Panhandle Springs 7-17-9 Dive Reports

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SuPrBuGmAn

Contributor
Messages
12,436
Reaction score
297
Location
Tallahassee, FL
# of dives
500 - 999
GlenFWB met me at my house Friday morning, early enough that we could see with the sparse bit of ambient light available. It was overcast, but we hoped for the best. After loading up my gear, and the venerable Miss Jellyfish, we headed East. It was going to be a good day, I hadn't dived our fist location in several months and conditions were reported to be improved since the last few times I had dived it. We hit up Vortex to quickly top off my tanks and dilute them a bit, it was possible for my 32% mix was going to be a bit too rich. BS'd with Eduardo a bit and headed out. I think we were in the park and at the boat launch by 10:30AM or so. We had several onlookers, Glen is convinced they just wanted to see us load alot of cave gear into it, then our butts, and watch us sink the boat. They've obviously never heard the many tales of the Miss Jellyfish.

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We made it to our spring in short time, despite several new trees being downed across the river completely, making our transit interesting enough. I only saw one gator, maybe 3' long, but it dropped under quickly, the panzy - so no pictures. There was no short supply of Herons(Little Blue, Great Blue, Night) and Ibis, as we seemed to just keep scarying them upriver. GlenFWB and I also checked on two other springs before heading to our intended location. One was looking very clear with a strong boil, that begged us to give it a try after our primary dives, and the other was still tannic, but shown with a boil(also spotted a brown water snake here). Anyway, back to our primary location.

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There are two basins for this system, and we'd be diving into the downstream basin first. I dropped in and headed down into the system, followed shortly after by Glen(after he shed an entire tree that tried to hitchhike along with him). We made short work of the couple hundred feet of cave that connects the first basin with the second. Some of the cave is restrictive in backmount, but with Glen diving sidemount already, he had plenty of room. We ascended back into OW into the second basin, the line continues on to the main trunk of cave, but there is a vertical restriction that I wanted Glen to avoid at this point. Besides, there's another vent that leads to the cave just beyond the restriction. I had GlenFWB run a primary up this vent and I showed him a few placements and(after one wrong turn), where to drop down and tie back into the mainline upstream of the restriction. From here, we headed upstream down a few dozen more feet of smaller passage and dropped into the larger deeper section. This part of the cave takes on an entirely different personality, much larger(huge infact), silty, and trends pretty deep. We headed upstream a couple hundred feet to the first intersection, a 4-way. We turned the dive here and exited back into the basin the way we came(leaving the primary). We dropped back into the karst window with line running through OW and I showed Glen the vertical restriction upstream, with plenty of gas, we cleared through it and ascended back up the primary Glen had laid just on the other side. He pulled the reel on the way back into OW. Again we dropped down the karst window and headed downstream back to the first basin, making our final exit. We surfaced to a few minutes of sun, then the lights turned out and it started to pour, with the occassional sounds of thunder. I had a max depth of 112' for a dive lasting 67 minutes. We zipped back as quickly as we dared, after wrapping vegatation in the prop on several occassions, that had to be cleared, we were on our way back to the landing. Breaking the boat down and packing the gear away was accomplished in a monsoon. Soaked, we headed over to the parking at Blue Hole Spring and ate sandwiches and Little Debbies that Glen's wife had packed away for us(she's awesome!).

We decided to head to Morrison, to finish the day off, but stopped by another spring on the way. The other spring is located in a state park, but doesn't allow diving. Neither Glen or I had been to the spring up to this point, so we figured we'd make use of our park passes and give it a look. I jumped in with a mask to check out the spring vents, both look passable in sidemount... Its a shame they don't allow diving to those that are qualified. The park ranger gave us a history lesson on the springs, it was interesting.

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There wasn't a tremendous crowd at Morrison Springs, suprisingly. We parked adjascent to the pavillion to see the waters with a slight tannic stain, like a weak tea. The boil was blue and contrasted the brown waters around it. So we knew we'd be diving into good conditions after dropping down from the surface layer. We geared up and walked in via the beach. After the initial 10' or so, we fell into 30' of visibility or so with a green tint. Once over the spring depression, the water turned blue and we enjoyed the 100' visibility we expect from this location. Heading down to the lower cavern entrance, I noticed the "Do Not Enter Unless Cave Trained Sign" had been knocked off the ledge and into the cavern entrance. I tried to lift it, but my wing just didn't have the capacity to bring it up. I didn't carry a liftbag for this trip, but will next time to bring this thing back to its rightfull place. The cavern was spotless, perfect visibility and our primary lights lit up the entire thing. We explored pretty much any nook and cranny we could find and poked our heads into the vents. It would have been sweet if the cave entrance hadn't been blown out in the late '60s. Its still one of the best caverns in Florida. After spending about 30 mintues in the cavern, we headed into OW and entered the upper cavern. After quickly exploring it, I tied off a line and zipped into the lower offshoot tunnel and explored all its 30' of passage before turning and exitting back into OW. I practiced pulling a tank off midwater, can't exactly superman a LP95, but atleast I can get the damned thing off. After a little while a few hot, foreign, snorkel chicks visited us on the surface. Gave me something else to look at and they seemd to enjoy the bubbles I sent up at them - LOL. I had a max depth of 90' for a dive lasting just short of an hour.

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It had been a great, full day of diving. It was getting late though, so we headed west, with only a quick stop at Arby's to grab some food along the way. We talked cave diving and music the entire time, Glen had endured Lithium, once again throughout the trip! The trip actually went by quickly and before we knew it, I was back at my house, and the boat was unloaded. Looking forward to our next adventure, which doesn't seem too far off.
 
Great stuff, as always, Mat! Thanks!
 
No problem Shirley! :D
 
Here are a few shots from the day...

Bugman and the Miss Jellyfish

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Bugman taking one of his famous pictures
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Didn't get any good cave shots...I had some problems getting my strobes to sync. I did take some video that I will post soon. Here is what greeted us after our dive.
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Only got one shot coming out of the cave
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Spring Run
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Morrison Pictures:

Tannic Water Meets Spring Water
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Matt Heading to Cavern
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Here is the sign by the entrance Mat was talking about
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Hey Yoda, the strobes were shooting a pretty good distance across the cavern...let's go do our Morrison Cavern Project
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Bugman Exploring
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Bugman's Swimming Friends
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Man it Takes a lot of Crap to Dive! This is without our tanks loaded!
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Another GREAT Day of Diving
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How'd the pictures I took of you come out? What are ya holding back?
 
Actually you took some good shots....I always like being behind the camera. The long shot in the cavern is one of me you took. I will post a few more soon.

How'd the pictures I took of you come out? What are ya holding back?
 
Sigh.....so beautiful....and so far away :(

Thanks for making me jealous...no...really :wink:
 
Come up to the the REAL Florida Shirley....lots of fun to be had.

Sigh.....so beautiful....and so far away :(

Thanks for making me jealous...no...really :wink:
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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