My Journey To Cave Country...

[Omicron]

Part 2...

We then began in water line drills. Our instructor ran the line and first gave us a tour of the Ginnnie cavern. Wow!! I was pretty impressed – it was pretty neat in the cavern…we went down to the great and my trim and kicks were perfect until I swam in front of that dang grate. Yikes….you can hear about it, but nothing preps you for hitting that huge flow coming out of that grate. I was also enjoying how much smoother I felt in the water without all that extra lead strapped on me. I now truly and firmly believe that lead is evil and I’ll only use it if absolutely forced to (ice diving probably….).

We did our open water line drills. Once around alone w/ eyes closed, once w/ partner in touch contact, once doing OOA w/ touch contact as donor, once doing OOA w/ touch contact as victim, once alone without your mask. After we did all that, we were doing in the cavern and ready to begin our actual drills in the caves.

We moved over to the Devil’s system and did the pre-dive briefing and got in the water. After doing the pre-dive check (bubbles, equipment, s-drill, turns) we made our way down into the spring. Good trim, good finning, nice hover as my team member made the tie offs and tied into the line. Then we began making our way into the cave – my god….I’ve been thinking about how to describe what I saw for two weeks and I still can’t bring it to words. I was like a kid in a toy store – looking everywhere, looking at the divers 200 feet ahead of me (I can actually see that far?!?! This is like swimming in air!!) looking at the cave walls – everywhere except my instructor who was swimming near the top of the cave while I was huffing & puffing in the high flow right in the center of the tunnel. Time to play follow the leader and get near the top. We made our way to the lips – and grabbed on. It’s kinda like trying to pull yourself through the grate at Ginnie. Pull and don’t let go. After the lips we got off to the side and did our lost diver drills and then made our way out of the cave. Line yourself up with the lips like a cruise missile, shoot out, hard left, gain altitude and just let the cave carry you out. We did our safety stop and the post-dive briefing. Our instructor made us frog kick up the spring run to the other spring as some extra practice for the night. Call it homework

The next day was at Peacock Springs on the Peanut line. Peacock is pretty neat because it is a low flow cave and it’s a little bit easier to concentrate on some of your technique. Our first dive we made it 400’ in and did our lights out drill. Kinda cool actually. We also did lights on OOA on the way out of the cave. Our second dive was lights out OOA w/ my partner using touch contact to exit. Another lights-on OOA on the way out. Our third dive I was OOA w/ lights out and touch contact. Another lights-on OOA on the way out. Our fourth dive I did a simple touch contact w/ a member from the other team as she had missed a dive earlier in the day and had to make up a drill. It was as good day of diving – my partner and I kept screwing up the lights on OOA though….either one of us would spin into the hose the wrong way, someone would go a little vertical during the drill…a little frustrating to screw up something so simple so many times. That night we spent considerable time back @ the campground with regulators around our neck using the road as the tunnel and doing OOA’s to get the spins and touch contact down to a science.

Our last day was also at Peacock. We had bagged so many drills the two days before and were doing well enough that we had kind of an enjoyment dive. Our instructor took us into the Pothole line on the first dive – you have to turn sideways and make your way down into the cave along a huge fault. It is soooooooo cool. You can see down to the bottom of the fault and the other divers below you, 50 feet down. But your buoyancy has to be amazing as it’s a mud buttom…come down the fault to fast and you have just destroyed the cave for the day. We didn’t even stir up a particle. As we did this, I was really starting to feel proud – here I am, three inches off the bottom of a cave, shuffling my fins along to get out from under the fault…and not a bit of silt, no bouncing up and down...man…this class was really starting to bring my skills together. It’s kind of like getting a cool new piece of gear to play with – you want to try it out, mess with it. You want to see how tight your control is, how fine your buoyancy is…your instructor has been working with you for a couple of days to hone these skills and all of a sudden they all just come together and they just click. Your chest gets huge and a grin hits your face – what a time. We turned the dive and made our way out…did lights on OOA again on the way out. That nice big feeling of pride I had a moment ago was quickly blown out of the sky as I grabbed onto my partners arm….the one that didn’t have the hose. Arrrrgghhh!!! So much for the skilled diver part. Can’t even share air properly….