Part 1 of 2 (due to post length restrictions)
Two years ago I went to Florida for my first cave diving experience the NSS-CDS Cavern & Intro to Cave courses. I passed those courses, and along with earning my Intro To Cave card, I developed what has become an obsession with the flooded subterranean world. Since then Ive been lucky enough to dive caves in Florida, Mexico and even here in Wisconsin. Last week I went down to Missouri to finish what I had started two years ago. I was going for my Full Cave rating. Tami Thomsen from Diversions was our IANTD instructor, George Heeres was my diving partner in the class and Ethan Brodsky (from the board) and Keith Meverden went along for some diving.
We made the (relatively) short trip to Missouri and arrived in Waynesville. I could barely sleep that night I was nervous about the class, nervous about the new caves, nervous about everything. Our first morning (Thursday) we got up early and jumped in our vehicles to drive to Bennett Springs (http://www.umsl.edu/~joellaws/ozark_caving/springs/Bennettt.htm). Bennett Springs is a gorgeous state park that is also a trout fishery. Bennett Springs was to be the site of the majority of our basic skill drills. We started out our day with land drills. It was mostly a review of what we had one in Intro to Cave. We ran lines all over the park and and did land jumps/gaps/circuits as well as lights out stuff. With that over with it was time to start in-water drills.
Bennett Springs is neat great viz and very high flow. Its a small cave maybe 300 feet long and its about a 45 degree slope from the entrance at 25 feet of depth to the bottom at 95 feet of depth. At the bottom is a restriction and the cave goes for a little while after that. We had the usual assortment of drills out of air, lights out out of air, bc failures, line entanglements (cutting yourself out of the line), lost line and lost buddy. We also had some endurance OOA drills that required us to swim set distances to reach our buddy while out of air, and then swim 10 minutes while sharing air. We did those with lights on and lights out. I especially enjoyed the line entanglement drill. While it had been talked about in my NSS class we had never actually had to cut ourselves out of a line, and it was good to actually do it. To do the entanglement drill my dive partner George had to run a line to the back of the cave (so we could get tangled in it) while he was tying into the restriction at the back I was illuminating his work, while trying to stay in one spot. The flow is so strong at this point in the cave that you have to use your hands to hold onto the gravel bottom (many Missouri caves require the pull and glide propulsion method). I had both of my hands buried in the gravel bottom and the flow was still pushing me back as I left two trenches in the rocks as I was drug out of the cave. It was VERY strong flow, and made our OOA drills difficult trying to maintain perfect trim while passing off a regulator. The gravel in the cave made a neat sound as it was bounced all around the cave floor by the flow.
The next day (Friday) was spent at Roubidoux Springs (http://cavdvr.tripod.com/roubid.htm). Roubidoux is another fairly high flow cave with very neat formations inside of it. The main tunnel runs at a depth from about 40 feet to 60 feet. You then reach a pit that drops down about 80 feet and then you are in the bottom tunnel that just goes and goes. The bottom tunnel contains lots of fossilized coral, and it looks really, really neat. Getting into the cave is somewhat difficult its a wide but very low opening. You pretty much stick your head in, wedge your body against the rocks and start pulling yourself into the cave however you can. Once you pop through, you pull and glide down a little ways and the flow dies out so you can start swimming. You dont really encounter flow again until you reach the bottom of the pit that leads to the deep tunnel. Getting into the deep tunnel takes a good amount of negative buoyancy and a little bit of pulling. We did lots of lights out air shares and line work in this cave. We also did our lost buddy drills in this cave. Since we had gotten a lot of our drills taken care of at Bennett the previous day, we focused mainly on diving and having surprise drills pulled on us. Tami was constantly hovering near us, ready to tell us that we were out of air, or a reg or inflator was freeflowing or any other problem. She kept us on our toes! We did two dives in Roubidoux that day.
We spent Saturday morning at Roubidoux as well, but the visibility was TERRIBLE. We were the only team that actually completed a dive in the system. We spent time exploring the deep tunnel again. Because of this we brought our deco gas with us on this dive and tied it into the mainline at our pickup depth. More drills ensued throughout the dive valves, air shares, lights, etc, etc. On the way out we picked up our deco bottles and sat through our decompression. I love the sounds the water makes inside of a cave when you are just sitting very relaxing and soothing.
Because of the bad viz, we decided to drive to where Keith & Ethan had been diving Boiling Springs on the Big Piney (http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~brodskye/trips/missouri_jan03/). We had to drive to Cannonball Cave that night, and they were in the direction we had to go. We packed up and met up with them at the edge of the river they were at. They were done diving for the day and offered to let us try out sidemount diving. George and I went for it and soon they were strapping us into their custom rigs. Sidemount diving is EXTREMELY comfortable Im already going through old gear in my basement to see how I can set myself up with this it is really cool. The cave we were going to dive was sidemount only very low but wide the entrance is only about two feet high, and the cave doesnt get more than a couple of feet high in most places. But it is a BEAUTIFUL cave awesome walls, neat contrasts of light and dark rock and some really funky looking formations. We made our first dive and got back to the deep pit several hundred feet back before turning our dive. On the next dive we went to the pit and dropped down to a depth of about 50 feet. There we spent several minutes just hovering in the pit in awe the bottom was 120 feet below us, the ceiling was about 30 feet above us..the walls of the pit were very white and our HID lights just made the whole thing just glow. We hovered and stared at all the bass and panfish that were hiding in the nooks and crannies of the tube. We turned our dive and exited the cave with huge grins on our faces. It was great to be able to just relax and dive for the sake of diving after all of the pressure of class the past several days it felt like our batteries had been recharged.
Two years ago I went to Florida for my first cave diving experience the NSS-CDS Cavern & Intro to Cave courses. I passed those courses, and along with earning my Intro To Cave card, I developed what has become an obsession with the flooded subterranean world. Since then Ive been lucky enough to dive caves in Florida, Mexico and even here in Wisconsin. Last week I went down to Missouri to finish what I had started two years ago. I was going for my Full Cave rating. Tami Thomsen from Diversions was our IANTD instructor, George Heeres was my diving partner in the class and Ethan Brodsky (from the board) and Keith Meverden went along for some diving.
We made the (relatively) short trip to Missouri and arrived in Waynesville. I could barely sleep that night I was nervous about the class, nervous about the new caves, nervous about everything. Our first morning (Thursday) we got up early and jumped in our vehicles to drive to Bennett Springs (http://www.umsl.edu/~joellaws/ozark_caving/springs/Bennettt.htm). Bennett Springs is a gorgeous state park that is also a trout fishery. Bennett Springs was to be the site of the majority of our basic skill drills. We started out our day with land drills. It was mostly a review of what we had one in Intro to Cave. We ran lines all over the park and and did land jumps/gaps/circuits as well as lights out stuff. With that over with it was time to start in-water drills.
Bennett Springs is neat great viz and very high flow. Its a small cave maybe 300 feet long and its about a 45 degree slope from the entrance at 25 feet of depth to the bottom at 95 feet of depth. At the bottom is a restriction and the cave goes for a little while after that. We had the usual assortment of drills out of air, lights out out of air, bc failures, line entanglements (cutting yourself out of the line), lost line and lost buddy. We also had some endurance OOA drills that required us to swim set distances to reach our buddy while out of air, and then swim 10 minutes while sharing air. We did those with lights on and lights out. I especially enjoyed the line entanglement drill. While it had been talked about in my NSS class we had never actually had to cut ourselves out of a line, and it was good to actually do it. To do the entanglement drill my dive partner George had to run a line to the back of the cave (so we could get tangled in it) while he was tying into the restriction at the back I was illuminating his work, while trying to stay in one spot. The flow is so strong at this point in the cave that you have to use your hands to hold onto the gravel bottom (many Missouri caves require the pull and glide propulsion method). I had both of my hands buried in the gravel bottom and the flow was still pushing me back as I left two trenches in the rocks as I was drug out of the cave. It was VERY strong flow, and made our OOA drills difficult trying to maintain perfect trim while passing off a regulator. The gravel in the cave made a neat sound as it was bounced all around the cave floor by the flow.
The next day (Friday) was spent at Roubidoux Springs (http://cavdvr.tripod.com/roubid.htm). Roubidoux is another fairly high flow cave with very neat formations inside of it. The main tunnel runs at a depth from about 40 feet to 60 feet. You then reach a pit that drops down about 80 feet and then you are in the bottom tunnel that just goes and goes. The bottom tunnel contains lots of fossilized coral, and it looks really, really neat. Getting into the cave is somewhat difficult its a wide but very low opening. You pretty much stick your head in, wedge your body against the rocks and start pulling yourself into the cave however you can. Once you pop through, you pull and glide down a little ways and the flow dies out so you can start swimming. You dont really encounter flow again until you reach the bottom of the pit that leads to the deep tunnel. Getting into the deep tunnel takes a good amount of negative buoyancy and a little bit of pulling. We did lots of lights out air shares and line work in this cave. We also did our lost buddy drills in this cave. Since we had gotten a lot of our drills taken care of at Bennett the previous day, we focused mainly on diving and having surprise drills pulled on us. Tami was constantly hovering near us, ready to tell us that we were out of air, or a reg or inflator was freeflowing or any other problem. She kept us on our toes! We did two dives in Roubidoux that day.
We spent Saturday morning at Roubidoux as well, but the visibility was TERRIBLE. We were the only team that actually completed a dive in the system. We spent time exploring the deep tunnel again. Because of this we brought our deco gas with us on this dive and tied it into the mainline at our pickup depth. More drills ensued throughout the dive valves, air shares, lights, etc, etc. On the way out we picked up our deco bottles and sat through our decompression. I love the sounds the water makes inside of a cave when you are just sitting very relaxing and soothing.
Because of the bad viz, we decided to drive to where Keith & Ethan had been diving Boiling Springs on the Big Piney (http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~brodskye/trips/missouri_jan03/). We had to drive to Cannonball Cave that night, and they were in the direction we had to go. We packed up and met up with them at the edge of the river they were at. They were done diving for the day and offered to let us try out sidemount diving. George and I went for it and soon they were strapping us into their custom rigs. Sidemount diving is EXTREMELY comfortable Im already going through old gear in my basement to see how I can set myself up with this it is really cool. The cave we were going to dive was sidemount only very low but wide the entrance is only about two feet high, and the cave doesnt get more than a couple of feet high in most places. But it is a BEAUTIFUL cave awesome walls, neat contrasts of light and dark rock and some really funky looking formations. We made our first dive and got back to the deep pit several hundred feet back before turning our dive. On the next dive we went to the pit and dropped down to a depth of about 50 feet. There we spent several minutes just hovering in the pit in awe the bottom was 120 feet below us, the ceiling was about 30 feet above us..the walls of the pit were very white and our HID lights just made the whole thing just glow. We hovered and stared at all the bass and panfish that were hiding in the nooks and crannies of the tube. We turned our dive and exited the cave with huge grins on our faces. It was great to be able to just relax and dive for the sake of diving after all of the pressure of class the past several days it felt like our batteries had been recharged.