FIXXERVI6
Contributor
First full week in cave country with only side mount rig to dive.
First up was peanut to crossover to Olsen and back for a warm up, peanut is probably one of the hardest places to enter using side mount. I opted to hang my tanks in the water then put them on in the water, beck tried to do a giant stride, that did not go so well and needless to say neither one of us attempted a giant stride for the rest of the week, 100% of the time we either hung the cylinders in the water ahead of time or laid them on the bottom when we could reach. Typical boring peanut dive, little to no flow etc, one thing of note though there were a bazillion crayfish in there. The female was having some trouble with the 95’s being cranked to 3600, she was suckin down two 95’s in sidemount much much faster than I was taking down my 108’s.
Burned a day because she managed to get the light head unplugged from the cord by jerking on it (cord too short due to butt mounting) but Joel came through and saved the day (and my vacation) thumbs up to light monkey!
After a few more dives I convinced her to try out 85’s instead, headed over to troy to dial it in, after a few adjustments and some dives things looked good, very good, but then the question of, 85’s, too small right???
Headed over to cow, flow was up a bit and I poked on the way in taking my sweet time, Beck spotted a well casing before not my fault – good catch. I ended up turning the dive on 3rds of my 108’s, before she hit thirds on her 85’s (both side mount with no gas match) go figure. Hey, I’m a man, I breathe. This shoked me a bit as I kept expecting her to turn the dive being on those lil girly tanks, we made it to change up in cow and we were poking on the way in, pulled a 100 minute dive out of that, pretty good!
Next day headed up to Madison, last time I was in Madison it wasn’t looking so pretty, mounds of silt everywhere instead of the pretty sand, this time it was flowing good and I was starting to see more sand and less silt, its coming back! Vis was awesome. Did the Godzilla circuit and while I was in there, I found an EXTRA back up in a hole, I pulled it out so now there are TWO!
Next day headed over to Little River, flow was UP, vis was down. Took beck to the Florida room, we made it all the way through the Florida room to the other side when she turned it on thirds yep, I didn't hit my turn before her on that one :cool2:, I was about 200 psi from turn on my 108’s. On the way out we starting poking around at the top of the chimney, I found the worm hole line and decided to stay out, that’s going to be a solo dive as its very tight and all clay. Between the chimney and exit I found 5 sidemount lines! I jumped down one, I blew it up pretty good setting the reel in so I told beck to hold while it cleared. After it cleared I pushed through about 50 or 60 feet until I came to a room big enough to turn around where I waited for Beck, she never followed so I just looked around then left, I told her to hold and then never told her to follow – oops my fault. Jumped to another line and it pinched down pretty tight, back to the ceiling with belly in the sand/silt and I popped through the other side where the line ended in a huge silt mound, guess it piled up from the flood? On exit I noticed the vis in the basin wasn’t so good anymore (insert whistling emoticon here). After looking at the map I don’t think the first sidemount line I went down was on the map, the line was oooold and BLACK, I must go back!
After that went to devils – very clear, no haze in the water at all. Flow was up, took a stage and went in the eye, some dork ran a line right down the middle of the cave, between the flow, trying not to get tangled in his line and lay my line in while sticking to line protocol made it one of the most difficult entries into devils I’ve ever done, I burned an entire 1000 psi on my stage just setting the reel. For kicks I moved the stage from being on the bottom to laying it on top of my left side cylinder, the reduction in drag was quite noticeable. Jumped down hill 400 heading for the bats. We were a few hundred feet out when Beck experienced a free flow during a reg switch, at first it was one of those just flip it upside down and hold my thumb over the mouthpiece and it will stop yadda yadda, none of that worked and by the time the cylinder was shut down we lost just enough gas to put us at turn so we exited without further incident, really good dive otherwise.
This next section I've kept to myself and have been debating on talking about it, I will give the report but I will not give the name of the cave and I ask those who know the name keep it under wraps, I know thats a bit selfish of me but I really don't want to see this place get torn up.
On the last day we decided to hit one more cave on the way out, never been in it before but I knew it had some tight spots, I was going to take my home made rig but opted not to at the last minute due to not dialing in the weighting with the can light on.
First thing I noticed was a baby snapping turtle as I was gearing up, maybe 1.5" accross the back of its shell, it was trying to hide from me as I kept trying to point it out to the female.
spring was producing a noticible boil on the surface, I tied in and dumped all of my gas and landed in the sand below, when I looked around I was in a good sized room with all sand and shells around me, made a secondary tie off and headed for what I beleived to be the entrance to the cave, that took me into a second room.
The second room was large, and the floor was covered in small rocks, among those rocks was tons of fossils, turtle shells, bones, teeth, wow wow wow they were all over the place. after poking around I found the sign and the tie in to the main line, I tied in and started into the bedding plane restriction, the flow at this point was noticibley strong and when I "plugged the hole" it took more effort to move forwad than I thought it would. While pulling through I was finding a considerable number of fossiles on my way in. The woman spotted what we later found out to be a 65 million year old croc ancestor tooth! I found a large section of what would have been a good size turtle etc.
This bedding plane popped up into another room, cobalt blue water with mounds of sand along the sides, from there it dropped down to about 80sh feet with a very tight restriction, I thought I was going to have to remove a cylinder to get through, but I was able to turn on my side and bury one in the sand and get through that way. This sand was special, its a very dark in color sand but when you flash your light accross it it giltters like diamonds. The only thing I could figure out was there were tiny pieces of quartz mixed in with the sand.
that pops you out into a section that I guess would be considered an ancient river bed, along the walls you could see the layers rock that the cave cut through, millions of years of layers?
From there it swung back up shallow and through a small tunnel, it had WHITE clay dusted with white sand, I put my 35 watt fish fryer on wide beam and just lit it all up, WOW. toward the back of the cave there were high walls, all along the walls there were fossils sticking out, sand dollars etc. We spent quite a bit of time just looking at the things in the walls.
That was one of the best dives I've ever had in cave country, my only fear is the cave becoming popular then dip sticks destroying it. While i was there it was in good shape, I would guess partly due to it being a sidemount only cave.
I smile because of the experience, then when I think about how popular side mount is becoming I get a little sad. The vast majority of the cave community are good respectful people but all it takes is one reject to ruin it for everyone else, I sure hope that never happens here, its going down as one of my top 3 caves.
First up was peanut to crossover to Olsen and back for a warm up, peanut is probably one of the hardest places to enter using side mount. I opted to hang my tanks in the water then put them on in the water, beck tried to do a giant stride, that did not go so well and needless to say neither one of us attempted a giant stride for the rest of the week, 100% of the time we either hung the cylinders in the water ahead of time or laid them on the bottom when we could reach. Typical boring peanut dive, little to no flow etc, one thing of note though there were a bazillion crayfish in there. The female was having some trouble with the 95’s being cranked to 3600, she was suckin down two 95’s in sidemount much much faster than I was taking down my 108’s.
Burned a day because she managed to get the light head unplugged from the cord by jerking on it (cord too short due to butt mounting) but Joel came through and saved the day (and my vacation) thumbs up to light monkey!
After a few more dives I convinced her to try out 85’s instead, headed over to troy to dial it in, after a few adjustments and some dives things looked good, very good, but then the question of, 85’s, too small right???
Headed over to cow, flow was up a bit and I poked on the way in taking my sweet time, Beck spotted a well casing before not my fault – good catch. I ended up turning the dive on 3rds of my 108’s, before she hit thirds on her 85’s (both side mount with no gas match) go figure. Hey, I’m a man, I breathe. This shoked me a bit as I kept expecting her to turn the dive being on those lil girly tanks, we made it to change up in cow and we were poking on the way in, pulled a 100 minute dive out of that, pretty good!
Next day headed up to Madison, last time I was in Madison it wasn’t looking so pretty, mounds of silt everywhere instead of the pretty sand, this time it was flowing good and I was starting to see more sand and less silt, its coming back! Vis was awesome. Did the Godzilla circuit and while I was in there, I found an EXTRA back up in a hole, I pulled it out so now there are TWO!
Next day headed over to Little River, flow was UP, vis was down. Took beck to the Florida room, we made it all the way through the Florida room to the other side when she turned it on thirds yep, I didn't hit my turn before her on that one :cool2:, I was about 200 psi from turn on my 108’s. On the way out we starting poking around at the top of the chimney, I found the worm hole line and decided to stay out, that’s going to be a solo dive as its very tight and all clay. Between the chimney and exit I found 5 sidemount lines! I jumped down one, I blew it up pretty good setting the reel in so I told beck to hold while it cleared. After it cleared I pushed through about 50 or 60 feet until I came to a room big enough to turn around where I waited for Beck, she never followed so I just looked around then left, I told her to hold and then never told her to follow – oops my fault. Jumped to another line and it pinched down pretty tight, back to the ceiling with belly in the sand/silt and I popped through the other side where the line ended in a huge silt mound, guess it piled up from the flood? On exit I noticed the vis in the basin wasn’t so good anymore (insert whistling emoticon here). After looking at the map I don’t think the first sidemount line I went down was on the map, the line was oooold and BLACK, I must go back!
After that went to devils – very clear, no haze in the water at all. Flow was up, took a stage and went in the eye, some dork ran a line right down the middle of the cave, between the flow, trying not to get tangled in his line and lay my line in while sticking to line protocol made it one of the most difficult entries into devils I’ve ever done, I burned an entire 1000 psi on my stage just setting the reel. For kicks I moved the stage from being on the bottom to laying it on top of my left side cylinder, the reduction in drag was quite noticeable. Jumped down hill 400 heading for the bats. We were a few hundred feet out when Beck experienced a free flow during a reg switch, at first it was one of those just flip it upside down and hold my thumb over the mouthpiece and it will stop yadda yadda, none of that worked and by the time the cylinder was shut down we lost just enough gas to put us at turn so we exited without further incident, really good dive otherwise.
This next section I've kept to myself and have been debating on talking about it, I will give the report but I will not give the name of the cave and I ask those who know the name keep it under wraps, I know thats a bit selfish of me but I really don't want to see this place get torn up.
On the last day we decided to hit one more cave on the way out, never been in it before but I knew it had some tight spots, I was going to take my home made rig but opted not to at the last minute due to not dialing in the weighting with the can light on.
First thing I noticed was a baby snapping turtle as I was gearing up, maybe 1.5" accross the back of its shell, it was trying to hide from me as I kept trying to point it out to the female.
spring was producing a noticible boil on the surface, I tied in and dumped all of my gas and landed in the sand below, when I looked around I was in a good sized room with all sand and shells around me, made a secondary tie off and headed for what I beleived to be the entrance to the cave, that took me into a second room.
The second room was large, and the floor was covered in small rocks, among those rocks was tons of fossils, turtle shells, bones, teeth, wow wow wow they were all over the place. after poking around I found the sign and the tie in to the main line, I tied in and started into the bedding plane restriction, the flow at this point was noticibley strong and when I "plugged the hole" it took more effort to move forwad than I thought it would. While pulling through I was finding a considerable number of fossiles on my way in. The woman spotted what we later found out to be a 65 million year old croc ancestor tooth! I found a large section of what would have been a good size turtle etc.
This bedding plane popped up into another room, cobalt blue water with mounds of sand along the sides, from there it dropped down to about 80sh feet with a very tight restriction, I thought I was going to have to remove a cylinder to get through, but I was able to turn on my side and bury one in the sand and get through that way. This sand was special, its a very dark in color sand but when you flash your light accross it it giltters like diamonds. The only thing I could figure out was there were tiny pieces of quartz mixed in with the sand.
that pops you out into a section that I guess would be considered an ancient river bed, along the walls you could see the layers rock that the cave cut through, millions of years of layers?
From there it swung back up shallow and through a small tunnel, it had WHITE clay dusted with white sand, I put my 35 watt fish fryer on wide beam and just lit it all up, WOW. toward the back of the cave there were high walls, all along the walls there were fossils sticking out, sand dollars etc. We spent quite a bit of time just looking at the things in the walls.
That was one of the best dives I've ever had in cave country, my only fear is the cave becoming popular then dip sticks destroying it. While i was there it was in good shape, I would guess partly due to it being a sidemount only cave.
I smile because of the experience, then when I think about how popular side mount is becoming I get a little sad. The vast majority of the cave community are good respectful people but all it takes is one reject to ruin it for everyone else, I sure hope that never happens here, its going down as one of my top 3 caves.
