View from the Southwest.
View of the stairs.
Meadowdale Marina
Located a few miles north of Edmonds. Take Exit 179 on I-5 (220th St SW). Go west until you cross Highway 99, and take a right at the next light onto 76th Ave SW. Your goal is 162nd St SW, so follow 76th Ave SW for quite a while until you hit a 4-way stop. Continue straight through into a more residential looking area for about 1.3 miles. Take a left onto 162nd St SW. It curves down to the railroad track. Park there.
Parking is pretty limited.
From where you park walk down to the railroad tracks and turn left. It is a ways down the track so if you suited up first you are going to have a very hot walk. I recommend carrying your gear down, and then suiting up. However this site got named either the person was diving at a very, very high tide or was narc'd, because the top of the rock is around 85 feet. The entry point can be found by looking for the cement stairs on the right as you walk down the track. Swim out directly from there looking for the start of a trench starting around 35-40ft. Follow it down until you get to a very large round rock. You should find the rock at about 85 ft. If you get to 100ft and you haven't found the rock you have missed it. You don't need to go any deeper. Turn sweep back and forth up the slope until you find it.
- J. Syre
Diving this site reminds me of all the times I got drunk, in that it seemed like a fun idea at the time, but every time I did I always said "never again"!
The site is called 100ft rock because the base of the rock sits in (nearly) 100fsw at high tide. It's located between the south side of Meadowdale Marina, aka "Haine's Wharf" and just north of Brown's Bay. The rock itself is HUGE, about 25ft tall, and probably about 40ft in diameter at the base. The main reason I dislike this site is that the entry and exit are such a bitch. For this you have two choices: hike about 200 yards down the tracks with all your gear, (being careful to dodge the moving freight trains), or climb down over the grimy, slippery, railroad embankment rocks and risk breaking your neck, or worse yet, your gear. Entry is only slightly better than trying to exit because you still have plenty of energy at that point. Another reason I don't care for this site is I'm not particularly fond of deep dives unless there is something really worth seeing for the 20 minutes of bottom time I would get, (only half of which is spent at the rock itself). Other than the rock, the only thing to see is some of the more commonly found Puget Sound sea life, but not in any great abundance. Whoopee. I've seen more sea life at the underwater park.
There is actually another part to this site that isn't so deep and a little more interesting, IMO. Out past the end of the pier you'll find some tire reefs and other junk that's been tossed overboard over the years, or even under the pier itself during high tide, the pilings usually have a lot of sea life clinging to and around them. Plus you don't have to hike down the tracks, just climb down over the rocks near where you park.
Bottom line is diving is supposed to be fun, and I always try to maximize the fun and minimize the stress on every dive. The fun/stress scale is tipped too far towards the stress side and too little on the fun side for this dive, and just isn't worth the effort, In-My-Humble-Opinion. If you must, dive it one or two times out of curiosity, but do so with somebody who's experienced with this site and/or experienced with (and enjoys) deep dives. Dive it at low tide and preferably from a boat. Otherwise, don't bother.
Reviewed by Greg Goebel