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Cave Diving Weekend
Ginnie Springs, Peacock, Telford
June 27-30th 2002
This was to be the beginning of a huge
road trip for me. Arriving at the caves on Thursday June 27th
and not returning until July 6th. I had planned a weekend of
practice dives with friends prior to my Cave 2 class. It was
difficult finding dive buddies for weekdays but I was still determined to head
up there. My X was simply stuffed with gear.
I had camping equipment, Cave Gear enough for 10 days, plus a set of open
water equipment since I was also teaching a refresher student at Ginnie Springs
the next day. There was so much stuff in there I could hardly see
over the top of it all.
I arrived at Ginnie at around 9:30pm and checked in. I was
meeting a new dive buddy Adam for a night dive so top priority was to get my
gear together. Adam arrived around 10:00pm and we
chatted a while about each others experiences, and planned what we would do on
the dive, as typical new buddies do. Alas this
dive was not to happen, for some reason we had a primary light failure
exactly as we entered the water at the steps, and the darned light just refused
to be fixed. we aborted our plan but made new plans to meet at EE the next
morning, sort out the light and go diving.
Around 11:30pm I started pitching my tent. It felt
very strange to be doing this alone, I have never camped on my own
before. Since it was a Thursday night Ginnie was pretty much
deserted and I was feeling distinctly like the lone ranger out on a
mission. After the tent was set up I made some soup and
watched the stars for a while and then slept. It felt most odd
and a bit lonely but exciting at the same time. At least it wasn't
raining!!!
Next morning Adam's light mysteriously started working again, and so we set off
for Peacock. This time all was well and we had an awesome
dive. This was our first dive, and we simply decided to go to
Olsen and back via the pothole tunnel. The basin
at peacock was like soup, almost zero viz until you finally got into the
clear cavern water. At this point since we were new
together we elected to tie off our primary reel at the
steps!!!! once inside the cave and tied off the
visibility was fine. Adam's light still
continued to work and we set off on the dive. We both
thoroughly enjoyed the cave, and agreed to dive together again when the
opportunity came up. An afternoon dive would have been nice, but I
had to zoom back to Ginnie to catch up with my Refresher class arriving there at
2:00pm.
My student and I went over the basics again, such as tables, safety procedures
etc: etc: and then we headed towards the water. I had brought
my small 18# wing and an 80 for her to use, and I simply put back on my
cave gear. It was at this point that the weather began to look
distinctly dark overhead, and before long the rain was just pouring
down. We completed several of the drills and then
exited the water for a break, during which the rain got worse and worse,
and then lightning began allover the place. We waited it
out in the pavillion, pretty much all I could think about at this point
was how my tent was doing since most of the ground was flooded under 2 inches of
water!!!! Finally the lightning stopped and we
headed back into the water despite the torrents of rain.
I had planned a night dive but at the last minute my buddy had to cancel, so
after the class I got as dry as I could and went back to my tent for damage
control.. the inside of the tent was full of water puddles and my sleeping
bag and pillows (both of them) had been busily slurping up the puddled water in
the bottom of the tent!!! Oh well :-( . I was really hungry, and
definitely by now feeling lonely so I just headed out in my car and took myself
out for dinner. At least by now it had stopped raining, so
when I got back I curled up in my soggy sleeping stuff and tried to
sleep. Pretty soon after this the party animals arrived at the
campsite. I did not sleep a wink after that until they decided
finally to turn in and end the party at around 5:00am!!!!. The probably
just got too drunk and couldn't party any more. This must have
been the low point of my trip.. at least from then on things got lots
better. I decided to sleep in until 9:00am because I was so
tired. I was awakened at about this time by loud shouts
coming from the river, so I popped my head out of the tent to feast my eyes on a
group floating past, one of the tubes bearing a huge 8ft high inflatable replica
of a part of male anatomy. I stifled a giggle, but then
someone from the campsite yelled out.. "Hey you better get some sun cream
for that" ... This was too much for me and I rolled about laughing
hysterically for the next 10 minutes. Life was good again
:-).. It was now Saturday
and I was forced to pack up my now wet and very muddy tent because I was
meeting Scubadave over at Peacock for a mid morning dive, and then later more
friends for a night dive. On the way over there I also
discovered from Dave, that Cristian had decided to make a cave trip and
was diving with Dave also. We made a very nice dive
again starting at the pothole tunnel and going in the direction of
Olsen. I hadn't dived with Dave for a while and it was really nice
to get another dive in with him. Dave in front, me in
the middle and Cristian at the back with his
camera. After a while I saw Cris stop and clip his
camera off on the line, how strange I thought, but later found out that it
was not working properly so he didn't want to carry it any
more. I also think that we need to put Cris in front for
picture taking since he seems to have a preponderence of pictures of my large
bum swimming ahead in front of him. I noticed an
improvement in the vis at Peacock, maybe something to do with all that rain. All
afternoon I had been keeping in touch with my other friends who were off doing
the big stuff and diving Die Polder, then heading up to meet for a night
dive. They arrived around 5:00pm and we all headed over
to Telford. Mike brought my jet fin back that had got mixed up in
everyone's gear after our Speigel Grove dives and then I immediately
loaned it out to Joe, whose fin had found a new home that afternoon and is now
quietly resting in a watery grave. It's amazing how useful a single
fin can be sometimes.
We split into two teams and guarded each others cars while the other team
dived. Our team was second in, and we had fun sitting around
and BS'ing until the first guys came back out. During
this time we saw several police cars come by looking to break up some fights
between the campers that had started!!!. The dive itself
was the best one of the weekend so far. We just kept going and going
and I just really like this cave. The visibility at was not bad and
we just kept going and going, just enjoying
ourselves. Mike in front, then me and then Rob
behind. We made a really nice long dive, and hung out a bit in
the cave while I watched Rob doing pretend
pushups. We arrived back to a really wild
scene. As we surfaced the entire spring was surrounded by the
local campers and party animals and it felt like we were surrounded by a sea of
faces all peering down at us and yelling. It was pretty
scary actually especially being so very late at night. We exited the water
extremely fast with lots of encouragement by from our now somewhat nervous
car watching team. Unfortunately one of the
guys got their car stuck in the mud, but between all of us we managed to push
him out, of course not before being sprayed from head to foot with wet mud from
the wheel spin and we looked like mud wrestlers. Good job we still
had our drysuits on, nothing that a quick dip in the spring wouldn't
fix. At least once the car was out we could see the funny
side.. and we did look pretty funny actually :-). By this time
I realized I had run out of time to get a hotel room and there was no way I was
going to get that nasty soggy ball of mud out of my car that was pretending to
be a tent and sleep in it.. so eventually three of us bummed floor space off the
others and we spent the night in air conditioning :-).. that was so awesome
thanks guys..
Next morning (now Sunday) we started the day with an immense, extremely
greasy breakfast. Our team dived peacock again, this
time in the peanut tunnel direction. We didn't go too far in and
spent quite a bit of time looking for interesting side passages and scoping them
out for an afternoon dive. For some reason we
always seem to have the same team order with me in the middle, like a sandwich
filling. The visibility in the side tunnels we peeked in was so much
better than the main tunnel. Eventually we made
our way out and returned to daylight. It is great because the
place is so shallow that your gas seems to last forever :-). We passed our
buddies in the other team inside the cave and waved as we went
by. They were setting up some kind of complicated circuit
ready for an afternoon dive.
Unfortunately afternoon dive activities were curtailed for my team, one buddy
had to go home and cut the lawn, and also because my other buddy's light test
tube just popped off actually while he was in the water and I was just getting
in, really weird. We started searching for it in
the soup, and I cannot believe it but he did actually find it in
there. Unfortunately the light refused to fire up after
that, even though it didn't seem to have got wet inside so he had to bail out
quickly to get to EE before they closed and drop it off.
I remained and waited for the other team to emerge from their long
circuit. We had another gear swap, said our goodbyes, and I
headed off to David Rhea's house for the beginning of my cave 2 class starting
the next day!!!!
I didn't get as many practice dives as I had hoped but the ones I did were
really enjoyable and probably it was a good thing since I might have been really
way too tired to start an intense class the next day. Thanks to all
my buddies for diving with me and helping me to get in as many dives as I
actually did.
Link
to the pics that Cristian took on the trip
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