ucfdiver
Contributor
Another great weekend here in Florida. Everything is starting to clear very nicely, and it's making things a lot of fun! Since all the news on here about cave diving has been negative this weekend, I'm going to try and give some positive discussion.
Marchand and I woke up about 6am and headed north to Tally. This paid off really well, as the river views are stunning with morning fog. Birds are chirping like crazy, fish are jumping all around you, and in general the wildlife is just incredibly abundant.
Here's a few pics-
Our first site was an accident, we meant to go somewhere else, but looked at the map upside down and went to a spring on the wrong side of the river. Lucky for us, there was cave there, too! Marchand and I saw the line and decided that we weren't trusting our lives to it, so we ran our own, using a reel with about 600ft of line. The cavern was massive, but we knew we were in for a dusty exit before we even got into the cave. We went in about 400ft, encountered a T, took the right side as it was larger, and continued on about 200ft, where we ran out of reel. We had another reel, but at this time the silt behind us was going to make for a long trip home, so we turned the dive and saved the rest of the cave for another day.
After packing up our gear, we headed further down river to check the next site out. Fortunately this is the biggest spring on this portion of the river, so we were able to find it
. Several locals had brought boats up and were having a good time, drinking, fishing, swimming, swinging from the rope in a tree, etc. A water snake I guess was curious to see what we were up to, and the locals warned us as it was swimming our way, fortunately it decided to leave us alone and go to the shore, but I had a paddle waiting . After gearing up again, we plopped down into the basin, and immediately saw the cave from the limitless viz. After feeling the flow coming out, I missed "easy" dives like Jackson Blue and Ginnie, which this fire hose puts to shame! I did the only logical thing and offered Jeff the reel...which he refused 
. Due to the tremendous flow, I decided to make the tie off about 15ft inside the cavern, after the entrance restriction, so I could get a good solid tie off that wouldn't break. We went a little ways until we hit a bottle off restriction, which opened up into a very large room with a line tied off low on the floor. The line went for a little ways and ended. I think there's more cave here, but since we were getting close to deco (it was 90ft deep) we decided to turn the dive.
Getting hungry, we decided to head home. We spotted another large spring run on our way, so we decided to check it out. We looked all over, but no cave, even if it was pretty on the surface.
We then spotted another...At first, I started to not get in the water, as the basin looked extremely small, but decided to give it a look just in case. After looking, I saw that there was potential, so we grabbed the sidemount tanks and suited up. Once inside the cave, I was thrilled to see that there was no line! Unfortunately the fun came to a screeching halt when we hit a restriction that I couldn't fit through, but could see a large opening on the other side of it. Bummer. Only got to lay down 80ft of line, but it's still a thrilling experience, hopefully I'll find something more substantial now that I'm more motivated after this little teaser.
We got a good night's sleep and then decided to head towards a land access cave on Sunday morning. We parked on the public right of way, and went to walk up the spring run, where we met the landowner who informed us that he didn't believe it was a navigable waterway, and would call the cops if we did so. Here's a previous photo of the spring we can no longer dive, and two of the cave. Incidents like what happened at vortex are costing us incredible sites, as landowners worry about liability :depressed:
Not wanting to miss a day of diving, we headed 15 minutes across town to another land access cave which has a more cave diver friendly landowner. We drove through tally towards the site and parked where the landowner requested. This site really makes you think about where you dump trash being so close to our aquifer, as it's COVERED in trash from homeless living on property.
Matt (superbugman) told me that this cave is one of the prettiest he's seen, and I think it takes top place in my book as well. Unfortunately the landowner wants to sell it, so who knows if we'll have access much longer. This was both Jeff and my first time here, so we had to spend a few minutes looking around for the cave. By water temperature alone, we could tell which side the cave was on, but didn't see the rather obvious line running to open water at first. The cavern here is stunning, and the cave even better. The milky surface water throws you off, but visibility here is rumored to almost always be limitless. We had crystal clear blue water as far as our two 21w HID's would shine, with only the pieces of rock that our bubbles knocked off the ceiling to disturb it.
After finishing our dive, Jeff and I surfaced to 3 homeless individuals getting ready to take a bath here. They were drinking the champagne of North Florida, Natty Ice, all 3 drunk, and 2 of them clearly on some sort of drugs. We surfaced after talking and being nice to them, but it certainly wasn't a comfortable situation.
Ben Martinez posted some amazing photos of this cave elsewhere, but I'll hotlink two to show the general character of the cave. These photos are Ben Martinez's and NOT mine!
All in all a great weekend. There's just so much beauty to Florida that it's hard to choose where to dive kayak or hike next! (We do manage however, and our next trip in 2 weeks is already planned, albeit closer to home in high springs )
Marchand and I woke up about 6am and headed north to Tally. This paid off really well, as the river views are stunning with morning fog. Birds are chirping like crazy, fish are jumping all around you, and in general the wildlife is just incredibly abundant.
Here's a few pics-
Our first site was an accident, we meant to go somewhere else, but looked at the map upside down and went to a spring on the wrong side of the river. Lucky for us, there was cave there, too! Marchand and I saw the line and decided that we weren't trusting our lives to it, so we ran our own, using a reel with about 600ft of line. The cavern was massive, but we knew we were in for a dusty exit before we even got into the cave. We went in about 400ft, encountered a T, took the right side as it was larger, and continued on about 200ft, where we ran out of reel. We had another reel, but at this time the silt behind us was going to make for a long trip home, so we turned the dive and saved the rest of the cave for another day.
After packing up our gear, we headed further down river to check the next site out. Fortunately this is the biggest spring on this portion of the river, so we were able to find it
. Several locals had brought boats up and were having a good time, drinking, fishing, swimming, swinging from the rope in a tree, etc. A water snake I guess was curious to see what we were up to, and the locals warned us as it was swimming our way, fortunately it decided to leave us alone and go to the shore, but I had a paddle waiting . After gearing up again, we plopped down into the basin, and immediately saw the cave from the limitless viz. After feeling the flow coming out, I missed "easy" dives like Jackson Blue and Ginnie, which this fire hose puts to shame! I did the only logical thing and offered Jeff the reel...which he refused . Due to the tremendous flow, I decided to make the tie off about 15ft inside the cavern, after the entrance restriction, so I could get a good solid tie off that wouldn't break. We went a little ways until we hit a bottle off restriction, which opened up into a very large room with a line tied off low on the floor. The line went for a little ways and ended. I think there's more cave here, but since we were getting close to deco (it was 90ft deep) we decided to turn the dive.
Getting hungry, we decided to head home. We spotted another large spring run on our way, so we decided to check it out. We looked all over, but no cave, even if it was pretty on the surface.
We then spotted another...At first, I started to not get in the water, as the basin looked extremely small, but decided to give it a look just in case. After looking, I saw that there was potential, so we grabbed the sidemount tanks and suited up. Once inside the cave, I was thrilled to see that there was no line! Unfortunately the fun came to a screeching halt when we hit a restriction that I couldn't fit through, but could see a large opening on the other side of it. Bummer. Only got to lay down 80ft of line, but it's still a thrilling experience, hopefully I'll find something more substantial now that I'm more motivated after this little teaser.
We got a good night's sleep and then decided to head towards a land access cave on Sunday morning. We parked on the public right of way, and went to walk up the spring run, where we met the landowner who informed us that he didn't believe it was a navigable waterway, and would call the cops if we did so. Here's a previous photo of the spring we can no longer dive, and two of the cave. Incidents like what happened at vortex are costing us incredible sites, as landowners worry about liability :depressed:
Not wanting to miss a day of diving, we headed 15 minutes across town to another land access cave which has a more cave diver friendly landowner. We drove through tally towards the site and parked where the landowner requested. This site really makes you think about where you dump trash being so close to our aquifer, as it's COVERED in trash from homeless living on property.
Matt (superbugman) told me that this cave is one of the prettiest he's seen, and I think it takes top place in my book as well. Unfortunately the landowner wants to sell it, so who knows if we'll have access much longer. This was both Jeff and my first time here, so we had to spend a few minutes looking around for the cave. By water temperature alone, we could tell which side the cave was on, but didn't see the rather obvious line running to open water at first. The cavern here is stunning, and the cave even better. The milky surface water throws you off, but visibility here is rumored to almost always be limitless. We had crystal clear blue water as far as our two 21w HID's would shine, with only the pieces of rock that our bubbles knocked off the ceiling to disturb it.
After finishing our dive, Jeff and I surfaced to 3 homeless individuals getting ready to take a bath here. They were drinking the champagne of North Florida, Natty Ice, all 3 drunk, and 2 of them clearly on some sort of drugs. We surfaced after talking and being nice to them, but it certainly wasn't a comfortable situation.
Ben Martinez posted some amazing photos of this cave elsewhere, but I'll hotlink two to show the general character of the cave. These photos are Ben Martinez's and NOT mine!
All in all a great weekend. There's just so much beauty to Florida that it's hard to choose where to dive kayak or hike next! (We do manage however, and our next trip in 2 weeks is already planned, albeit closer to home in high springs
)
