Cave Diving in the Lot region, France, Nov 2005, Part One

[wetlettuce]

Hi


Its been a while since I've posted here and I hardly recognise the place. If this is in the wrong place then I apologise. I'm sure you can redirect it or something. Anyway, I recently travelled to the Lot region of France to dive some caves there. We dived 3 different caves over the 4 day trip and had a great time. I wrote a trip report and thought some of you might like to read it. Hope you enjoy it.

A mad rush to leave work meant that I left home at about 7pm, Wednesday, to drive down to Bob’s house as I had planned to stay over before the long trip to Southern France the following day. Eventually arriving at 10:30pm we had a beer and packed the car for the following day. The trip to France took a long time, due to having to wait nearly two hours for the ferry and, from an 8am start we arrived at the CDC Lot centre, Pont de Rhodes, at around 10pm. Lynne had prepared food for us and this was very welcome. The chalet we stayed in was fine and we had plenty of room for all the gear as well as a bedroom each. So on to the diving.


Day One

Emergence du Ressel; Ressel is a famous cave and one most seen in photos of Franch caves. It is about 45 minutes drive from the Centre. The viz is reported to be usually excellent and there are some nice features in the cave, one being a grey, slate like, square patch on a light coloured limestone slab...weird.

We planned to use the twin 12's of 18/45 backgas as reserve and do the circuit at Ressel on a stage of 32%, a dive Bob had done before and which had taken about an hour or so. French cave diving is a bit surprising after doing all my cave diving so far in Florida, complete with picnic tables and proper parking areas and toilet facilities. The Ressel dive involved parking at the edge of a road, and carrying the gear down a muddy path to the side of a river. The entrance of the cave is upstream about 50 mtrs or so and is signified by a loop of cave line wrapped round a branch of a tree. Follow the cave down into the muddy brown water and suddenly you find the cave.

We had been warned that the vis was uncharacteristically bad due to a period of little rainfall and so I wasn’t too surprised when I had trouble seeing my gauge and needed touch contact with the line and with Bob on the way in although it wasn’t the usual type of entrance I am was used to. It soon cleared a little though and I was able to stray away from the line somewhat and found that if I stayed high then the vis was much improved, up to 5 or 6 mtrs. I signalled to Bob to move up a little in the water column as we swam along andas we progressed the viz steadily improved. We reached the T junction we had planned to follow after 15 minutes or so and then left a clothes peg marker before following the line which we knew would eventually lead us back the main line to complete a circuit (or at least Bob knew. I didn’t and so this was a ‘trust me’ dive). The vis then dramatically improved to between 15 and 20 mtrs and the water was also warmer at around 13degC. I was swimming along smiling, thinking just how cool this is, looking at the limestone formations and the various characteristics of the cave. It brought back all the great dives I had done in my Florida in June and I was excited and delighted to see that there are similar dives to be had in France.


After 30 minutes we reached the main line and continued the circuit, I looked at my gas and was still on 120 bar of an AL80, so we had plenty of time, and I knew I wouldn’t need to use any backgas, which was great, as we wanted to use that the next day for a deeper dive. As we swam along the mainline tunnel the viz steadily decreased as we progressed and the water cooled to 9degc, obviously the lack of rain had caused the river water to start ingressing into the cave and this was what was effecting the viz. At the exit we did a slow ascent finishing the dive on 60 minutes exactly, and me with 40 bar left out of the AL80 J which was 20 bar better off than Bob, a point I made reference too regularly throughout the weekend, as he always uses less gas than me.



Day 2

We got up later today as Bob had not set his alarm, and we fancied relaxing a bit anyway. The weather had warmed up slightly and this was going to be a pleasant day. Lynne has a great little gas filling setup and we managed to fill our used stage bottles with 32% ready for diving Cabouy tomorrow.

Today we had planned to do a deeper dive in Ressel, with 12’s of 18/45 and a 50% bottle, which we would use for the shallow section, drop at 21mtrs and then onto backgas for the deeper section, which we planned on scootering for 10 minutes and then returning. The viz at the entrance and the first section was really poor, worse than yesterday, and I had to push against Bobs fins to make sure he knew I was there as we scootered along the best we could. After the T the vis cleared up a lot and we started to make some decent progress before we hit a snag. Bob’s trigger cable snapped on his scooter and he had to try and ride it using just the wheel which has the contact for the magnetic switch mounted on it. This worked kind of OK but I could see it was a pain for Bob and I knew we would end up dropping the scooters at the stage bottle point and swimming instead of scootering, which was fair enough, but still a bit of a shame. We dropped the bottles as we planned and, as I thought, Bob signalled to drop the scooters. We then dropped down the shaft which goes to around 30 mtrs and on for another 20 mtrs or so before dropping to 45 ish metres.


The cave at this point really opens out and really is impressive, looking like something out of a WKPP video, white stone on the whole, scalloped by the water flow over time and punctuated by solid slabs of rock which have fallen from the ceiling or been washed into the cave. The line is worth mentioning as it is a mixture of telephone wire and what seems to be fishing line, which is strewn around the cave in loose coils at some parts and where it is broken it is fixed with all sorts of different coloured and different quality line. Very different to the cremantle used in American caves.

Anyway we swam along and after about 15 minutes or so I reached my turn pressure of 150 bar and this was just at the 600 mtr marker and I was happy to know how far we had swam into the cave. It gives me a measurement for next time. The trip back was pretty straightforward and we arrived at the ascent shaft thingy after about 25 minutes bottom time. We ascended doing our deep stops and then picked up our 50% bottle and scooters, switching to our deco gas and then started swimming home. We already knew it was about 30 minutes to swim back so deco pretty much took care of itself and we just paused at different points to match with the plan. Reaching the 9 mtr section we got a shock, as after having 13degc in the cave we were treated to 9degc river water! As the viz worsened I closed in on Bob and started nudging his fins to ensure he knew I was close and we exited the cave after 90 minutes. Not only my deepest cave dive but my first scooter cave dive I was cold but happy. I ended up with about 30 bar left in my 50% bottle and 90 bar left in the twinset. It was quite late by this time and we decided to drive around a bit and relax rather than try and rush to do another dive, as Bob wanted to go back and fix his scooter, in order to conduct the Cabouy dive the following day with two stages and our scooters J

You can read Part Two here, or at my scuba diving weblog

 

[wetlettuce]

Day 3

Day 3 we decided to do Cabouy, as some recent visitors had reported the viz being exceptional. This was my first time at Cabouy but we had Andrew Wards book which gave us a good idea of what profile to expect and Bob had dived this quite a few times before. We decided to use the scooters for 25 minutes and then drop them, and use two stages, drop the first at 120 (half plus 20bar) bar and then breathe the second but only up to a dive time of around 30-ish minutes, because we thought if anything went wrong with the scooters then it would be a long swim home ( We reckon its about 10mtrs/min swim versus 50mtrs/min scootering). Cabouy was the favourite cave of the trip for me, as scootering along inside such a pretty cave is just a great experience, its like flying along a mini grand canyon, you can see where the cave used to be dry over the centuries, and follow what was a stream, and then a river, as the water levels have risen over the eons. The walls are clean with a bright white colour, and the viz was between 15 and 20 mtrs, the HID lights easily picking out the way ahead and all of this makes following the line and seeing your buddy very easy. Everything really went according to plan, although we both said afterwards it felt a bit rushed, during the stops, switches, and placing the markers.

I expected the pou maisson to be at about 900 mtrs, and it might be, although some of the markers where showing only 400 ish mtrs and so I was a bit disappointed to be dropping the first stage at about 20 minutes in thinking we had a long way still to go. I was wrong however, and literally a minute later we reached the first T, showing a large arrow shaped sign pointing to an airbell (I think) I placed a marker and we then travelled on to the next T, and from there I struggle to remember all the different routes we took. As we reached each junction we placed a cookie (non directional marker) or a clothes peg to show the way out. Needless to say this slows us down somewhat and it was 32 minutes or so when I called the dive, as the scooters burn time is only about an hour at full pitch, and I didn’t want them to run out of juice, despite us having full twin 18’s on our back and still plenty in the stage bottle and a further bottle which was more than half full to pick up. The trip back was just as fun as the trip in. We travelled back following our markers, picking them up as we hit each T, and then scootered back the 900 mtrs or so to the exit which dips down to about 30 mtrs and then has a nice sloping bank which provides a nice exit out of the cave. I just signalled 1min stops from 15 and then 5 at 6 and 5 to the surface. All in all a great dive.

We then travelled to Fontaines St George for the second dive. We had hoped to be able to get back and charge the scooters a bit between dives but we ran out of time and decided to swim the dive instead, using just one stage bottle. It had started raining so we kitted up pretty quickly and the plan was to use the one stage, drop at 120 bar and then use 20 bar or so of backgas, or call the dive at 30 minutes, as we wanted to be back out before it got dark. The viz wasn’t as good as Cabouy but it is a really nice cave. Very similar in the look and feel to Cabouy, this cave drops down to 25 or 30 mtrs and then shallows up to between 10 and 15 mtrs. Just swimming along this time I had chance to have a longer look at the different rock formations and take note of the different coloured lines showing through the rock. Again, everything went to plan and there were no surprises. We dropped the stages when we reached the 120 bar bit and swam ahead a while until I called it at 34 minutes I think. On the way back we picked up the stage bottles and switched to those and had a pleasant swim back doing similar deco as before, stops from 15 and then 5minutes at 6 and 5 to the surface. There were a whole bunch of little fish which gathered round whilst doing the 5 minutes stop which was quite entertaining. I don’t know whether they were just curious at seeing two blokes in black rubber suits coming out of the cave, or using us as shelter from some unseen predator. Funny though.

Day 4

Today we planned on just the one dive and this was at Cabouy again, trying to find the upstream section from Pou maisson. This time we planned to take two stages and the scooters, dropping the stages at 100 bar and dropping the scooters at the first T, and then check out the different lines with the second stage, calling it at the end of the second stage which would be 100 bar, saving the backgas for reserve, which was at about 170 bar or so. Again, this is simply because we reckoned the scooters travelled up to 5 times further than swimming, and so we needed plenty of gas to swim home if needs be.

This time we took it a little easier on the way in as we knew the layout now and dropped the first stage at about 20ish minutes. We then reached the first T in a couple more minutes and dropped these. We were then free to swim to the next T with just a stage bottle to manage and try and figure out what was going on, as there are quite a few T’s at regular intervals seemingly going in all sorts of directions. We ended up swimming round what was a circuit which took about 20 minutes or so to swim, which I thought was really pretty and at one point I was just grinning into my reg thinking how great this dive was. After the 20 minutes we came across the T were my line arrow pointed to the exit, my stage was about spent and so I thumbed it there. After a bit of pointing and gesticulation Bob seemed to understand that it was my line arrow, but then turned around to swim the way we had come. As he had shown a bit of confusion when coming across the T I wondered what he was doing, as I thought we would just leave from the T, saving the time. Anyway, I flashed him and pointed to the exit and he said OK and we headed on out. In hindsight I should have just gone back the way we had been, we had the gas, and I had forgotten that I left a cookie at a T inbetween which is a bit bad practice really, unless you are going to go back for it, which I’m sure I will, one day . Luckily it is non directional so it shouldn’t point someone else the wrong way, as a line arrow could. Everything else on the exit went fine, we picked up the scooters and then the second stage bottle and switched to that for the exit.

Eventually we arrived back after 80 minutes or so, which seemed short, but that’s the difference the scooter makes. If they had broken on the way out we could have been in there an extra hour which might not have been so much fun. In the afternoon we decided to have a look at the St Sauveur entrance and, after driving our way through some small trails we ended up stuck in slippery field. The upshot of this is that we had to offload the scooters and twin 18’s and then get a good run up and with Bob at the wheel and me pushing we got the car back up the hill. We then had to go back and carry the 18’s and scooters back to the car. Needless to say we are thinking about a 4wd for the next trip! The trip home was OK and I think it was 14 hours for me door to door, a long drive!

Final Thoughts

All in all I think it was a great first trip to France and I thoroughly enjoyed it. All my cave dives so far have been in Florida, which, with the warm weather and the picnic tables, is almost the amusement park feel to it. France is different. You get kitted up at the side of the road, and there are fewer divers about. There are no dive shops at the sites and it is really peaceful and feels less explored. It has a real sense of adventure about it, and I can’t wait to go back, perhaps with a second scooter, to explore a little further. In fact we're already in the middle of organising the next trip.

I hope you enjoyed the report and maybe even take the trip to France to check out the caves. Feel free to read a few more of my trips and stuff on my scuba diving weblog

Thanks

Andy

 

[daniel f aleman]

Beautiful - thanks for the write-up.

 

[mania]

Some of our divers love caves in France. here you can see good videos:
http://www.stajniakleina.prv.pl/
If the home page will open click on the left side menu on "WYJAZDY - video". Then you have 2005 and 4 great films from French caves.
mania