Aurora Reservoir

Easy to find, dedicated dive area that you can drive up to for dropping off gear. I had 6 dives over two days to earn the Search and Recovery specialty and had fun dives on Cessna wreck. Because of 5-10 ft vis., this is good training for searches with ropes.

Great place for a quick dive near the Metro area. I did see several large fish and the craw-dads are fun to watch. As you swim around they either dart away causing puffs of dirt or stare at you with their pinchers up. Either way it's cool to see. Visibility varies from day to day... On Monday it was approx. 15' today (Wed.) you could hardly see 5'. The sunken Cessna is also a cool site to see... Well it's about the only thing to see. If you go during the week there are hardly any other divers there so you can dive in peace with your buddy. On weekends its can get so crowded you can't hardly see anything in the water. All in all it's a decent dive due to its location. Good for new divers due to shallow depths and good for nav practice. Will be diving here frequently to keep my skills fresh

As said by others, it's mostly a place to get wet in Colorado. $5 per vehicle per day. If you go through a dive shop, your gear can be taken to the shore by vehicle (otherwise plan on carrying on your own). The best vis I've had there (in the last eight years of diving) has been about 7', otherwise the average I've encountered is about 5'. Check out the Cessna and on good days you can still find related debris in the diving area. Watch your exit and entry, as the beach can be slippery and gear can easily be lost in the murky waters. Otherwise, this place is good for navigation and night classes. My reason to come here is if you can navigate well in 3-5' vis, you're off to a great start. Night diving is fine too, especially practicing your navigating to site and shore during the dark hours. If you're adventurous enough, do a little bug hunting. Near the end of the Aurora Res season (they close about the last week in October) the crawdads are a good size. FYI, a military installation is adjacent the park and who knows what was dumped in the waters from there (that's where the adventurous part comes in). Happy Diving! K

I have found the site great for practicing basic skills, wreck diving, and night diving. Vis is limited from 1 inch (when too many divers are hitting the bottom) to 12-15 feet if there are few divers with buoyancy control abilities. Fun to dive with the understanding of lake diving.

Not much to see other than some crawdads and a Cessna twin engine that was sunk and stripped of anything remotely interesting. Tons of cert classes and tons of mud. Visibility almost always poor. Otherwise, it's AWESOME.

I've dived in the reservoir a few times. I come northern Colorado area and the lakes' viz is pretty much nil. Aurora has probably one of the best diving facilities around and on a good day I've seen 10-12' of viz. You can see from the front of the plane to the back. We also enjoy going out and catching crawfish and having a crawfish boil annually with our dive club (Banana Skin Divers) out of Greeley. We usually host that in August.

Well, I must agree with Anon...but again, it is a place to get wet in Colorado. Bring a rope, about 12 feet long so you and your buddy do not have to ascend to locate each other as the vis rarely gets better than 1-3 feet. Basically muck diving, find stuff the other folks may have lost and a great place to work on navs

This dive falls into the category of my worst day diving is better than my best day working. Aurora is a pleasant little dive and an acceptable student checkout site. As Colorado dives go it is average. The bottom is very silty and vis can go to 0 in a second. In the deeper water the silt is black so we are talking about total blackout conditions. There is an airplane wreck marked with a buoy. Although there are fish in the resevoir I have never seen one while diving. Lots of crawfish and some of those babies are big so there's good eatin'. Make sure you have a fishing license. The beach is nice to set up and have a picnic lunch. Overall, I'd rather dive anywhere else, but since we're talking Colorado and there isn't much else, dive it and enjoy being underwater.