SuPrBuGmAn
Contributor
Jefferson Co Springs on 9-5-10
After way too long of no fun cave dives, the stars alined, and I was able to finally make some time for the caves and found myself some buddies to go along with it. I got a lazy start Saturday and it was actually kinda brisk outside, felt great! I took the bike out and rode about 10 miles through the woods in Daphne and Spanish Fort. After a quick lunch I headed out to Cave Adventurers for some gas. Saw a couple people I hadn't seen in quite some time, which is always great. Then I headed to St. Marks to meet up with Jmaddox. He had cooked up some awesome BBQ chicken, which was devoured before I crashed.
Saturday morning, Jmaddox and I loaded up in the wagon and headed over to a boat launch to meet up with cwick, who had taken his boat along. The three of us piled three sets of gear onboard and we made our way out onto a crystal clear springfed river. The river has a substantial amount of springs feeding into it and we'd be looking into a few new ones today. We headed upstream after hearing that it may have been scouted out successfully before?
We headed pretty much to the most upstream reaches of the river, aside from a small tannic tributary, which wasn't flowing enough to overcome the springwater on this particular trip. I dropped in with a mask and fins and found a nice limestone ledge with overhang so I came back up and started gearing up. Cwick was having some sinus congestion so opted out of diving and helped us with the gear. Jmaddox hopped in and started gearing up as well. Once we hit the water, we saw alot of breakdown and started searching through it. There may be some nomount leads here, but it'd be a difficult push considering the amount of silt and the terrible LACK of flow to clear any of it out. We mucked up the visibility beyond usefull quickly and gave up the search, but managed to squeeze down to 31' for the 6 minutes we were underwater. No problem, we have more sites to check.
Just over 30 minutes later, we were at another site. This one showed some strong boils over several areas of a long fissure crack that sprawled out a hundred feet or better. We waited for an airboat to load up at the boat launch across the river before we hit the water. The water was super clear and unlike the last spring, there were many very apparent spring vents and silt wasn't an issue at all. None of the vents were passable as is, but possibly with some excavation they could be pushed, although it didn't look very promising even then. We just worked our way down the vent, checking every available opening, but kept getting shot down so we called it after only hitting 24' for 11 minutes. When I was reeling up the primary, the knob fell off and into the abyss. I had probably 300 trouble free dives out of my Salvo reel, so I guess it was do for an issue - it'll be rectified quickly.
Less than 30 minutes after the 2nd site, we hit up a spring further downstream, which is located on an alcove of the river, and definately has some cave. I had been there before, but hadn't been able to do much exploring. The spring has two vents that connect about 15' down that you can actually swim through against a heavy flow. Below that you hit a restriction, that has a worse reputation than it really is... but still requires a tight SM squeeze. It drops into a large dome room with a breakdown pile and a few lines shoot off some sizable, but short passages on either side the breakdown. Its so refreshing breaking into cave that doesn't have any trace of past divers, aside from a tattered old line(and some new line too). No fin marks, busted rocks, molested clay banks, just straight up purty cave... AND a ton of life, crawfish and a tremendous amount of other troglobites. The only line we didn't bottom out was a line entering a crack heading deeper, that was tight, low flow and apparently pushing out some darker water - interesting. We hit 78' for a dive lasting 41 minutes. Excellent dive, beautiful cave despite being seemingly short.
It would take us nearly an hour later before our next dive. Jmaddox and Cwick joked as we passed over the vent, they thought it was too small. I had kayaked over it a month or more earlier with TheAwesomeFish and DogHouseDiver(non-diving trip) and thought it was nomountable. Two weekends ago, another team of divers came out and did infact dive it, and dropped line in it, since it didn't have any - D'Oh! The spring has a name, but its pretty lame... Until the original explorer(from two weekends previous) comes up with something better, I'm just going to call it Garrett's Poopshoot(call it a tribute).
We tried tying up just east of the vent, I sunk down to my waist in mud, putting my head just above water... Jmaddox damned near took a leak on a moccassin... Hrrm... So we tied the boat off on the northside, with a nice big log for me to gear up on. I took a single bottle down first to get a feel for what I was getting into - the entrance was the nastiest part, so I geared up fully and headed back in. Took no time to find the EOL, which was exactly the way it was described to me. Tied off to a nonpassable restriction with obviously going cave beyond it - D'oh. The line was laid well and out of the way. The cave itself was black, but pretty nice. I found another water source about halfway down off to one side that may prove to be a bypass to the cave around the restriction? Dunno, worth another look at a later date, but I passed the info to the original explorer incase he wants first dibs on it. I hit 50' and this entire piece of narrative took place in a measly 8 minutes. It was a rather pretty 8 minutes, and a new to me spot, so even better.
The three of us headed back to the boat launch, packed up the gear, the boat, and headed over to Jmaddox's for some BBQ pork butt, BBQ ribs with meat falling off the bone, homemade mac-n-cheese, and grilled corn. That coupled with a few brewskies and great company was the perfect ending to an awesome day out on the water(and below).
A Leon County Sink 9-6-10
Jmaddox had been wanting to check out a sink uptown for quite awhile now and finally our schedules lined up with plenty of free time to check everything out. A stop at Gregg Stanton's for some gas(he was swamped, being a holiday) and we headed off to Tallahassee to find our sinkhole. It was right where I had left it last time I had been there. The basin was green and very milky, but no worries. This particular site has a reputation for staying clear(in the cave). So we made a couple trips getting tanks to the water, which is easier typed than done... its a hellova depression. Then suited up and hit the water ourselves. I tied off a primary and slipped into the cavern and then the entrance restriction. Thats pretty much the tightest part of the cave, once your through the beginning its pretty smooth sailing. We headed to EOL then came back, and checked out a few jumps before thumbing the dive. Its a beautiful cave with lots of color variations and chunky rock formations in the shallower portions. When it drops deep(relatively, all in all, this is very shallow cave), it gets pure white, so there's an entire different feel to it. The water is warm too, 71F, which is very uncommon for this part of the state - but I'm happy about it. We had a great dive, 62' max depth with a divetime of 62 minutes as well. It took us awhile to get out of the water, its a steep climb up, and you don't really want to leave the cave, its just that good.
We checked out a few other sinks in the area, but they all looked tannic from the surface. Had some more BBQ at Jmaddox's before parting ways. Had a great time, but it was a busy weekend and I was starting to get pretty exhausted so figured it was time to get on the road. Very much looking forward to more diving in the area though, sounds like everyone else is too - so I don't think it'll be long
After way too long of no fun cave dives, the stars alined, and I was able to finally make some time for the caves and found myself some buddies to go along with it. I got a lazy start Saturday and it was actually kinda brisk outside, felt great! I took the bike out and rode about 10 miles through the woods in Daphne and Spanish Fort. After a quick lunch I headed out to Cave Adventurers for some gas. Saw a couple people I hadn't seen in quite some time, which is always great. Then I headed to St. Marks to meet up with Jmaddox. He had cooked up some awesome BBQ chicken, which was devoured before I crashed.
Saturday morning, Jmaddox and I loaded up in the wagon and headed over to a boat launch to meet up with cwick, who had taken his boat along. The three of us piled three sets of gear onboard and we made our way out onto a crystal clear springfed river. The river has a substantial amount of springs feeding into it and we'd be looking into a few new ones today. We headed upstream after hearing that it may have been scouted out successfully before?
We headed pretty much to the most upstream reaches of the river, aside from a small tannic tributary, which wasn't flowing enough to overcome the springwater on this particular trip. I dropped in with a mask and fins and found a nice limestone ledge with overhang so I came back up and started gearing up. Cwick was having some sinus congestion so opted out of diving and helped us with the gear. Jmaddox hopped in and started gearing up as well. Once we hit the water, we saw alot of breakdown and started searching through it. There may be some nomount leads here, but it'd be a difficult push considering the amount of silt and the terrible LACK of flow to clear any of it out. We mucked up the visibility beyond usefull quickly and gave up the search, but managed to squeeze down to 31' for the 6 minutes we were underwater. No problem, we have more sites to check.
Just over 30 minutes later, we were at another site. This one showed some strong boils over several areas of a long fissure crack that sprawled out a hundred feet or better. We waited for an airboat to load up at the boat launch across the river before we hit the water. The water was super clear and unlike the last spring, there were many very apparent spring vents and silt wasn't an issue at all. None of the vents were passable as is, but possibly with some excavation they could be pushed, although it didn't look very promising even then. We just worked our way down the vent, checking every available opening, but kept getting shot down so we called it after only hitting 24' for 11 minutes. When I was reeling up the primary, the knob fell off and into the abyss. I had probably 300 trouble free dives out of my Salvo reel, so I guess it was do for an issue - it'll be rectified quickly.
Less than 30 minutes after the 2nd site, we hit up a spring further downstream, which is located on an alcove of the river, and definately has some cave. I had been there before, but hadn't been able to do much exploring. The spring has two vents that connect about 15' down that you can actually swim through against a heavy flow. Below that you hit a restriction, that has a worse reputation than it really is... but still requires a tight SM squeeze. It drops into a large dome room with a breakdown pile and a few lines shoot off some sizable, but short passages on either side the breakdown. Its so refreshing breaking into cave that doesn't have any trace of past divers, aside from a tattered old line(and some new line too). No fin marks, busted rocks, molested clay banks, just straight up purty cave... AND a ton of life, crawfish and a tremendous amount of other troglobites. The only line we didn't bottom out was a line entering a crack heading deeper, that was tight, low flow and apparently pushing out some darker water - interesting. We hit 78' for a dive lasting 41 minutes. Excellent dive, beautiful cave despite being seemingly short.
It would take us nearly an hour later before our next dive. Jmaddox and Cwick joked as we passed over the vent, they thought it was too small. I had kayaked over it a month or more earlier with TheAwesomeFish and DogHouseDiver(non-diving trip) and thought it was nomountable. Two weekends ago, another team of divers came out and did infact dive it, and dropped line in it, since it didn't have any - D'Oh! The spring has a name, but its pretty lame... Until the original explorer(from two weekends previous) comes up with something better, I'm just going to call it Garrett's Poopshoot(call it a tribute).
We tried tying up just east of the vent, I sunk down to my waist in mud, putting my head just above water... Jmaddox damned near took a leak on a moccassin... Hrrm... So we tied the boat off on the northside, with a nice big log for me to gear up on. I took a single bottle down first to get a feel for what I was getting into - the entrance was the nastiest part, so I geared up fully and headed back in. Took no time to find the EOL, which was exactly the way it was described to me. Tied off to a nonpassable restriction with obviously going cave beyond it - D'oh. The line was laid well and out of the way. The cave itself was black, but pretty nice. I found another water source about halfway down off to one side that may prove to be a bypass to the cave around the restriction? Dunno, worth another look at a later date, but I passed the info to the original explorer incase he wants first dibs on it. I hit 50' and this entire piece of narrative took place in a measly 8 minutes. It was a rather pretty 8 minutes, and a new to me spot, so even better. The three of us headed back to the boat launch, packed up the gear, the boat, and headed over to Jmaddox's for some BBQ pork butt, BBQ ribs with meat falling off the bone, homemade mac-n-cheese, and grilled corn. That coupled with a few brewskies and great company was the perfect ending to an awesome day out on the water(and below).
A Leon County Sink 9-6-10
Jmaddox had been wanting to check out a sink uptown for quite awhile now and finally our schedules lined up with plenty of free time to check everything out. A stop at Gregg Stanton's for some gas(he was swamped, being a holiday) and we headed off to Tallahassee to find our sinkhole. It was right where I had left it last time I had been there. The basin was green and very milky, but no worries. This particular site has a reputation for staying clear(in the cave). So we made a couple trips getting tanks to the water, which is easier typed than done... its a hellova depression. Then suited up and hit the water ourselves. I tied off a primary and slipped into the cavern and then the entrance restriction. Thats pretty much the tightest part of the cave, once your through the beginning its pretty smooth sailing. We headed to EOL then came back, and checked out a few jumps before thumbing the dive. Its a beautiful cave with lots of color variations and chunky rock formations in the shallower portions. When it drops deep(relatively, all in all, this is very shallow cave), it gets pure white, so there's an entire different feel to it. The water is warm too, 71F, which is very uncommon for this part of the state - but I'm happy about it. We had a great dive, 62' max depth with a divetime of 62 minutes as well. It took us awhile to get out of the water, its a steep climb up, and you don't really want to leave the cave, its just that good.
We checked out a few other sinks in the area, but they all looked tannic from the surface. Had some more BBQ at Jmaddox's before parting ways. Had a great time, but it was a busy weekend and I was starting to get pretty exhausted so figured it was time to get on the road. Very much looking forward to more diving in the area though, sounds like everyone else is too - so I don't think it'll be long
