Missouri Cave Diving

[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!