SuPrBuGmAn
Contributor
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.
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.
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.
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.