SuPrBuGmAn
Contributor
Tallahassee and Wakulla Sinks 9-19-9
Earliest I could manage to pull myself out of bed for a 4 hour drive to south Tallahassee was 5AM. I'd lose another hour to the change in time zone. There was a cleanup day set up for a local sink there called Church Sink. Church Sink is on private property and swimming/diving isn't allowed to the public. Unfortunately, lots of people have trespassed onsite to enjoy the cool waters, but also managed to forget alot of there junk behind. We were hoping to clean up alot of that mess. The cleanup was to start around 8:30EST and end around noon. That put me there around 10AM. I arrived just in time to see them cleaning up the last remenants of garbage. They must have really been bustin butt to get that site cleaned up so quickly! I picked up a few cans and bottles, a hubcap, and then helped them load all the garbage bags into a pickup truck to be thrown in the dump. I wish I could have helped out more.
After the cleanup, the site was open to us to get a dive in since we had just helped clean it up. Bruce Ryan, who had organized the cleanup(I believe), had dived the site and likely did alot of the exploration there. He said it was best dived in sidemount and had some low areas, lots of fragile cave, and lots of silt. Due to configurations and comfort levels, tflaris and I decided we'd dive it. We had a little surface support, which was great considering the steap sides to the sinkhole. I'm talking a slippery slope of clay and pinestraw that makes getting tanks down a killer. Before long, we were in the water and ready to go. Tflaris had run a primary as I finished gearing up. The basin was pretty funky and had poor visibility, but the cave opening had cooler clearer water from what tflaris was saying. He led the dive and we found ourselves pushing through the basin and into clear water in the cave. The entrance was a bit tight, but not too bad. A little silt got kicked up, but not bad. The cave itself was mostly low, but very wide. Visibility was stellar at 100' and the water, suprisingly enough seemed to be warmer than most sinks and springs in the area. Both of our computers showed 71F when everything else in the area was 68F. Strange, but a nice suprise.
The cave walls were mostly very bright white, with yellow and black striations. Formations could be found everywhere that seemed obviously ready to break off and crash into the floor. The floor itself was a mix of breakdown and silt. There was no flow to be spoken of. We hit our first "T" almost immediately and hung a right, which seemed to be the main passage. There were jumps scattered out the cave throughout, most seemed low and silty, but begged for exploration in the future. Several hundred feet later, we came on another "T", where we continued on what seemed to be the main passage even further. We turned the dive somewhere near 700-800'p I'd imagine and started a slow exit. Its a beautiful cave, one that would definately be nice to have access to in the future. Definately a cave not to be taken lightly though, the potential to blowing out visibility and getting jammed in a line trap was pretty high. Possibly worse, the potential for damaging some of the formations here by the careless fin kick or less than stellar bouyancy was even higher. Just the percolation from our exhaled gas bubbles had debri falling down on us, some of it, the size of fists. We hit a max depth of 56', with an average in the upper 30' range, for a dive lasting a mere 35 minutes. On our exit, I snatched up several more cans and bottles from the cavern zone. Great dive!
BGillespie took both the above photos.
A Wakulla Sink 9-19-9
Around three and a half hours later, we were back in the water. This time further south and with a larger group. I'd be diving with rox@ucf11 and BGillespie would be diving with tflaris. The basin looked funky, but we could see the bottom of the ledge where we gear up, which is somewhat of a good sign. I took a LP72, hooked a reg and a light to it and powersnorkeled down to around 30' to see how visibility was at that point on the descent line. Looked good, around 30', maybe even better. Things can change from this point to where the cave is, so its not a true indication on cave conditions, but atleast it gives us some sort of idea...
Rox@ucf and I would be heading straight up the mainline in whats called the Turtle Passage. BGillespie and tflaris would be doing the same, except they would jump off to a sidepassage leading off to a large room with some pretty impressive formations. We started off as a pair of buddy teams and visibility was suprisingly good in the basin. Now, with the power of all our lights, it was more apparent. I could see BGillespie leading down the descent line some 40' below me as I brought up the tail end of our pair of teams. Once we hit the cave line and followed it until an overhead was noticed, the grim reaper sign, BGillespie and I placed over a month ago, greeted us at the first intersection. We headed up the gold and shortly found that the waters had flipped. This cave has several layers of water, and up to this point, tannic water would fill most of the cave and spring water on the floor. This time, the spring water was more prevelant with pockets of tannic water on the floor. The spring water was a bit milky, but still gave us enough sight to enjoy the beauty of this system. We were visited by many cave critters, including blind cave crawfish and several other types of isopods. The lead team hooked up a snap-n-gap and continued down a side passage, leaving the main passage for myself and rox@ucf. We continued a few hundred feet more before turning, not quite hitting an intersection that couldn't be more than a hundred or two feet beyond our turning point. I picked up the rubber lighthead bezel from someone's Halcyon scout, which was laying in the silt. By the time we had made it back to the ascent line, we could see the first team above us a couple dozen feet, finishing out there safety stops. We had a dive to 76' that lasted for about 52 minutes. Great dive in an unpredictable system that never ceases to impress when it allows divers to enjoy it!
We staked up a water level guage to help us track the tides into the system, maybe the system won't be completely unpredictable in the future?
Tflaris headed back east, and the three of us decided to head over to the Woodville area to check out a spring group that BGillespie had looked at previously. Two springs fed into a shared spring run after a short distance, where the flow was sucked back into the abyss by a swallet. The water was clear though! BGillespie and rox@ucf snorkeled around the surface to check it out, while I stuck to the surface this time around. I should have gotten in the water, the mosquito's were ferocious. After this little scouting mission, we headed over to Los Amigo's for some mexican food. I hadn't eaten all day and some mexican food always hits the spot after a days worth of diving. I headed to Marianna to crash at a buddies new place for the night.
Panhandle River Caves 9-20-9
Sunday morning came early and Ben M and I headed to Edd's place for opening time. There were a few other divers onsite, including Kevin Carlisle. Once I gassed up, we headed south-west, with the Miss Jellyish aching for a cruise. It didn't take us long to find our boat launch, but the water levels were higher than any I've seen while launching here. I wasn't too worried about the springs reversing, as they seem to have atleast a little bit of flow. We loaded the boat up and made way slowly.
It wasn't long before we were at our first destination. The basin looked tannic and was indistinguishable from the river waters. We motored well into the floodplain to find shallow enough water for us to stand up in and gear up... beats gearing up in the boat. Once we descended about 10' or so, the basin cleared up underneath, giving us a view of a fairly dull, featureless depression. Basically a dust bowl with a few trees submerged. Thankfully, there's a small ledge on one end, that just happens to contain a small cavern and a smaller cave entrance. I ran a primary the short distance to the mainline in the cavern area. The entrance isn't too bad really, just a little low. Flow was defiantely affected by the higher water levels as it was barely noticable. We pushed through the low section and the cave opened up into a large junction room with breakdown on the left, a jump on the right, and the mainline pushing further in. This cave is very white, pure white, but lots and lots of silt on the bottom. Dark fossils were pretty common and struck out against the white cave. Lots of catfish and eels could be found as well as the occassional blind salamander and isopod. We took the mainline a few hundred feet where we hit a "T" and hung left, which I guessed was the main passage. It went for several hundred more feet before hitting another "T". The right side of this "T" was low and looked certain to become messy, the left side looked more promising, so we took it. Unfortunately it went shallow and pinched off after a very short distance. So we turned the dive there and headed back to the first "T", where we explored the leftside(if we were going in). This passage actually looks to be the main water source tunnel, judging from its shape. Its low, but the silt was mixed more with sand, more fossils could be found as well. There are jumps everywhere throughout this cave, its gonna take a good while to sort them all out. We got to another "T" and the dive was called and we made a slow exit, enjoying the cave on the way out. I hit a max depth of 62' for a dive lasting 38 minutes.
The ride out to the next cave was crazy short. Infact, we ate a sandwich and relaxed for a good half hour or better before hitting the water again and still had shorter than an hour and a half SI. I led the dive again, descending under tannic water where a large ledge comes into view. Its easily 60' long and 20' high, looks very dramatic and makes you think there'd be some huge entrance here... There's not, just a little cave entrance off to one side, just big enough for one diver to enter single file. The cave is low throughout the rest of the cavern and angles down a larger wide open junction room with silt dunes and higher ceilings. I showed Ben M some dugong fossils hanging out of the wall, then we headed down the opposite direction on the "T", then left at yet another "T" only a few dozen feet away, putting us into the main passage. Things were getting dusty and the dive was called here. The next few hundred feet of cave is very low with a super fine silt floor. Ben M didn't want to exit in zero visibilty in a cave he hadn't seen(as the second in line, his view couldn't have been stellar). I hit 64' for a dive lasting 22 minutes.
We had a short SI of less than a half hour, basically to let the silt push out(there's enough flow here to do that), and we changed the team order so Ben could lead and see the cave. Back in the main passage, he got a much better view. I stayed on his fin tips to outrun any silt that got dusted up behind him and before long we had pushed through a low restriction that marks the end of the low passage and the beginning of easy passage thats easily travelled cleanly. There are more fossils to be found here, as well as the occassional isopod. We pushed a hundred or two feet beyond where I had been before and called the dive, the cave stayed big at this point. I'm looking forward to seeing more of it! I had another max depth of 64' for a dive lasting 36 minutes this time around.
After we finished up the diving, we tempted the weather a bit(it had become overcast and there was thunder in the distance) and tried scouting out a few other locations. The water was high and that kept us from recognizing anything as potentially divable or not, so gave up on it after a bit. It was a great day of diving though, got to see alot of new cave! We're certain to head back and dive both to explore a bit more and I'm very much looking forward to it
Earliest I could manage to pull myself out of bed for a 4 hour drive to south Tallahassee was 5AM. I'd lose another hour to the change in time zone. There was a cleanup day set up for a local sink there called Church Sink. Church Sink is on private property and swimming/diving isn't allowed to the public. Unfortunately, lots of people have trespassed onsite to enjoy the cool waters, but also managed to forget alot of there junk behind. We were hoping to clean up alot of that mess. The cleanup was to start around 8:30EST and end around noon. That put me there around 10AM. I arrived just in time to see them cleaning up the last remenants of garbage. They must have really been bustin butt to get that site cleaned up so quickly! I picked up a few cans and bottles, a hubcap, and then helped them load all the garbage bags into a pickup truck to be thrown in the dump. I wish I could have helped out more.
After the cleanup, the site was open to us to get a dive in since we had just helped clean it up. Bruce Ryan, who had organized the cleanup(I believe), had dived the site and likely did alot of the exploration there. He said it was best dived in sidemount and had some low areas, lots of fragile cave, and lots of silt. Due to configurations and comfort levels, tflaris and I decided we'd dive it. We had a little surface support, which was great considering the steap sides to the sinkhole. I'm talking a slippery slope of clay and pinestraw that makes getting tanks down a killer. Before long, we were in the water and ready to go. Tflaris had run a primary as I finished gearing up. The basin was pretty funky and had poor visibility, but the cave opening had cooler clearer water from what tflaris was saying. He led the dive and we found ourselves pushing through the basin and into clear water in the cave. The entrance was a bit tight, but not too bad. A little silt got kicked up, but not bad. The cave itself was mostly low, but very wide. Visibility was stellar at 100' and the water, suprisingly enough seemed to be warmer than most sinks and springs in the area. Both of our computers showed 71F when everything else in the area was 68F. Strange, but a nice suprise.
The cave walls were mostly very bright white, with yellow and black striations. Formations could be found everywhere that seemed obviously ready to break off and crash into the floor. The floor itself was a mix of breakdown and silt. There was no flow to be spoken of. We hit our first "T" almost immediately and hung a right, which seemed to be the main passage. There were jumps scattered out the cave throughout, most seemed low and silty, but begged for exploration in the future. Several hundred feet later, we came on another "T", where we continued on what seemed to be the main passage even further. We turned the dive somewhere near 700-800'p I'd imagine and started a slow exit. Its a beautiful cave, one that would definately be nice to have access to in the future. Definately a cave not to be taken lightly though, the potential to blowing out visibility and getting jammed in a line trap was pretty high. Possibly worse, the potential for damaging some of the formations here by the careless fin kick or less than stellar bouyancy was even higher. Just the percolation from our exhaled gas bubbles had debri falling down on us, some of it, the size of fists. We hit a max depth of 56', with an average in the upper 30' range, for a dive lasting a mere 35 minutes. On our exit, I snatched up several more cans and bottles from the cavern zone. Great dive!
BGillespie took both the above photos.
A Wakulla Sink 9-19-9
Around three and a half hours later, we were back in the water. This time further south and with a larger group. I'd be diving with rox@ucf11 and BGillespie would be diving with tflaris. The basin looked funky, but we could see the bottom of the ledge where we gear up, which is somewhat of a good sign. I took a LP72, hooked a reg and a light to it and powersnorkeled down to around 30' to see how visibility was at that point on the descent line. Looked good, around 30', maybe even better. Things can change from this point to where the cave is, so its not a true indication on cave conditions, but atleast it gives us some sort of idea...
Rox@ucf and I would be heading straight up the mainline in whats called the Turtle Passage. BGillespie and tflaris would be doing the same, except they would jump off to a sidepassage leading off to a large room with some pretty impressive formations. We started off as a pair of buddy teams and visibility was suprisingly good in the basin. Now, with the power of all our lights, it was more apparent. I could see BGillespie leading down the descent line some 40' below me as I brought up the tail end of our pair of teams. Once we hit the cave line and followed it until an overhead was noticed, the grim reaper sign, BGillespie and I placed over a month ago, greeted us at the first intersection. We headed up the gold and shortly found that the waters had flipped. This cave has several layers of water, and up to this point, tannic water would fill most of the cave and spring water on the floor. This time, the spring water was more prevelant with pockets of tannic water on the floor. The spring water was a bit milky, but still gave us enough sight to enjoy the beauty of this system. We were visited by many cave critters, including blind cave crawfish and several other types of isopods. The lead team hooked up a snap-n-gap and continued down a side passage, leaving the main passage for myself and rox@ucf. We continued a few hundred feet more before turning, not quite hitting an intersection that couldn't be more than a hundred or two feet beyond our turning point. I picked up the rubber lighthead bezel from someone's Halcyon scout, which was laying in the silt. By the time we had made it back to the ascent line, we could see the first team above us a couple dozen feet, finishing out there safety stops. We had a dive to 76' that lasted for about 52 minutes. Great dive in an unpredictable system that never ceases to impress when it allows divers to enjoy it!
We staked up a water level guage to help us track the tides into the system, maybe the system won't be completely unpredictable in the future?
Tflaris headed back east, and the three of us decided to head over to the Woodville area to check out a spring group that BGillespie had looked at previously. Two springs fed into a shared spring run after a short distance, where the flow was sucked back into the abyss by a swallet. The water was clear though! BGillespie and rox@ucf snorkeled around the surface to check it out, while I stuck to the surface this time around. I should have gotten in the water, the mosquito's were ferocious. After this little scouting mission, we headed over to Los Amigo's for some mexican food. I hadn't eaten all day and some mexican food always hits the spot after a days worth of diving. I headed to Marianna to crash at a buddies new place for the night.
Panhandle River Caves 9-20-9
Sunday morning came early and Ben M and I headed to Edd's place for opening time. There were a few other divers onsite, including Kevin Carlisle. Once I gassed up, we headed south-west, with the Miss Jellyish aching for a cruise. It didn't take us long to find our boat launch, but the water levels were higher than any I've seen while launching here. I wasn't too worried about the springs reversing, as they seem to have atleast a little bit of flow. We loaded the boat up and made way slowly.
It wasn't long before we were at our first destination. The basin looked tannic and was indistinguishable from the river waters. We motored well into the floodplain to find shallow enough water for us to stand up in and gear up... beats gearing up in the boat. Once we descended about 10' or so, the basin cleared up underneath, giving us a view of a fairly dull, featureless depression. Basically a dust bowl with a few trees submerged. Thankfully, there's a small ledge on one end, that just happens to contain a small cavern and a smaller cave entrance. I ran a primary the short distance to the mainline in the cavern area. The entrance isn't too bad really, just a little low. Flow was defiantely affected by the higher water levels as it was barely noticable. We pushed through the low section and the cave opened up into a large junction room with breakdown on the left, a jump on the right, and the mainline pushing further in. This cave is very white, pure white, but lots and lots of silt on the bottom. Dark fossils were pretty common and struck out against the white cave. Lots of catfish and eels could be found as well as the occassional blind salamander and isopod. We took the mainline a few hundred feet where we hit a "T" and hung left, which I guessed was the main passage. It went for several hundred more feet before hitting another "T". The right side of this "T" was low and looked certain to become messy, the left side looked more promising, so we took it. Unfortunately it went shallow and pinched off after a very short distance. So we turned the dive there and headed back to the first "T", where we explored the leftside(if we were going in). This passage actually looks to be the main water source tunnel, judging from its shape. Its low, but the silt was mixed more with sand, more fossils could be found as well. There are jumps everywhere throughout this cave, its gonna take a good while to sort them all out. We got to another "T" and the dive was called and we made a slow exit, enjoying the cave on the way out. I hit a max depth of 62' for a dive lasting 38 minutes.
The ride out to the next cave was crazy short. Infact, we ate a sandwich and relaxed for a good half hour or better before hitting the water again and still had shorter than an hour and a half SI. I led the dive again, descending under tannic water where a large ledge comes into view. Its easily 60' long and 20' high, looks very dramatic and makes you think there'd be some huge entrance here... There's not, just a little cave entrance off to one side, just big enough for one diver to enter single file. The cave is low throughout the rest of the cavern and angles down a larger wide open junction room with silt dunes and higher ceilings. I showed Ben M some dugong fossils hanging out of the wall, then we headed down the opposite direction on the "T", then left at yet another "T" only a few dozen feet away, putting us into the main passage. Things were getting dusty and the dive was called here. The next few hundred feet of cave is very low with a super fine silt floor. Ben M didn't want to exit in zero visibilty in a cave he hadn't seen(as the second in line, his view couldn't have been stellar). I hit 64' for a dive lasting 22 minutes.
We had a short SI of less than a half hour, basically to let the silt push out(there's enough flow here to do that), and we changed the team order so Ben could lead and see the cave. Back in the main passage, he got a much better view. I stayed on his fin tips to outrun any silt that got dusted up behind him and before long we had pushed through a low restriction that marks the end of the low passage and the beginning of easy passage thats easily travelled cleanly. There are more fossils to be found here, as well as the occassional isopod. We pushed a hundred or two feet beyond where I had been before and called the dive, the cave stayed big at this point. I'm looking forward to seeing more of it! I had another max depth of 64' for a dive lasting 36 minutes this time around.
After we finished up the diving, we tempted the weather a bit(it had become overcast and there was thunder in the distance) and tried scouting out a few other locations. The water was high and that kept us from recognizing anything as potentially divable or not, so gave up on it after a bit. It was a great day of diving though, got to see alot of new cave! We're certain to head back and dive both to explore a bit more and I'm very much looking forward to it
