Jenn and I haven't been in Hole in the Wall in over a year. And today we realized we are waiting much too long to dive this system. It's a little more difficult for us to get to than JB, Twin, Shangri-La, and Gator Hole. JB is obviously accessible by land. The other 3 systems are a quick boat ride from the park or the boat ramps on the pond. A few weeks ago, we took the canoe out to Hole in the Wall for a test ride. We wanted to know if it would be feasible to try to paddle to it. We decided it would be. Well, yesterday, instead of doing another dive at JB, we decided to load up the canoe and do a nice long dive in Hole. We wanted to check out both the upstream and downstream tunnels. We've never been in the upstream passage and actually only just found the beginning of the line the last time we were there. We decided we would bring stage tanks with us and head upstream on the stage tanks. Turn on 3rd of our stages, drop them in the chimney, and head downstream on side gas. We knew our canoe wouldn't hold all the tanks we needed for this dive, so we headed to Walmart to buy a small inflatable as a tank dingy. We then headed over to Day Loop, set the boats in the water and loaded them up.
Once loaded up, we paddled over to the Hole dock, which took us about 15 minutes. Nothing like a little pre-dive exercise, which consequently, we learned at the CDS Workshop is a good thing to do to help lower the risk for DCS!.
We tossed tanks in the water, got suited up, and dropped into the cool refreshing water. Air temp was in the 90s, so the pond water felt great! We got our tanks on, dropped down, found a primary tie off and in we went. We dropped down the chimney and quickly found the 2 gold lines. They've been moved out a little since out last dive here. Both are now visible from the middle of the chimney. We headed upstream first. Here are a couple of shots of the passage:
The first pic is a little deceiving. You can actually swim over this key hole area in a much wider area. The only way to get through it in sidemount is by diving sideways! Upstream is a really beautiful passage. Lots of up and down and lots of huge rooms. We definitely need to come back here and see more of it.
We headed back after hitting 3rds on our stages and rerouted the reel to the downstream line. We clipped off our stage bottles and headed into the passage. We swam past the big E.
We continued and were just awestruck by the formations on the ceiling.
We've seen them before, but they never cease to amaze me. We swam until we hit 3rds plus 200 and turned the dive and slowly made out way back noting all the side passages for future dives.
We will definitely be back here on a more regular basis! It was a great dive to end off a great week and a half of diving before having to head back to the desert for a few weeks.
Once loaded up, we paddled over to the Hole dock, which took us about 15 minutes. Nothing like a little pre-dive exercise, which consequently, we learned at the CDS Workshop is a good thing to do to help lower the risk for DCS!.
We tossed tanks in the water, got suited up, and dropped into the cool refreshing water. Air temp was in the 90s, so the pond water felt great! We got our tanks on, dropped down, found a primary tie off and in we went. We dropped down the chimney and quickly found the 2 gold lines. They've been moved out a little since out last dive here. Both are now visible from the middle of the chimney. We headed upstream first. Here are a couple of shots of the passage:
The first pic is a little deceiving. You can actually swim over this key hole area in a much wider area. The only way to get through it in sidemount is by diving sideways! Upstream is a really beautiful passage. Lots of up and down and lots of huge rooms. We definitely need to come back here and see more of it.
We headed back after hitting 3rds on our stages and rerouted the reel to the downstream line. We clipped off our stage bottles and headed into the passage. We swam past the big E.
We continued and were just awestruck by the formations on the ceiling.
We've seen them before, but they never cease to amaze me. We swam until we hit 3rds plus 200 and turned the dive and slowly made out way back noting all the side passages for future dives.
We will definitely be back here on a more regular basis! It was a great dive to end off a great week and a half of diving before having to head back to the desert for a few weeks.
