Bucks Beach

The beach is not obvious from the road: it sits about 100 ft (30 m) west of the state-line border on the California side, near Brockway, with the trailhead where Harbor Street meets Lake Street. Parking is very limited in what is a residential area, and arriving late can mean a walk of over 300 ft (90 m) along a fence-lined trail past private property, then down wooden steps to the sand. The entry is a rather narrow sandy beach with large boulders along the shoreline, and the water is shallow from the first stride.

Maximum depth is only 20 ft (6 m), so this is a long, slow dive rather than a deep one — you can work 1,500 ft (460 m) out from shore and still be in 6 m of water. The bottom is what you come for: large, flat granite with many round craters throughout, and no other part of the lake compares. Rocks rise to the surface as far as 500 ft (150 m) out, and a marker buoy further out flags the abyss and warns boats off the shallows. The same beach is the entry for the surface swim to Stateline Wall, so decide which of the two dives you are doing before you kit up.