Waterwulf
Contributor
It's been over four decades since I've been in that area. At the time, it was a long drive down a single lane dirt track to get to the Spring. You dropped off the dock into a pond about a half acre in size with a stream running out of it. There was a sinkhole type thing and the cave entrance was inside of that against the back wall. The tunnel was long and kind of cork screwed with several rooms opening off of it. At the end, was a small opening about three feet across with a serious current spewing out of it. It had a street sign type stop sign in front of it.
That was my first and last cave dive. I just didn't like it. Nothing to see except brown rock and eels with no eyeballs. It might have had something to do with the previous divers in that cave. It was about 1978. We were in my VW Bug going cave diving. I turned off the main road onto the dirt track and was Buggin' On when I spotted an Ambulance coming back the other way. I pulled onto the side and let it go past. It seemed in no hurry so we went on our way.
At the Spring, the operator was putting his gear away. We signed in, paid our money and started carrying our gear to the end of the dock. Right before we dropped in, the operator came over and asked us to recover any loose gear that we came across. Hmmm. We found a mask and brought it back out with us. I asked the operator about it and he said they just had three deaths. The previous three divers had all died there an hour before. He would not give us any details but we read about it in Skin Diver Magazine the next month.
Three divers went into the cave using ski rope as guide line. It floats and bunches up. Not good. But why even use it in that cave? There's no way to get lost. One diver drowned with a half tank of air. The second was strangled by the ski rope and the third was stabbed to death. Best guess from the experts, was that the first diver to die was the one strangled by the ski rope. The second diver saw that, panicked, lost his regulator and went after the third guys air. There were no Octos back then. We trained for Buddy Breathing. I was super modern just for having a SPG. The third diver stabbed the second diver in self defense and killed him. Then he dropped his regulator, couldn't find it and drowned.
