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Montage Resort, Laguna Beach
jreitz1 - 7/04/2007 12:00 AM
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Category: Travel
Comments: 0
Montage Resort, Laguna BeachMade a nice dive with a buddy on Saturday morning at Montage Resort (Treasure Island) in South Laguna, CA. Parking can be tough as it`s such a nice beach, but once found leads to some nice shallow diving with swim-throughs and lots of cracks and crevices to play around. Parking in the underground lot is $1.50/hr from 8am-7pm, but you have showers and restrooms on site. Walk down the path to your choice of 3 entries; the main beach, accessed by either stairs or ramp, lead down to the south side of the reef. The middle cove (pictured) is reached via wooden staircase and drops down into a nice protected cove, as you are in the middle of the fingers that create the reef system at Montage. The third entry is at the far end of the pathway and is reached at the bottom of the pathway ramp. Both the second and third entries have showers at the top of the hill, and the main beach has a shower just off the sand, at the base of the hill, to clean off the sand before hiking back up. Max depth at high tide will usually only reach 35ft, so this site can provide some long bottom times. On this dive we reached a max of 29ft and had a bottom time of 70mins. The water was downright toasty with temps between 67-70F. Critters seen were octopi, eels, lobsters, baracuda, many rock fishes, and lots of Spanish Shawl nudibranches. This is not a place to dive when the tide is low because you are not able to get under the surge and therefor can really get kicked around. Also, you will want to explore a few times during the day before venturing in at night as the many reefs can get confusing, especially at night.