SuPrBuGmAn
Contributor
Its been a little while since I had seen the sun come up over a Florida interstate, but that all changed yesterday when it started shining in my eyes as I crossed a glassy Pensacola Bay. I can't say this all that often, but I was EARLY arriving at GlenFWB's house a little before our 7AM meet time. We made quick work of loading up the hoards of stuff that Glen had brought around for this day trip, not to say that I didn't appreciate atleast the icechest full of goodies and the camera that promised some underwater photos and video. The Jetta loaded down now, with two sets of cave gear, an awefull lot of camera gear(I had two dSLRs and a load of lenses with me), lots of other goodies... oh and an entire boat, we headed East through Destin and north east from there. It really wasn't too long until we had reached a little, private boat launch along a stretch of waterway we'd be diving along.
Unloading the car went well, it was still early and cool at this point. We could enjoy the sweltering heat later, while packing back up, but hopefully we'd be chilled from a set of dives in the area springs to offset that heat. The boat went up rather quickly as too. After filling the interior of the Miss Jellyfish with gear, far past her intended capacity, we made headway upstream, in search of holes in the ground. Surely there are tons of them. The first stop was at a site that I had been to several times before and it makes for a great cave dive, but its quite advanced. We'd be sticking to the beginning of the system so I could show Glen some fossils embedded in the wall here. The boat had a considerable amount of water in it by the time we arrived. A quick check on the bottom and I found one of the seams to the bottom had come free and will need to be repaired after the trip. Its an inflatable, so no worries, the boat won't sink, she just won't be going fast on this trip.
The basin was tannic, which isn't an unusual occurance so we tied up to a tree that looked like it had less chance of dropping snakes on us than some of the others. I plunged into the water and Glen started passing tanks down. I had hoped that the tannic water would end after we descended a bit and clear, cool spring water would surround us. We were rewarded in just that way as we descended below 5-6' of tannic water, we broke into blue spring water with visibility upwards of 40' and getting better near the cave entrance. There's an impressive ledge at this site that makes you think there will be a nicely sized cave entrance, but thats just not the case. We dropped down a small triangular sized entrance into a low cavern area that angles downwards towards a junction room. There was a halocline from different watertypes mixing, which is a regular feature in the beginning portion of this cave. By this time we had 50-60' visibility easy. We spent a little time in this junction room, where there are several cave lines T'ng into each other. I motioned Glen to one passage where you could see the dark remains of dugong fossils embedded in a pure white limestone wall. You couldn't ask for a better display! We did make a small jaunt into the main cave passage, but only about 15-20' into it we turned as a plume of silt started to fill in behind one of us(bwahah!). I knew we wouldn't get far and we'd be turning early, just wanted Glen to see how on your game your needed to be for some of these caves. The exit went fairly well, despite a couple snags and Glen kept his cool. We spent the remainder of our dive exploring the different features on the ledge wall. Its got goethite ledges(strangely accessible from OW, which I've never seen anywhere else) and lots of breakdown and bore holes to pear into. I had a max depth of 67' for a dive lasting 42 minutes.
Once loaded back on the boat, we headed further upstream. We found a few potential leads and followed a few of them. We spent a considerable amount of time down one I think(now) is probably just a cut through, but turned around and eventually found our true run. All we had to do was hang a right at the aligator, who knew? The waterways are nice right now. It wasn't too hot, the water was cool(even the tannic water), and there was an abundance of shade thanks to the foliage which was all fully greened. Coming out here during the winter makes for an entirely different setting, which bare trees, potentially chilly air temps, and frigid river waters. Eventually we found ourselves at the end of a potential run, at a round basin of sorts. The water seemd tannic, no suprise with the water levels being what they were... alot of the flood plain was innundated. Is this the spring we were looking for? We tied up the boat and Glen suggested we snorkel out. I figured I'd just go ahead and take tanks, feeling confident we were in the correct site. Glen geared up too and grabbed the camera. Again we found ourselves descending past a defined tannic layer into cool, clear spring water. The basin was basically shaped like a dust bowl, with very few defining features apart from a submerged tree in the middle. Off to one corner, I saw a sloping area and went to investigate. Here we found a small ledge, no more than 10-15' long and only a few feet high. Coming over it and there was a definate cavern entrance. Sweet! New cave! I tied off Mr Potatoe Head to log nearby and reeled into the cavern to make a secondary tie off to an interesting piece of wood that was down in the sand. The cavern was smallish, but interesting, there were lots of great limestone features and it was very apparent that the site isn't dived often. Along the far wall, a cave line was tied off for the tell tale sign that, there had, indeed, been cave divers here in the past. The line dropped down under a low overhange into a short run of more low passage with a very very fine sand bottom. It was sand, but fine enough to get kicked up into the water column like silt. It did blow out somewhat quickly and settle with the little bit of flow present. I squeezed into the sand restriction and could see the cave opens up beyond. Once I popped through to the otherside, I was caught in awe, and an impressively sized room with offshooting passage going in several directions. The line I was following continued forward and there was another line coming off a tie off on the bottom and running to my right. The room was huge compared to the cavern and especially that little passage I had taken to get to this point. Awesome! GlenFWB wasn't feeling the restriction since he was diving a new wing and hadn't adjusted completely to that point so we called the dive and headed out. What a great trip! We found a new playground and it looks very promising! I can't wait to get back out there. We goofed around a bit in OW before gearing down and filling the boat. I had hit 45' of depth, for a dive lasting nearly a half hour.
Again we set out, this time in search of yet another spring. We headed upstream, pissing off the aligator again as we past it. We found several potential runs and followed them into flood plains, but never came across anything promising enough to hop out of the boat for. I'm figuring this would be a better spring to search for in lower, or even drought, conditions. Its probably a smaller spring and likely doesn't have anything passage large enough for divers, but you never know until you go... so we'll be back.
The trip back to the boat launch was uneventfull, but we enjoyed the time on the water regardless. We geared the boat down and loaded everything into the Wagon. Our stuff seemed to have been multiplying, things were alot more cramped this time around. We had considered taking the boat out to explore yet another spring from yet another boat launch, but decided against it for visiting a couple springs we could drive up to. We hit up Hightower Spring, which is fed by a series of sand boils, and has no passage. After that, we hit up Brunson Landing Spring, which has a debri laden bottom that water issues up from. Both sites are pretty, and I've done dives in both. To that point, I can say neither are worth the trouble of carrying a tank... a mask will suffice by far.
We hit up Dees afterwards, the Ribeye won me over again with cheesesticks as an appetizer(I shot spd135 a shot of the steak, since I knew he'd be jealous). GlenFWB chowed down on Whole Flounder, he tore into it an even ate the tail. LOL The food was great, and I got sleepy so tore into my last Redbull that I had saved for the trip back... I'd need to refill on more energy drinks on the way home. We weren't done yet though! We headed further East and walked out to a few more springs part of one spring group. The head spring has an impressive flow, but the cave is supposedly very tight(no mount). There was a trail running around the side of the spring run that I hadn't noticed before, so we walked it for a bit. What a great little trail! There was lots of limestone features and lots and lots of additional small springs meandering around the rock fissures. Once we finished there, we headed over to "Stasia's Cave"(LOL), which is a sinkhole in the same area. The trek to this site was uncomfortable. We had horrendous washboard dirtroads that would rattle your fillings out(I'll spend most of today retightening every bolt on my car), then deep ruts in sand that my car had a hard time grading down while keeping traction, the occasional deep hole, and far scarier, the occassional speeding redneck in a monster truck. The roads were in much worse shape than I had seen in the past and I was suprised we didn't get stuck in the sand... I hate getting stuck in sand. The sinkhole was looking good though, not nearly as nasty from the surface as I had seen in the past.
That pretty much rounded out our cave tour for the day, we headed back to Fort Walton, passing through Destin with ease(tourist season is apparently over, thank God). I dropped Glen and all his gear off before heading further west to Alabama. The ride home wasn't nearly as bad as I imagined it would be, despite a full day of running around, but I did get another Redbull to ensure no sleepiness for the remainder of the trip. What a success though? We found new cave, visited 6 different sites, and Glen's gonna make a great new exploration buddy! Shagman, ya hear that? You're replaced! LOL
Unloading the car went well, it was still early and cool at this point. We could enjoy the sweltering heat later, while packing back up, but hopefully we'd be chilled from a set of dives in the area springs to offset that heat. The boat went up rather quickly as too. After filling the interior of the Miss Jellyfish with gear, far past her intended capacity, we made headway upstream, in search of holes in the ground. Surely there are tons of them. The first stop was at a site that I had been to several times before and it makes for a great cave dive, but its quite advanced. We'd be sticking to the beginning of the system so I could show Glen some fossils embedded in the wall here. The boat had a considerable amount of water in it by the time we arrived. A quick check on the bottom and I found one of the seams to the bottom had come free and will need to be repaired after the trip. Its an inflatable, so no worries, the boat won't sink, she just won't be going fast on this trip.
The basin was tannic, which isn't an unusual occurance so we tied up to a tree that looked like it had less chance of dropping snakes on us than some of the others. I plunged into the water and Glen started passing tanks down. I had hoped that the tannic water would end after we descended a bit and clear, cool spring water would surround us. We were rewarded in just that way as we descended below 5-6' of tannic water, we broke into blue spring water with visibility upwards of 40' and getting better near the cave entrance. There's an impressive ledge at this site that makes you think there will be a nicely sized cave entrance, but thats just not the case. We dropped down a small triangular sized entrance into a low cavern area that angles downwards towards a junction room. There was a halocline from different watertypes mixing, which is a regular feature in the beginning portion of this cave. By this time we had 50-60' visibility easy. We spent a little time in this junction room, where there are several cave lines T'ng into each other. I motioned Glen to one passage where you could see the dark remains of dugong fossils embedded in a pure white limestone wall. You couldn't ask for a better display! We did make a small jaunt into the main cave passage, but only about 15-20' into it we turned as a plume of silt started to fill in behind one of us(bwahah!). I knew we wouldn't get far and we'd be turning early, just wanted Glen to see how on your game your needed to be for some of these caves. The exit went fairly well, despite a couple snags and Glen kept his cool. We spent the remainder of our dive exploring the different features on the ledge wall. Its got goethite ledges(strangely accessible from OW, which I've never seen anywhere else) and lots of breakdown and bore holes to pear into. I had a max depth of 67' for a dive lasting 42 minutes.
Once loaded back on the boat, we headed further upstream. We found a few potential leads and followed a few of them. We spent a considerable amount of time down one I think(now) is probably just a cut through, but turned around and eventually found our true run. All we had to do was hang a right at the aligator, who knew? The waterways are nice right now. It wasn't too hot, the water was cool(even the tannic water), and there was an abundance of shade thanks to the foliage which was all fully greened. Coming out here during the winter makes for an entirely different setting, which bare trees, potentially chilly air temps, and frigid river waters. Eventually we found ourselves at the end of a potential run, at a round basin of sorts. The water seemd tannic, no suprise with the water levels being what they were... alot of the flood plain was innundated. Is this the spring we were looking for? We tied up the boat and Glen suggested we snorkel out. I figured I'd just go ahead and take tanks, feeling confident we were in the correct site. Glen geared up too and grabbed the camera. Again we found ourselves descending past a defined tannic layer into cool, clear spring water. The basin was basically shaped like a dust bowl, with very few defining features apart from a submerged tree in the middle. Off to one corner, I saw a sloping area and went to investigate. Here we found a small ledge, no more than 10-15' long and only a few feet high. Coming over it and there was a definate cavern entrance. Sweet! New cave! I tied off Mr Potatoe Head to log nearby and reeled into the cavern to make a secondary tie off to an interesting piece of wood that was down in the sand. The cavern was smallish, but interesting, there were lots of great limestone features and it was very apparent that the site isn't dived often. Along the far wall, a cave line was tied off for the tell tale sign that, there had, indeed, been cave divers here in the past. The line dropped down under a low overhange into a short run of more low passage with a very very fine sand bottom. It was sand, but fine enough to get kicked up into the water column like silt. It did blow out somewhat quickly and settle with the little bit of flow present. I squeezed into the sand restriction and could see the cave opens up beyond. Once I popped through to the otherside, I was caught in awe, and an impressively sized room with offshooting passage going in several directions. The line I was following continued forward and there was another line coming off a tie off on the bottom and running to my right. The room was huge compared to the cavern and especially that little passage I had taken to get to this point. Awesome! GlenFWB wasn't feeling the restriction since he was diving a new wing and hadn't adjusted completely to that point so we called the dive and headed out. What a great trip! We found a new playground and it looks very promising! I can't wait to get back out there. We goofed around a bit in OW before gearing down and filling the boat. I had hit 45' of depth, for a dive lasting nearly a half hour.
Again we set out, this time in search of yet another spring. We headed upstream, pissing off the aligator again as we past it. We found several potential runs and followed them into flood plains, but never came across anything promising enough to hop out of the boat for. I'm figuring this would be a better spring to search for in lower, or even drought, conditions. Its probably a smaller spring and likely doesn't have anything passage large enough for divers, but you never know until you go... so we'll be back.
The trip back to the boat launch was uneventfull, but we enjoyed the time on the water regardless. We geared the boat down and loaded everything into the Wagon. Our stuff seemed to have been multiplying, things were alot more cramped this time around. We had considered taking the boat out to explore yet another spring from yet another boat launch, but decided against it for visiting a couple springs we could drive up to. We hit up Hightower Spring, which is fed by a series of sand boils, and has no passage. After that, we hit up Brunson Landing Spring, which has a debri laden bottom that water issues up from. Both sites are pretty, and I've done dives in both. To that point, I can say neither are worth the trouble of carrying a tank... a mask will suffice by far.
We hit up Dees afterwards, the Ribeye won me over again with cheesesticks as an appetizer(I shot spd135 a shot of the steak, since I knew he'd be jealous). GlenFWB chowed down on Whole Flounder, he tore into it an even ate the tail. LOL The food was great, and I got sleepy so tore into my last Redbull that I had saved for the trip back... I'd need to refill on more energy drinks on the way home. We weren't done yet though! We headed further East and walked out to a few more springs part of one spring group. The head spring has an impressive flow, but the cave is supposedly very tight(no mount). There was a trail running around the side of the spring run that I hadn't noticed before, so we walked it for a bit. What a great little trail! There was lots of limestone features and lots and lots of additional small springs meandering around the rock fissures. Once we finished there, we headed over to "Stasia's Cave"(LOL), which is a sinkhole in the same area. The trek to this site was uncomfortable. We had horrendous washboard dirtroads that would rattle your fillings out(I'll spend most of today retightening every bolt on my car), then deep ruts in sand that my car had a hard time grading down while keeping traction, the occasional deep hole, and far scarier, the occassional speeding redneck in a monster truck. The roads were in much worse shape than I had seen in the past and I was suprised we didn't get stuck in the sand... I hate getting stuck in sand. The sinkhole was looking good though, not nearly as nasty from the surface as I had seen in the past.
That pretty much rounded out our cave tour for the day, we headed back to Fort Walton, passing through Destin with ease(tourist season is apparently over, thank God). I dropped Glen and all his gear off before heading further west to Alabama. The ride home wasn't nearly as bad as I imagined it would be, despite a full day of running around, but I did get another Redbull to ensure no sleepiness for the remainder of the trip. What a success though? We found new cave, visited 6 different sites, and Glen's gonna make a great new exploration buddy! Shagman, ya hear that? You're replaced! LOL
