Florida Cave & Wreck Trip Report July 2009

[YellowfinKunkfish]

Wow! Those are awesome pictures! I'm loving these reports!


Thanks,
Rhonda

 

[Zinc]

After two days of camping and diving at Ginnie Springs we were ready for a change and more importantly, air conditioning and a few creature comforts. We loaded up the trailer and headed north to Luraville, where we had a cabin reserved at Dive Outpost, an outfit catering to cave divers complete with air fill station, dive shop, kitchen, and common areas with walls adorned with the local cave maps all for a very reasonable price. Our room had three beds, bathroom, tv/dvd setup, and a wi-fi internet connection that was a welcome break in the middle of our journey. To top it off, Dive Outpost is 1 ½ miles from Peacock Springs State Park where we would make our next cave dive.

 

[Zinc]

Wednesday morning we woke up refreshed and ready for a good days diving. We set up our rigs and loaded them in the pickup truck, now free from the scuba trailer that we parked outside our cabin. We headed down the road to Peacock Springs State Park and to the Orange Grove sink entrance to the cave system. We arrived finding an uninhabited park with wooded benches made especially for setting up dive gear, pretty cool. After studying the cave map, we made a plan to take the upper tunnel towards Challenge sink.

We entered the sink which had an algae bloom clouding up the top 30 feet of visibility. There were large trees that had fallen into the sink making the underwater scene very interesting to say the least. Because of the poor visibility, I tied of the reel just beneath the stairs and headed down through the murky water in search of the cave entrance. Once we dropped beneath 30 feet, the visibility opened up to 60+ feet or more and it didn’t take long to find a very large cavern opening up beneath us. I diligently searched for the main guideline to tie off on, but all I could find was more cave opening up deeper beneath us. I continued down the only passage I could see until we reached 92 feet, too deep for the tunnel we were seeking. Even though the passage continued on, we turned the dive, reeled up to where we staged our deco bottles, left the reel, and headed to the surface to evaluate our situation.

Orange Grove has two cave passages: the upper tunnel that we were seeking was around 60 foot depth, versus the lower tunnel which drops quickly down to depths eventually reaching 140 feet. The latter was obviously the passage I had followed. We took a look at the map, and decided to give it another go, this time heading to the right of where we had previously searched. We headed back, past our staged bottles, and I reeled through the branching tree limbs till a passage opened up, sloping upwards right at 60 feet as expected. We found the main line another 100 feet in, tied off, and began heading upstream this time with very little flow.

The passages were fairly wide, averaging 10 to 20 feet across in the beginning and seemed fairly straight forward, moving gradually upwards in depth much of the way. We continued on through the tunnels for quite some time, before it made a radical change in orientation, making a quick drop and downward turn, slightly back on itself so that we had to pay special attention to where the mainline actually went. The main direction however didn’t really change all that much. We’d originally hoped to make it to Challenge sink, but after spending a lot of gas looking for the entrance, our thirds came sooner than the sink, so we turned the dive at 1,300 feet penetration to make the long swim back out, this time with very little flow to assist us. While the dive and tunnels were intriguing, both K-valve and I found them to be a bit more effort with less immediate variation than other caves we’ve been in. I still want to go back and do it again, and can't help but dream of how cool it'd be to do it with a scooter!

 

[Zinc]

Thursday we headed south to Branford, then a bit north to Little River, a county park with no entry fee where the cave entrance is a small cavern beneath where all the swimmers play. It was a beautiful day and we passed two cave divers coming out in the parking lot, presumably from Australia. The water was a premium clear blue and was no problem dropping into the cavern to the main line. From there the cave tunnel does a large corkscrew down under itself which was neat.

We headed upstream about 400 feet, and then made a jump to the left to the Mud Tunnel. This passage, as the name suggests, had a very muddy bottom with many ripples formed from the flow passing through. We reached the end of this line and jumped back over to the main line. We continued on, following the passage on through the Serpentine Tunnel, which is as curvy as it sounds. Past this we hung a left into the Florida Room, a large passage until we reached thirds, approximately 1,000 feet in penetration from the entrance. We really took our time on the exit allowing the flow to gently push us back, past the mud tunnel, picked up our jump reel, then up through the corkscrew to the cavern and our awaiting deco bottles.

After a few minutes decompression on O2, we surfaced from the spring to a curious group of swimmers and sunbathers. We hiked our gear back to the truck, and while discussing our next dive and de-kitting our gear, BOOM! A large explosive sound erupted right next to me that blew a set of doubles over across the bed of the truck. The burst disk had done its job. One of our second sets of doubles, already topped to slightly above 3,700 psi had warmed in the hot sun to around 4,000 psi and blew. There were no shady spots to park in, but in hind sight we’d have done better to chain them to a tree while diving. Anyhow, Little River is a rockin’ cave and I can’t wait to dive it again!

 

[Crazyduck]

Great trip reports on Florida cave diving.
Thanks for thinking of us all and regular updates.
Continue with the excitement and fun.

Andrew

 

[FIXXERVI6]

..... We hiked our gear back to the truck, and while discussing our next dive and de-kitting our gear, BOOM! A large explosive sound erupted right next to me that blew a set of doubles over across the bed of the truck. The burst disk had done its job.

Next time, just drop in 2 copper disks instead of one and your good

 

[Zinc]

Next time, just drop in 2 copy disks instead of one and your good

That's exactly what we did next at Cave Excursions!

 

[ianr33]

What about some details on the USS Oriskany?

Its just a pile of rust on the bottom of the Ocean.

Now back to the real diving.

 

[Zinc]

After the burst dic blew our second dive at Little River, we headed back to Cave Excursions to replace them with double discs and re-fill the tanks with air. Because it was getting late in the day, we decieded to head back to Peacock Springs State Park, this time to dive the Peacock I entrance. While different in many ways from Orange Grove, Peacock I also has two different entrances, both a shallow upper, and deeper, lower tunnel. We opted to take the shallow tunnel and head towards the crossover, where we planned to make a jump and head over to Olsen sink.

We found the main line just inside the entrace on the left, dropped our deco bottles and followd the line awhile at 35 feet, until we reached a breakdown pile that dropped to 65 feet. From here the tunnel seemed to progress slightly upwards, with some pretty good size rooms and passages along the way. We were expecting to find the crossover jump around 900 feet in, but somehow missed it and continued on up towards the Peanut restriction. We turned the dive at 1,600 feet in, and K-valve snapped some pictures on the way out.

After exiting the beautiful blue green cavern, I noticed my ears were feelling clogged as we hiked along the path back to the truck. I had noticed earlier in the week signs of a pending ear infection, and think that clearing my ears repetitively through the multi-level tunnels aggrivated it. Rather than push it, I decided it best to take the next day off from diving, rather than risk missing the upcoming Oriskany dive Saturday. It turned out to be a good decision, both for my ear and for K-valve and I as we needed to rest up and get things packed back up to hit the road.

 

[FIXXERVI6]

Its just a pile of rust on the bottom of the Ocean.

Now back to the real diving.

Yep, you sink a pile of junk in the water and all of a sudden its suppose to be cool