Chipola 5-29-10 and Wakulla stuff on 5-31-10 Dive Reports

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SuPrBuGmAn

Contributor
Messages
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Location
Tallahassee, FL
# of dives
500 - 999
5-29-10 on the Chipola

Saturday morning started off like just about any other cave diving weekend. I headed out before sunrise, the car already loaded up, lots of tanks, a dive yacht strapped ontop, and grand plans for the day. The real kicker was that this was a trip closing on two years in the making. Kevin Carlisle and I had plans to dive a certain Chipola River cave for quite some time, but every time, something came up. The rivers were too high, probably blowing the cave out, schedules didn't mesh, or just too damned cold(as in earlier this winter). Today was looking great though, the weather was cooperating and the river levels were favorable. It was Memorial Day weekend, so I figured it'd be prudent to get to Edds early for some fills and get started early. I arrived 5-10 minutes after 8AM, and apparently people started showing up at Cave Adventurers 20 minutes before opening, or more! D'Oh. So much for beating the holiday rush. Although I was relieved to have beaten the science diver program, about 20 strong, who cruised in a few minutes after me. Ucfdiver and Major Restriction were also there, they'd be tagging along with us to the spring and I'd show them a little about the entries there as well as a little about what to expect as far as layout, restrictions, and depths. They headed out to rent a canoe for the trip before they rented out(which seemed prudent, but ended up being unneccessary - suprisingly). After some fills, I made it out and over to the boat launch just a bit after 9AM. It didn't take long for Kevin and I to set the Miss Jellyfish up and load her full of gear.

The water levels were low and we had to run over a few trees that spanned across the river. No big issues though, we checked out a couple smaller springs before heading down the shallow spring run up to our spring group. Visibility looked excellent, but damn, the mosquitos were out.

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Kevin and I'd dive as a team, while ucfdiver and Major Restriction dived as a team. There's two basins here and we'd be starting in the first basin, then exit into the OW of the second basin via one of the karst windows, then I'd run a primary line(there's continuous line from the first basin and through the second and into a cave, but it traverses a SM restriction thats best not attempted in BM) from OW there into a BM friendly entrance, bypassing a SM restriction just before the cave drops into some very large passage. We dropped O2 at the first basin a everything went as planned, Kevin and I dropped into the vast cave system after some restrictive beginning passage. The flow let up as it was no longer bottlenecked. Visibility was great and we headed into the depths. The cave trended deeper and stayed wide, while mostly lowish, in great bedding planes with the occassional breakdown area. We hit a 4 way and continued forward, then a T and continued forward again. I cookied the exit line on each navigational decision. The bottom is deep silt and there are fissure cracks in the ceilings to look up. Cave biology was pretty abundant, blind crayfish, different isopods, and the occassional catfish. Eventually, I got the turnaround from Kevin, and we start our exit. The flow at our backs expedite our exit and its doesn't take long until we're at half our max depth(119') and we do a deep stop before negotiating the tighter begining of the cave. This time we took the SM restriction(Kevin and I both diving in SM configurations), which shortened our exit even more. Eventually we reached OW again, this time at the first basin. After 4 minutes on O2 deco'ing out, we ascended with a 55 minute runtime. It was a great dive, but it cost me a bolt snap and double ender somewhere along the way :/

The trip back on the Chipola was easy, we heard thunder, and the skies clouded up, but we never hit any rain. Filled back up with gas at Edds and Kevin and I met up with Ben M and GLENFWB at whatever they're calling the old IceHouse restraunt nowadays. I had a great burger and it was fun to hear about Ben and Glen's dive. Good times with great buddies, but it was time to go. We all headed our seperate ways, but I'd get some more diving in over the weekend. I even got to scope some new sites out.
 
5-30-10

On Sunday, TheAwesomeFish and I took her kayak(two seater) out to a springfed river near Tallahassee. Old Yeller(the kayak) was loaded up in no time, course, its easy when your not bringing dive gear. We did bring masks, fins, lunch, and the camera. We ended up visiting 7 different springs, which wasn't even half of the known springs in the immediate area. Most of them were really small, but very pristine, tranquil, and beautiful. We hopped in and swam around a few of them, looking to see if they'd be candidates for future dives and some were! There was alot of wildlife out and about as well, all sorts of birds, gators, snakes, crawfish, fish, etc. The common northflorida redneck was probably the most abundant though - complete with airboats...

Couple pics...

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The yellow flies were horrible and the mosquitos were everywhere. Horseflies were just icing on the cake. Any manner of stinging flying insectoid could be found out there, and biting into me.

Before the day was over, we took MsAwesome's Rav 4 to check on one more sinkhole in the area. It was clear too.
 
Great read Mat! It was good seeing you for lunch. I want to get back to that Chipola cave again soon. Next time we dive it I won't have to ask you questions on my slate??:D Looks like some nice springs. You better get your bug spray in your dive bag!
 
5-31-10 in Wakulla County

I met up with Ben M at the Hooters in Tallahasse on Memorial Day proper. Conditions in the area continued to improve, so we were hoping to get a good dive in somewhere or another. We decided against our initial site, and headed out to an access point further downstream of the same system, which the WCDC had arranged. The Leon Sinks/Wakulla Springs Cave system is the longest submerged cave system in the United States, it had been the deepest in the past, but several other sites in florida(and the deepest in texas) have taken that 'honor' now. So after parking at the back of some private lands(one of the benefits of joining the Wakulla County Dive Club) our walk to the sink we'd access was only about 100 yards, rather than a mile from the nearest public access. Ben and I were both very happy to find clear waters, just as some hikers had told us earlier in the day at another location.

A couple sinks downstream of our entry sink

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This is actually where we entered

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We set out a dive plan where we'd be heading upstream. Since we were starting off at a sink upstream of our typical entry, we'd have a head start on alot of the system I had already seen, enabling us to see some new passage along the way. This would all be new cave for Ben M, so we'd hopefully both be seeing some new cave today. While our entry sink was much closer, it is a bit difficult to get in and out of. There's a bit of a step to the water and then you get to gear up in thick vegatation and deep, soft mud. Luckily there flow through the sinkhole was swift enough to take our silt downstream without hampering our startup visibility much. After a few trips with gear, agonizing considering the rising heat and the raging amount of insects attacking us, we were in the water and ready to go. We dropped O2 at the upstream cavern and started our swim. Visibility was around 50', green, and very nice. The walls in this cave are black and will suck the light out of our primaries right up. We stayed close, and after a short hiccup related to an empty argon bottle, we were on our way. No issues followed and the next sink(which is offset) up was barely visible as a gloomy silouette against a large silt dune blocking its direct sight, but we continued upstream. Next we swam through a sink thats labelled as a cave breach, which in a sense is just a very short river. After crossing the sink, we went into another upstream passage and continued forward, passing a line that backs into yet another small sink on the right, then we passed a multi-windowned offset sink on the left. At this point, our max depth was only something like 50' and averaged much less, but upstream from here, the cave slowly trended deeper until we were in the 90-105' range where it seemed to level off a bit. We found a few more lines and a break down that likely indicated another small sink nearby. We crossed a "T" that I cookied, that branched off to another section of cave and more sinks, but we continued upstream. The cave changed from dark to lighter, then large scalloped cave, then extremely scraggly honeycomb cave that was much whiter(and very beautiful), then more bore hole with a carved out ledge on both sides. Eventually we crossed over a large silt mound than a set of deep pits that dropped beyond our light beams. Eventually we can across a parrallel line that crossed ours, so I cookied ours to avoid confusion, and we ascended up some breakdown. At the top of the breakdown we find some surface debri and a huge tree limb, we're likely right under another sink. There's a junction of line below us with lines in several directions, but they aren't really tied into each other, which makes for some confusion - especially if we have to exit in zero visibility. One of the lines has an arrow pointing up, with the line ascending almost straight up, which leads more credibility to us being under another sinkhole. The tangle of lines is enough for me to call the dive though, we turn and make a slightly quicker trip out. Took 50 minutes to get in and about 40 to get out with some flow to our backs. I managed to get a little deco obligation, which was taken care of mostly in OW at our entry sinks basin. We had the option of diving downstream for a bit, but decided against it after already accruing some decompression, so we cleaned up and exitted the water. Had a max depth of 105' for a dive lasting 95 minutes. Awesome dive and I got to see several hundred feet of new to me cave.

It was clouding up again, so we did the best we could to get all our gear out, pay our landowner for the close entry, and head out to find some food. We managed to get into El Jalisco before the bottom dropped out of the sky. It poured rain and the lightning rang out for quite some time. We had an over-the-top crazy waiter to laugh at, some good mexican grub, and some after dive beerskies to keep our mind off it though. It was a great day, although I honestly think any more bug bites would have started seriously damaging my psyche!

I'm very much looking forward to my next weekend of diving :) bugs are not!
 
Great reports Mat. That was a great trip and a must do again. The Chipola is beautiful up that way, maybe next time we will catch a veiw of a gator.
 
El Jalisco crazy waiter??? That brings back memories....He wasn't singing to you and doing pelvic thrusts was he?? :rofl3:

Different El Jalisco and different waiter! No pelvic thrusts in my direction, or even any Tequila singing mariachis!

Great reports Mat. That was a great trip and a must do again. The Chipola is beautiful up that way, maybe next time we will catch a veiw of a gator.

I think if I didn't have the camera out and ready, we would have spotted a gaggle of gators.

:D
 
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