Subterranean 2023

[rjack321]

This was filmed a couple summers ago and recently released in Canada, you can stream it (in Canada only I think) via VPN or it's making the rounds at some of the outdoor film festivals as well. The divers are myself in ARGO (northern Vancouver Island) and Katie Graham in Bisaro Anima (near Fernie BC).

Subterranean

www.knowledge.ca

 

[lermontov]

well i got to see the trailer !

 

[Norwegian Cave Diver]

Would be great to watch this.

 

[RyanT]

Pretty cool, thanks Richard!

 

[steinbil]

Very cool! A lot of great dry cave footage in that documentary. VPN worked great. Pretty gnarly place to dive, though. Would be interesting to hear what goes into a dive like that in terms of planning and preparations. How much did you know going in?

 

[SleepySlipper]

I didn't need a VPN, I registered my account with a generic Canadian zip code.

 

[rjack321]

Very cool! A lot of great dry cave footage in that documentary. VPN worked great. Pretty gnarly place to dive, though. Would be interesting to hear what goes into a dive like that in terms of planning and preparations. How much did you know going in?

So for clarity there are 4 cave systems which are known to be connected on that particular hillside. Then a few more which are not currently connected.

Upstream to downstream
Glory Ol ---> Resonance ---> Arch ---> Treasure ---> Tsulton Rising (a spring I pushed a few years ago to an unpassable restriction)

I "thought" it was 300m of diving to connect upstream Arch to downstream Glory Ol. Turns out that the existing survey was off and I ended up after about 135m in the bottom of Resonance. Never having been there before I didn't recognize it. Just knew it wasn't where I expect to be. I couldn't crawl out, sank into the mud every time I tried to inch forwards. So I turned around and surveyed out. Only a few weeks later the stake I tied my line to was discovered to be in Resonance.

Planning wise I bought my sidewinder cause I thought I had to swim 300m. 2L O2, and pumped lp45s of 32%. I could have done the 130m on lp50s and OC in retrospect. Was still a hefty amount of stuff to get to the bottom and then back out again. There are 5 drops which took a whole day to rig. Then I think there were 8 of us carrying bags which you have to crawl with - so max weight per bag was about 11kgs. One day to get all the gear for 1 diver to the bottom. It took 2 days to get all the dive gear out and derig the cave.