Missouri Cave Diving

[Omicron]

Part 1 of 2

Two years ago I went to Florida for my first cave diving experience – the NSS-CDS Cavern & Intro to Cave courses.  I passed those courses, and along with earning my Intro To Cave card, I developed what has become an obsession with the flooded subterranean world.  Since then I’ve been lucky enough to dive caves in Florida, Mexico and even here in Wisconsin.  Last week I went down to Missouri to finish what I had started two years ago.  I was going for my Full Cave rating.  Tami Thomsen from Diversions was our IANTD instructor, George Heeres was my diving partner in the class and Ethan Brodsky (from the board) and Keith Meverden went along for some diving.

We made the (relatively) short trip to Missouri and arrived in Waynesville.  I could barely sleep that night – I was nervous about the class, nervous about the new caves, nervous about everything.  Our first morning (Thursday) we got up early and jumped in our vehicles to drive to Bennett Springs (  Bennett Springs is a gorgeous state park that is also a trout fishery.  Bennett Springs was to be the site of the majority of our “basic” skill drills.  We started out our day with land drills.  It was mostly a review of what we had one in Intro to Cave.  We ran lines all over the park and and did land jumps/gaps/circuits as well as lights out stuff.  With that over with it was time to start in-water drills.

Bennett Springs is neat – great viz and very high flow.  It’s a small cave – maybe 300 feet long and it’s about a 45 degree slope from the entrance at 25 feet of depth to the bottom at 95 feet of depth.  At the bottom is a restriction and the cave goes for a little while after that.  We had the usual assortment of drills – out of air, lights out out of air, bc failures, line entanglements (cutting yourself out of the line), lost line and lost buddy.  We also had some “endurance” OOA drills that required us to swim set distances to reach our buddy while out of air, and then swim 10 minutes while sharing air.  We did those with lights on and lights out.  I especially enjoyed the line entanglement drill.  While it had been talked about in my NSS class we had never actually had to cut ourselves out of a line, and it was good to actually do it.  To do the entanglement drill my dive partner George had to run a line to the back of the cave (so we could get tangled in it) – while he was tying into the restriction at the back I was illuminating his work, while trying to stay in one spot.  The flow is so strong at this point in the cave that you have to use your hands to hold onto the gravel bottom (many Missouri caves require the pull and glide propulsion method).  I had both of my hands buried in the gravel bottom and the flow was still pushing me back as I left two trenches in the rocks as I was drug out of the cave.  It was VERY strong flow, and made our OOA drills difficult trying to maintain perfect trim while passing off a regulator.  The gravel in the cave made a neat sound as it was bounced all around the cave floor by the flow.

The next day (Friday) was spent at Roubidoux Springs (  Roubidoux is another fairly high flow cave with very neat formations inside of it.  The main tunnel runs at a depth from about 40 feet to 60 feet.  You then reach a pit that drops down about 80 feet and then you are in the bottom tunnel that just goes and goes.  The bottom tunnel contains lots of fossilized coral, and it looks really, really neat.  Getting into the cave is somewhat difficult – it’s a wide but very low opening.  You pretty much stick your head in, wedge your body against the rocks and start pulling yourself into the cave however you can.  Once you pop through, you pull and glide down a little ways and the flow dies out so you can start swimming.  You don’t really encounter flow again until you reach the bottom of the pit that leads to the deep tunnel.  Getting into the deep tunnel takes a good amount of negative buoyancy and a little bit of pulling.  We did lots of lights out air shares and line work in this cave.  We also did our lost buddy drills in this cave.  Since we had gotten a lot of our drills taken care of at Bennett the previous day, we focused mainly on diving and having surprise drills pulled on us.  Tami was constantly hovering near us, ready to tell us that we were out of air, or a reg or inflator was freeflowing or any other problem.  She kept us on our toes!  We did two dives in Roubidoux that day. 

[Omicron]

Part 2 of 2

We spent Saturday morning at Roubidoux as well, but the visibility was TERRIBLE.  We were the only team that actually completed a dive in the system.  We spent time exploring the deep tunnel again.  Because of this we brought our deco gas with us on this dive and tied it into the mainline at our pickup depth.    More drills ensued throughout the dive – valves, air shares, lights, etc, etc.  On the way out we picked up our deco bottles and sat through our decompression.  I love the sounds the water makes inside of a cave when you are just sitting – very relaxing and soothing.

Because of the bad viz, we decided to drive to where Keith & Ethan had been diving – Boiling Springs on the Big Piney ().  We had to drive to Cannonball Cave that night, and they were in the direction we had to go.  We packed up and met up with them at the edge of the river they were at.  They were done diving for the day and offered to let us try out sidemount diving.  George and I went for it and soon they were strapping us into their custom rigs.  Sidemount diving is EXTREMELY comfortable – I’m already going through old gear in my basement to see how I can set myself up with this…it is really cool.  The cave we were going to dive was sidemount only – very low but wide…the entrance is only about two feet high, and the cave doesn’t get more than a couple of feet high in most places.  But it is a BEAUTIFUL cave – awesome walls, neat contrasts of light and dark rock and some really funky looking formations.  We made our first dive and got back to the deep pit several hundred feet back before turning our dive.  On the next dive we went to the pit and dropped down to a depth of about 50 feet.  There we spent several minutes just hovering in the pit in awe – the bottom was 120 feet below us, the ceiling was about 30 feet above us..the walls of the pit were very white and our HID lights just made the whole thing just glow.  We hovered and stared at all the bass and panfish that were hiding in the nooks and crannies of the tube.  We turned our dive and exited the cave with huge grins on our faces.  It was great to be able to just relax and dive for the sake of diving after all of the pressure of class the past several days – it felt like our batteries had been recharged.

Our last day (Sunday) was spent at Cannonball Cave ().  This cave is found about 30 feet deep in Lake Wappapello which is a man-made lake.  Tami found the cave for us by tying the primary line onto a tree on shore and then searching through the 6-inch viz to find the cave entrance.  There is no way you could find this cave without having someone show it to you.  Cannonball is a very beautiful cave.  It’s a huge cave with these dark black ceilings, reddish walls and very silty floors.  Strange rock formations poke out through the silt all over the place.  You get into Cannonball by again crawling through a low & wide opening that has some good flow coming out of it.  Once you pop out into the cave you can tell it’s huge, but you still need to have perfect control in the cave as it is VERY silty.  We were going to be doing our jumps and circuits inside Cannonball.  We made our way through the cave admiring the formations.  Unfortunately we couldn’t see all of the cave as the viz was not that great.  The neatest thing inside of Cannonball are the arches – natural rock bridges that run across the tunnel.  Unbelievable – I’ve never seen anything like it inside of a cave.  I went over them my first dive and under them my second dive.  They were just the neatest thing ever. 

We made our way back to the pit – the pit in Cannonball is intimidating.  You swim to the edge of it and you are at 60 feet of depth.  You look down into the pit and you are looking down a massive tunnel that goes down to 300 and some feet if memory serves.  We did our first jump in Cannonball and went left around the pit.  As we circled the pit I kept looking down it, loving the feeling of hovering over that thing.  Very cool!  We made it around the pit and had to put our second jump in, back to the mainline.  Once we tied in we turned the dive and exited on our same route, confirming our lines on the way out.  Back out of the cave and into the cold and dark lake water.  Keith & Ethan had a good fire going for us to warm up by while our tanks filled.

Our second dive would be completing the circuit.  I blew a spring strap on this dive and ended up diving with one Jetfin & one Turtle.  A little lopsided but it worked out We went in, found our first jump and I lead around the pit.  It’s a very strange feeling (for me anyway) the first time you see someone reeling up a line behind you as you are going INTO the cave – you are committed to your path, that is for sure.  We made our way around the pit and George had an honest light failure!  I thought we were just experiencing another drill so as he was motioning to me, I got out my backup light to start my exit….  It took me a couple of seconds to realize that he wasn’t doing a drill   I put my backup light away and got back to completing the circuit.  Tami got into first position then, George got in the middle and I assumed the last position so I had to remove our second jump reel as we completed our circuit.  We exited the cave and came up to the surface full cave divers.

Cannonball was great, but I had two regrets about the cave.  First – the viz sucked, so we didn’t get to see as much of this huge cave as we wanted to.  Second, the permanent line in this cave is horrid.  I am really glad we weren’t doing line drills here, and I feel bad for anyone that would need to exit this cave on the line.  Several wraps had  been wrapped 20 or more times around the rock,  one wrap had a clump of line floating up above it, and at one point the gold line was wrapped around one of the natural bridges.  There is NO WAY you could safely follow that out of the cave – the arch is to big to follow the line around with your hands and you could not safely swim around (over & under) the arch in the dark with a buddy in touch contact – you would essentially be doing a somersault in the dark with your buddy trying to follow the line.  The line needs improvement.  It could just be that I’m not that experienced with the reasons of putting it in like that, but the thought of exiting on that line kinda gave me the willies.

The trip was awesome.  The caves were amazing.  I’m thrilled that there are diveable caves within a reasonable driving distance of where I live.  It was great training down there as I now have experience in the very unique Missouri cave environment – having trained in both Florida and Missouri gives me a great foundation to build on.  Tami rocked – she is a great instructor and has a ton of experience to draw on to make the class challenging and interesting.  I can’t wait to get back!

[Omicron]

Here are some photos from the trip.  All images were taken by Ethan Brodsky.

Here I am cutting George out of a line entanglement during a land lights out drill.  Great action shot of the line being cut   George's reel got tangled in the line.  Normally you wouldn't have a primary reel (the big red one) with you during a dive, but this was just for practice.



George is now the line that I need to negotiate - I've cut the line on the left side, which is the exit.  My only line to the surface is now George, and then the line he is holding.



This is us getting ready to dive in Bennet Springs



Here are some trout from the cavern zone in Bennet Springs



Just a few of the little guys



Here we are getting ready to dive in Roubidoux - you can see by the water that there is a heck of a flow coming out of the cave.



Roubidoux is under this concrete structure.  A road goes over the top of it.



Here's us getting ready to dive into Boiling Springs



A great photo op   The cave entrance is behind and to the left of the big limestone boulder



Heres me climbing down the hill to the lake to get into Cannonball



We're putting on fins and doing a pre-dive briefing at Cannonball



We even found some time for some dry caving!

[matt t.]

Nice report and photos. Looks like you guys had fun.

[Omicron]

It was a good time.  The only thing that was a bummer was trying to work safety reels with drygloves with the lights out.  I managed to do my share of reel fouling.  We were doing a lost line drill and I ended up just ripping my drygloves off during the dive so that I could actually feel the line that I was working with.  I toasted one safety reel and had to go to a backup.  Not good!

I ended up switching to 3-mil wetgloves for the rest of the trip.

[dfreeman]

Looks like you had a great time.  Getting you to dive Red Granite may be hard after an experience like this. 

Froze up here while you were gone.

Looking forward to the next dive.

Doug

[Omicron]

Nahhh... you know me.  If it's got water, I'll dive it

It's gonna be a little bit though.  My drysuit is being finicky.  I got damp on every dive, and on two dives I had wet socks.  I'm not putting myself through that while ice diving.  I've got to figure out where that leak is coming from.

[Vtach]

Congrats Jason and George, glad you had fun and didn't tie yourself into a knot. ;D

[Bubblemaker]

What was the conditions like as far as temp. Surface, at depth, ect.

I leave tomorrow for some warmer cenote dives In Mexico.

[ethanb]

Air temps were 15-45 degF and springwater was 55-57 (59 in Cannonball).  Surface water was only experienced briefly in the Big Piney River and a bit longer in Lake Wappapello and was probably in the low 40s. 

I'm not going to Mexico until January

Ethan