tunnels connecting the silos are all flooded. The metal flooring was salvaged long ago, so we had to make our way on exposed beams and pipes. We kept our BCs inflated so that when we missed a step we wouldn’t fall into an open hole in the floor.

The water became deeper and deeper as we approached the silo. I actually enjoyed this because it helped to keep the weight of the tanks off our backs and the water was nice and cool in our dry suits so we weren’t too hot by the time we reached the silo. When we reached the silo through the door in the photo above, we put on our fins and masks and deflated our BCs to drop down into the main missile silo.

As long as we made sure not to disturb the silt on the beams, the visibility in the silos was pretty great.

The depth of the silo was around 105-110 ft. The water temperature was a pretty consistent 55 degrees.

The entire internal structure was supported by giant springs so that the missile and equipment were protected from shock if a bomb should go off on the surface.

Fortunately for us, these are no longer “hot.”

I like to find all the serial number tags on the old equipment in the silo.

Here, I am looking up toward the blast doors on the surface. You can see the platforms that fold out of the way when the missile would be lifted to the surface to fire.

This was the only bit of color in the silo. I believe these are pressure release valves. They were probably for the fueling of the Titan missile.

The staff would use an intercom system to communicate with various areas of the silo complex.

I think this eye wash station and elevator are a bit redundant now that the silo has flooded.

I believe this interesting looking pipe transferred the liquid fuel for the Titan missile.

I’m glad we don’t have to use the stairs to get up and down in this silo. I’m sure the people working here never imagined a bunch of people swimming around for fun inside their top-secret base.

At one point in the dive, I looked up to find the dive master sitting on a beam watching everyone. It was a bit creepy and cool at the same time.

Verdict: If you are at all interested in diving and cold war era relics, this is a very cool dive! I found the walk in through the tunnels to be just as interesting as the dive itself. If you can only dive one silo, I would choose this one. It has a very authentic feel and there are a lot of little interesting things to look at along the way. If I’m in the area again, I will try to go back and explore some more.

A website with the history of the Titan missile program.

Wikipedia page for the 568th Strategic Missile Squadron that managed this site.

So far, I have been able to dive the 2 known dive-able missile silos in the US. Now I’m hooked and want to find more. There must be more silos out there just waiting to be explored.

Kerensa decided that we should book it to Burlington, Vermont to get out of the summer heat of North Carolina. Of course, the first thing I did was get online to see if it was even possible to scuba dive in Burlington.

It turns out that yes, you can dive in Burlington and it’s pretty damn good diving too!

It doesn’t really matter how good the dive was when you surface to a view like this.

A quick Google search came up with Waterfront Diving in Burlington. Their site contains a list of historic canal boats that sank in the cold fresh water of Lake Champlain. As a shipwreck hunter, the news of well-preserved wooden wrecks really intrigued me. The next step was to find some locals to show me around. I put up some posts on Scubaboard and connected to the Vermont Divers Facebook group to find some fellow divers to point me in the right direction and take me out for some dives. Little did I know this would lead to one of the most interesting dives I have done to date.

An unexpected  dive on a relatively unknown wreck deep in Lake Champlain

I went on nice evening dive with a couple of the locals I met through Facebook. I didn’t realize at the time, but they were testing me to see if I was capable of conducting a dive they had planned later that week. We met up at a location called Thompson’s Point. There isn’t much to see here, but it is one of the deepest places in the lake. From the shore, we were able to gradually swim down past 100′ to cruise along a ledge that drops deeper into the lake. It was pretty dark at this depth, so I don’t have any photos to show, but as we went along with our flashlights we started to find old bottles strewn along the bottom. We collected a few for one diver’s personal collection and surfaced shortly after to the beautiful sunset in the photo above.

Once we surfaced, they invited me to dive on a wreck that they and a local boat captain had recently re-discovered. The wreck was a steam-powered tug boat that sank in 1931. The Lake Champlain Maritime Museum found the wreck in 1996 and sent a few divers down to verify its identity. Even though the museum identified the as the US La Vallee, the location was not shared publicly in order to preserve the site.

My new dive buddies invited me to dive this wreck with them and be one of the first to see it since the survey crew located it in 1996. As a thank you for the boat captain, I created this video to show the wreck and credit Larry’s Diving Services. The wreck lies at 105 ft near the current Ferry Lanes in Lake Champlain. The water at that depth is very cold and pitch black. Due to the depth, we only had one dive with a limited amount of time. Below is the video we managed to capture during that short first dive. I hoped to get back to it again but the weather didn’t cooperate and we had to move on.

The wheel and rope pulley still intact on the La Vallee

Bottles and other artifacts were still present on deck

You can read more about the US La Vallee on the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum website.

The OJ Walker

In addition to the US Lavallee, I dove a few other wrecks with Waterfront Diving. These were also on Captain Larry’s boat since the shop contracts with local dive boats. One of my favorites was the OJ Walker. The OJ Walker was a schooner-rigged canal boat which is basically a sailing cargo boat that designed to fit through the canals and locks to bring cargo up and down the Hudson river from as far away as New York City into Lake Champlain. The size of the locks determined the size of the boats and because of this archeologists can determine the age of the ship from its size. As time went on, the locks grew bigger and bigger in order to bring through larger and larger ships laden with cargo.

According to the Waterfront Diving website, the OJ Walker went down in a storm in 1895 carrying a heavy cargo of bricks and tiles. Even though this ship has been underwater for over 100 years it is remarkably well-preserved. The cold fresh waters of Lake Champlain serve to preserve these old wooden ships, unlike the ocean where currents and living creatures will quickly eat their way through a wood ship like this.

The Wheel of the OJ Walker: Care must be taken in order to avoid damaging this delicate structure

This wreck lies at a depth of 65ft and is considered an intermediate to advanced dive. Good buoyancy control is mandatory to avoid running into and damaging the fragile structures on the boat and to avoid touching the bottom and kicking up a cloud of silt. Here some light still filters down from above, but a good flashlight really helps you take in the details of the site.

In the gallery below, you can see the deck and mast of the OJ Walker as well as some of her cargo of bricks still resting on deck and one of the brick carts laying on the bottom near the ship.

A dead eye from the OJ Walker: Although these look skulls, they are used in the rigging of the sails

There are many other wrecks in Lake Champlain that all have their own story to tell. The Vermont Division for Historic Preservation puts out a very nice pamphlet that describes the wrecks, their history and gives specific location information. I picked up my copy from Waterfront Diving.

On a drive back from a dive near Austin, my new dive buddy mentioned that there was a decommissioned nuclear missile silo that was dive-able in Texas. If you know me, you will know there is no way I am leaving Texas without diving it. So I got on the googles and turned up the interwebs and found Valhalla!

The view from the blast doors to the surface of the water.

Standing on the Silo Doors.

Valhalla is a decommissioned Atlas-F hardened nuclear missile silo located near Abilene, Texas. It is actually part of a complex of 12 silos located around Texas and formerly run by Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene. To learn more about the silos check out this guy’s site: Phildorsett.com. I talked with him prior to the dive to learn more about the silo myself.

Valhalla is owned by Family Scuba in Midland Texas. If you want to check it out for yourself, contact them to find out when there are open dives you can join.

The silo itself is divided into 2 separate silos. One is 2 stories tall and served as the command room and crew quarters. The other is the main silo where the missile and fuel was held. The main silo is 180ft tall from the base to the blast doors. This silo was once filled with many levels of equipment to service, fuel and guide the missile. It is now mostly empty and filled with nearly 130ft of water. The water comes from ground water that seeped through the concrete walls of the silo. The water is extremely clear and at a constant 60 degrees year round. The air temperature of the silo stays at 68 degrees year round, so this is a great dive to escape the summer heat in Texas.

Original section view of the silo.

The first question I get asked when I talk about this dive is, “what is there to see?” The silo once housed a lot of equipment and instruments. Those were salvaged after the silo was decommissioned, but as they lifted some stuff out through the blast doors the shackles would break and some material would fall to the bottom of the silo. The bottom is littered with debris made up of mostly twisted metal and duct work. At 40-50ft, there is a metal shack attached to the wall which served as the inertial guidance shack. Apparently it was too difficult to remove, so it was left in place. Inside you can see some control panels and plaques for the machinery manufacturers. The walls of the silo are mostly featureless and smooth which can make for a very eerie feeling when ascending and descending. There are parts of the wall, though, that have deposits on them from when the ground water seeped in over time and they are interesting to check out. The coolest thing about the place is the fact that you are diving in a Nuclear Missile Silo.

Diver approaching the Inertial Guidance Shack.

My video of the bottom of the Silo. The audio is from an old news reel film about the Atlas program.

Another interesting feature about this dive is that it qualifies as an Altitude Dive (2500ft above sea level), Night Dive, Deep Dive, and Wreck Dive in one. The location for the dive is about 20 miles south of Abilene, Texas in the middle of one of the largest wind farms in the country.

After driving through scrub brush and the rolling desert hills near Abilene, you approach the dive site. The site is mostly left over junk from previous years as a farming community. There is one small nondescript concrete doorway that gives the first hint of the silo below. On the day we visited the silo, there were some mild threats of tornadoes in the area. This is the only dive I have ever been on where the weather did not matter. It was impossible to get “blown out” on this dive. If a tornado came overhead, we would just go underground and shut the blast doors behind us. We could have a nice enjoyable dive with the apocalypse going on overhead. Fortunately, on this day, we didn’t need to test that theory.

The entrance to Valhalla

At the entrance to Valhalla, there is a nice little warning to those who may want to dive without paying; it’s a little good Texas humor. The owner of the silo was a pretty cool guy and not what I expected at all. He seemed pretty down to earth compared to the type of people who you would expect to own a missile silo.

Once in the silo you begin the journey down the stairs. There is one long set at the entrance, then a set spiraling down to the control room. All equipment for the dives must be hand carried down these stairs and then back up at the end. You learn real quick not to waste any trips up or down the stairs. Fortunately, it wasn’t as bad as I expected and there were plenty of places to rest.

Stairs down into the silo.

After passing through 2 sets of blast doors, you arrive in the command center. Here you can spread out and set up your gear in preparation for the dives. The owner also has a small selection of dive gear here for purchase in case you forget anything.

Once geared up, you pass through another set of blast doors that would separate the crew from the missile and head into the main silo. Here you walk 30ft down to the floating platform on the water’s surface. The owner demonstrated the water’s clarity by dropping a nickel in the water and you can watch it fall deep into the silo.

Tunnel from command center to missile silo.

You have to climb up and down the stairs for each dive. I am glad I was diving sidemount, so I could leave my tanks at the bottom until the end.

Exploring the deposits from the seeping groundwater on the walls of the silo.

The only limitation to the visibility in the silo was the light. The only light in the silo was from 4 flood lights mounted overhead. This was good down to 60ft or so, but after that the water filtered out the light and dive lights are necessary.

Here I am circling my way up the silo.

The inertial guidance shack.

Mounts for the levels that were previously in the silo.

The owner signing my Valhalla shirt.

After you complete your Valhalla dive, the owner will sign a shirt for you. He will not sell you a shirt unless you actually complete a dive here. Here he is signing my shirt after diving to 105ft in the silo.

Looking up at the launch doors.

This trip was a very unique experience and I recommend it for a couple of dives. It’s one of those you do, just to say you did it. The dive itself is super easy, if a bit cold. Being inside a former missile silo was the real draw for me. During lunch while others were up on the surface grilling I was down in the silo playing with the blast doors. They still swing easily given their age and size. If you have some time and want to do something unique, head deep into the heart of Texas to visit Valhalla.

Now, I hear there is a Titan missile silo in Washington state that is dive-able. I’m going to have to find my way out there.

UPDATE: I finally got to the Titan Silo in Washington. Check it out here: Titan Missile Silo Dive