I just got up!! and was fleeing from the camera...
Cristian at the campsite.
Finally we found the timer on the camera :-)...
Drysuits are just not built to be flattering. But this is my new one and I love it, although there are still some things that need tweaking. :-)
Packing up to leave :-(....
Look how much of the rocks are showing!!!!
Low water at Peacock
Sunday evening, Last few things in the car :''-(
Cristian's
Website
We had not cave dived together before so we decided to make this a shakedown dive and just go in and out running a primary reel through the eye. Cristian ran the reel in. I was kind of disappointed since I had been blown out of a deep dive a couple of weeks before and was forced to use a 50% helium mix at 95ft. But I can tell you I remember everything I saw, :-)! It also reminded me how much colder the cave water is when you are using He in your suit... Yikes!!. Despite this, it felt so good to be back in the caves again, and I just plain enjoyed the dive. We went in on the main line to just a bit past the Maple leaf and then turned around and flew out again. It was awesome, with no surprises or snafus :-). We hung around in the eye at the end of the dive, for quite some time, and played around. I think we got out of the water some time around 1:00am and made it to our sleeping bags at some time around 2:00am.
I was woken early next morning not by sunlight, but the sound of rain pattering on the tent walls... It stayed that way for several hours but did eventually clear up just in time for our dives. We met up with Debbie at about 9:30, and proceeded to plan our dive. Since I had used my cave tanks the night before I used a pair of AL80's for this dive, but this still turned out to be plenty big enough for the dive that we did. Debbie was in the lead, followed my me and then by Cristian. This time we dropped down into the ear and easily located the line at it's new starting point. It had been a very long time since I had dived with Debbie and it was really nice to be back together again. Debbie had patiently dived with me in all the Open Water and then cavern places, for a long time before I had any cave diving at all, waiting for me to catch up with her. Debbie is also a dry caver and as we were swimming along I was looking at the floor WAY below me and thinking that it is a great advantage that the cave is underwater because it gives us three dimensional access. As always I love the trip back, it is amazing in there that you hardly have to kick but sadly you still get back home in half the time. One of my favorite things to do is to try to do this without stopping and just glide back Kind of like a kiddies roller coaster. Of course in stark contrast to the inward journey which is measured one kick after the other :-)... We made an extended safety stop at the log, watching some open water divers struggling to get to the entrance.. and then getting blown off our stop by their bubbles rushing up underneath us :-).. which was pretty fun also..
Surface Interval was VERY long.. and effectively we refilled had lunch and then went to Extreme Exposure for Cristian to rent a drysuit to test it out before he buys one. He rented a TLS 350 and we discovered that his will need to be a custom suit, but was a good enough fit to use for the test run. We forgot the time and were really late by the time we arrived at Peacock and of course paid for that by having our dives cut extremely short. Cristian did pretty well in his drysuit, we made a very short excursion into the pothole tunnel, and then another short excursion into the peanut tunnel... Debbie and I counting the minutes so that we would not get thrown out of the park. It's the first time I have ever turned a dive based on how many minutes before the park closes LOL!!!
We refilled our tanks and set up for a
night dive at Telford, When we got there the place was just alive
with beer and bonfires. We were already suited up so we took a quick
reccy down at the spring. I was amazed to find the water about
18inches below where it had been when I dived it just on easter
weekend. The entire rock area was uncovered but the
water looked crystal clear. After overhearing some rather
gruff comments about cave divers Cristian and I elected not to dive and leave
the Van unattended so we went back to the DO and just hung out. I
was pretty disappointed not to get my night dive.
Next day we decided to dive Peacock again, and managed two really excellent
dives. I got to visit Olson on the first dive and
Challenge for the first time on the second dive. It was really
awesome to see the daylight ahead of me and go up into the
sink. We did alot of back and forth swimming that
day. When I looked at the map later, I think I added up about 12000
ft by the end of our two dives. It made my legs ache, but it
was a good feeling. :-). Cristian took his camera on one of the
dives which was really interesting, I know it's really hard to take
pictures in a cave, but I think he did pretty well when I saw the
pics later on.
We left at 7:00pm and headed home.. I think I finally arrived at my bed at around 4:00am... Jeez... I was wiped out but very satisfied. I can't wait for my next cave expedition at the end of June.