SuPrBuGmAn
Contributor
Spring has sprung, warmer temperatures are hitting the area fairly regularly now with crisp cool mornings and extremely comfortable Tshirt weather afternoons. Saturday started off early, with me leaving the house before sunrise, which I ended up watching over Pensacola Bay. Its been a little while since I've gotten a start this early but I can't complain for the view that I got to enjoy. It was gearing up to be a sunny day and temps were already climbing. I hit up Vortex a bit after 8AM and dropped a few LP95s in the fill tank and started rigging up a stage for the days dive. Spd_135 and his gf met up with me shortly afterwards, he had his boat in tow. We talked for a bit, loaded the tanks into the car after checking their newly filled pressures, and headed south.
My favorite river cave
Less than an hour later, we're looking at a mostly flooded boat launch, waiting for our turn to put into the water. We loaded up four tanks(two tanks for backgas, a stage, and a deco bottle each) each for Spd_135 and me(Spd's gf would be tending the boat as we dived). Spd's boat is greatly equipped for two divers to pretty much pull off any kind of dive plan with the amount of room it has. Its steady and fast too, which is great, because the dive we had planned today is no short run. It cut the ~5 mile trip down in around 30 minutes, less than half the time it takes the Miss Jellyfish to make the same trip. Once out of the creek, we found the river to be moving swiftly, no big deal though. The water was high, the boundaries of the river were skewed into the floodplain, water rushing through the trees. Luckily, the spring we'd be diving is high flowing and I had no doubt that it'd be in great shape despite the river being higher than I've ever seen while diving here. Making our way up the run, the water turned from mud to a much cleaner dark blue/green color. There was obviously still intrusion present, but atleast there was some visibility present. The basin was shot, as expected, but there was a copious boil coming from the depths. We tied off to a couple trees in the flood plain and start tossing tanks in waist deep water that usually makes up a dry shore.
The river water intruding the basin made the temperatures colder than normal, so I wasn't looking forward to the decompression obligation I expected to accumilate. There are ways to avoid the cold, but I'll go into that later. Spd and I geared up, made our plan, and headed into the abyss. I lead and clipped my O2 bottle to the knotted rope leading into the cave. The entrance is a restriction that bottlenecks a tremendous amount of flow out of a relatively small hole with a sand bottom. There isn't much to pull on and you're definately not gonna swim into it. I pulled hand over hand into the cavern and the cave failed at spitting me back out. It wasn't easy, and it came at a loss, both my primary regulators free flowed hard and I ended up dropping 400psi and 200psi respectively from my untouched back gas(I was breathing on a stage). Gotta pay the piper somehow and once out of the restriction the flow resided and I got my regs stowed away without gas just bleeding out like crazy. After a few OKs, we headed further into the cave.
The walls are dark and the flow is crazy, the bottom is composed of a coarse dark sand and silt mix with clay underneat. Goethite thats fallen from the walls and ceiling in sheets covers certain areas and tube worm fossils adorn the walls. Dugong fossils are on the ground everywhere, most easily recognized are the ribs which are deposited in piles throughout the entire cave. The first several hundred feet rise and fall continuously and test your bouyancy. Then the cave drops into the 80'+ depth range and stays around that depth(eventually dropping into the 90' range) the rest of the trunk that I've visited so far. I dropped my stage just before dropping into the deep section. This section is composed of more rock and generally is smaller than the beginning section of cave. There are side tunnels here and there, but the flow makes the main passage quite evident. We eventually hit around 1500'p before the dive gets turned and we float out with the flow faster than we could swim into the cave. This part is relaxing, we can sit back and look around quite easily without working our asses off. Back at the cavern, spd gets spit out the exit and I get on the rope to exit backwards. At the end of the line, I unclip my 02 and clip the nose off to my shoulder D-ring and let the butt float up(its better than half empty, but still have more than enough gas to deco out several times over). There's a great tree spanning across the basin that makes for a great deco ledge, but its in cold river water... and I'm wet, so I don't want to be there. I choose to grab onto some limestone directly over the vent and just get beat around by the flow as it gushes up and out.... warm, comfortable, watery beat down, beats frigid river water. Deco is short, only 6 minutes, spd was diving a better mix and hadn't accrued any stop, so when I'm done, we head up. It was a great dive and the sun is out to warm us up. We packed the boat and headed back in, enjoying the day, the sun, and the company. I'm looking forward to getting back, its my favorite cave, and it had been too long since my last visit.
Per custom, we hit up Dee's in Vernon, FL. Its necessary to hit up this eatery if anywhere in the area on any day but Sunday. The food is great, far greater than you'd expect to find in the little town of Vernon. My steak was excellent, so was everyone elses! Once we settled the bill, we parted ways and headed home. One hellova day trip!
Max depth of 84' for a dive lasting 67 minutes.
My favorite river cave
Less than an hour later, we're looking at a mostly flooded boat launch, waiting for our turn to put into the water. We loaded up four tanks(two tanks for backgas, a stage, and a deco bottle each) each for Spd_135 and me(Spd's gf would be tending the boat as we dived). Spd's boat is greatly equipped for two divers to pretty much pull off any kind of dive plan with the amount of room it has. Its steady and fast too, which is great, because the dive we had planned today is no short run. It cut the ~5 mile trip down in around 30 minutes, less than half the time it takes the Miss Jellyfish to make the same trip. Once out of the creek, we found the river to be moving swiftly, no big deal though. The water was high, the boundaries of the river were skewed into the floodplain, water rushing through the trees. Luckily, the spring we'd be diving is high flowing and I had no doubt that it'd be in great shape despite the river being higher than I've ever seen while diving here. Making our way up the run, the water turned from mud to a much cleaner dark blue/green color. There was obviously still intrusion present, but atleast there was some visibility present. The basin was shot, as expected, but there was a copious boil coming from the depths. We tied off to a couple trees in the flood plain and start tossing tanks in waist deep water that usually makes up a dry shore.
The river water intruding the basin made the temperatures colder than normal, so I wasn't looking forward to the decompression obligation I expected to accumilate. There are ways to avoid the cold, but I'll go into that later. Spd and I geared up, made our plan, and headed into the abyss. I lead and clipped my O2 bottle to the knotted rope leading into the cave. The entrance is a restriction that bottlenecks a tremendous amount of flow out of a relatively small hole with a sand bottom. There isn't much to pull on and you're definately not gonna swim into it. I pulled hand over hand into the cavern and the cave failed at spitting me back out. It wasn't easy, and it came at a loss, both my primary regulators free flowed hard and I ended up dropping 400psi and 200psi respectively from my untouched back gas(I was breathing on a stage). Gotta pay the piper somehow and once out of the restriction the flow resided and I got my regs stowed away without gas just bleeding out like crazy. After a few OKs, we headed further into the cave.
The walls are dark and the flow is crazy, the bottom is composed of a coarse dark sand and silt mix with clay underneat. Goethite thats fallen from the walls and ceiling in sheets covers certain areas and tube worm fossils adorn the walls. Dugong fossils are on the ground everywhere, most easily recognized are the ribs which are deposited in piles throughout the entire cave. The first several hundred feet rise and fall continuously and test your bouyancy. Then the cave drops into the 80'+ depth range and stays around that depth(eventually dropping into the 90' range) the rest of the trunk that I've visited so far. I dropped my stage just before dropping into the deep section. This section is composed of more rock and generally is smaller than the beginning section of cave. There are side tunnels here and there, but the flow makes the main passage quite evident. We eventually hit around 1500'p before the dive gets turned and we float out with the flow faster than we could swim into the cave. This part is relaxing, we can sit back and look around quite easily without working our asses off. Back at the cavern, spd gets spit out the exit and I get on the rope to exit backwards. At the end of the line, I unclip my 02 and clip the nose off to my shoulder D-ring and let the butt float up(its better than half empty, but still have more than enough gas to deco out several times over). There's a great tree spanning across the basin that makes for a great deco ledge, but its in cold river water... and I'm wet, so I don't want to be there. I choose to grab onto some limestone directly over the vent and just get beat around by the flow as it gushes up and out.... warm, comfortable, watery beat down, beats frigid river water. Deco is short, only 6 minutes, spd was diving a better mix and hadn't accrued any stop, so when I'm done, we head up. It was a great dive and the sun is out to warm us up. We packed the boat and headed back in, enjoying the day, the sun, and the company. I'm looking forward to getting back, its my favorite cave, and it had been too long since my last visit.
Per custom, we hit up Dee's in Vernon, FL. Its necessary to hit up this eatery if anywhere in the area on any day but Sunday. The food is great, far greater than you'd expect to find in the little town of Vernon. My steak was excellent, so was everyone elses! Once we settled the bill, we parted ways and headed home. One hellova day trip!
Max depth of 84' for a dive lasting 67 minutes.
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