Tom Falardeau
April 3rd, 2007, 08:11 PM
This morning, we returned to Little River, arriving around 10:30AM, after a quick self-service fill at Amigo's, run by the friendly and easy-going Wayne Kinard. To our surprise, the only humanoids around other than Marie and me, were a dive team of two and a solo sidemounter. No brats, no local gentry sipping barley pops.... hmmmm, maybe two dives here will be possible after all.
As we got geared up, a sporty car pulled in, disgorging two lovelies in skimpy outfits, evidently intent on sunbathing. Other than that, the birds chirped, the solo diver went in - then so did we. I put in the line to the main, then we dropped down quickly to the 90ft level and proceeded into the cave. At the Merry-Go-Round & Serpentine split, I led us to the left and, within a few dozen feet, the un-marked jump to the Harper Tunnel. Our solo sidemounting friend had preceeded us and placed a jump with a violently fluorescent green line - very hard to miss.
We slowly made our way into the Harper tunnel, noting with dismay the large amount of fin slices, drag marks and other damage to the fragile clay bottom and mounds in the tunnel. Let me digress for a moment.
It seems like cave diving nowadays is degenerating into the same kind of nonsense as the recreational dive industry, churning out unqualified divers. I've seen it around cave country - instructors who don't challenge their students, figuratively kick their behinds to get them into a high performance state of mind. The end result is divers who have no business calling themselves cave divers, let alone dive places like the Harper Tunnel. It breaks my heart to see the damage. My advice to anyone who has, is or will take cave dive training - if your instructor doesn't kick your butt, challenge you until you're ready to quit and work you until you're dying of fatigue. He's a zero - and as a cave diver, you will be a zero too. If your instructor hasn't taught you how to lay a line in really bad flow, make your way through a cave without damaging the environment and remain aware at all times - then that instructor is an even bigger zero, and any diver he or she certifies is equally a big, useless zero. Believe me when I tell you I've seen instructors like that - and the students they produce. The graduates may have a c-card that says "Cave", but by no stretch of the imagination are they cave divers - you know, the kind of divers I'd trust with anything more than carrying my tanks to the water.
Rant Off.
We met our solo sidemounter a few hundred feet into the Harper tunnel, he having just turned (as he told us when we chatted on the surface). We went in a few hundred feet more and turned the dive ourselves. On the way back to the gold line, I had further occasion to dwell on the damage done to fragile clay formations by idiots with no business diving caves, the result of said dwelling being the rant above.
We made it back without further side trips to more unmarked low, silty tunnels, but upon surfacing, after a 63 minute dive (max depth 102), we found the site being slowly overrun by kids who should be in school and parents who should be at work. Fortunately, the "Brain-a-diver" semi-finals had not yet been announced and we made it out with no further assaults by someone's charming little angel. Our contemplation of doing a second dive at Little River was shattered by the sight of a couple of local gentlemen in full reglia (sleeve-less t-shirt, straw cowboy hats, chin beards) pushing a full size bar-b-que and several coolers of beer towards the site. That, and the continuous stream of arrivals looking for a party kind of shattered the moment. We left the hoi-polloi to their ethnic fun and headed for Pea**** III, stopping only for fills at Dive Outpost, owned by the lovely Cathy Lesh, and lunch at the Luraville General Store.
As usual, Pea**** III was ours to enjoy in private. A wise philosopher once said, Pea**** I is for tourists, Pea**** III is for cave divers. This time, we took the 2nd jump and swam up a sometimes tight, but always silty and nasty secondary line, rejoining the gold line about 1200ft in. At that point, we jumped to the gold line and returned to the entrance, completing the circuit. Pea**** III has plenty of unmarked side-tunnels, and we are getting somewhat better at spotting them. Several have attracted our attention for some further exploration during the next cave country trip in the fall.
Before surfacing, we entered the Balcony tunnel at the 25ft mark and swam to the Pea**** II cavern zone. This time, I surfaced to satisfy my curiosity as to the exact location of the opening. It proved to be about 20ft from where we'd entered the water, in the pond between the Pea**** I and Pea**** III ponds (d'uh :? who'd have thunk it). Total dive time: 69 minutes.
After my first dive in Pea**** III last fall, I dismissed the system as uninteresting. Boy, was I wrong. It's proving to be more interesting and fun than Pea**** I - nasty, silty, dark and thoroughly devoid of tourist cave divers.
Tomorrow, Madison Blue.
As we got geared up, a sporty car pulled in, disgorging two lovelies in skimpy outfits, evidently intent on sunbathing. Other than that, the birds chirped, the solo diver went in - then so did we. I put in the line to the main, then we dropped down quickly to the 90ft level and proceeded into the cave. At the Merry-Go-Round & Serpentine split, I led us to the left and, within a few dozen feet, the un-marked jump to the Harper Tunnel. Our solo sidemounting friend had preceeded us and placed a jump with a violently fluorescent green line - very hard to miss.
We slowly made our way into the Harper tunnel, noting with dismay the large amount of fin slices, drag marks and other damage to the fragile clay bottom and mounds in the tunnel. Let me digress for a moment.
It seems like cave diving nowadays is degenerating into the same kind of nonsense as the recreational dive industry, churning out unqualified divers. I've seen it around cave country - instructors who don't challenge their students, figuratively kick their behinds to get them into a high performance state of mind. The end result is divers who have no business calling themselves cave divers, let alone dive places like the Harper Tunnel. It breaks my heart to see the damage. My advice to anyone who has, is or will take cave dive training - if your instructor doesn't kick your butt, challenge you until you're ready to quit and work you until you're dying of fatigue. He's a zero - and as a cave diver, you will be a zero too. If your instructor hasn't taught you how to lay a line in really bad flow, make your way through a cave without damaging the environment and remain aware at all times - then that instructor is an even bigger zero, and any diver he or she certifies is equally a big, useless zero. Believe me when I tell you I've seen instructors like that - and the students they produce. The graduates may have a c-card that says "Cave", but by no stretch of the imagination are they cave divers - you know, the kind of divers I'd trust with anything more than carrying my tanks to the water.
Rant Off.
We met our solo sidemounter a few hundred feet into the Harper tunnel, he having just turned (as he told us when we chatted on the surface). We went in a few hundred feet more and turned the dive ourselves. On the way back to the gold line, I had further occasion to dwell on the damage done to fragile clay formations by idiots with no business diving caves, the result of said dwelling being the rant above.
We made it back without further side trips to more unmarked low, silty tunnels, but upon surfacing, after a 63 minute dive (max depth 102), we found the site being slowly overrun by kids who should be in school and parents who should be at work. Fortunately, the "Brain-a-diver" semi-finals had not yet been announced and we made it out with no further assaults by someone's charming little angel. Our contemplation of doing a second dive at Little River was shattered by the sight of a couple of local gentlemen in full reglia (sleeve-less t-shirt, straw cowboy hats, chin beards) pushing a full size bar-b-que and several coolers of beer towards the site. That, and the continuous stream of arrivals looking for a party kind of shattered the moment. We left the hoi-polloi to their ethnic fun and headed for Pea**** III, stopping only for fills at Dive Outpost, owned by the lovely Cathy Lesh, and lunch at the Luraville General Store.
As usual, Pea**** III was ours to enjoy in private. A wise philosopher once said, Pea**** I is for tourists, Pea**** III is for cave divers. This time, we took the 2nd jump and swam up a sometimes tight, but always silty and nasty secondary line, rejoining the gold line about 1200ft in. At that point, we jumped to the gold line and returned to the entrance, completing the circuit. Pea**** III has plenty of unmarked side-tunnels, and we are getting somewhat better at spotting them. Several have attracted our attention for some further exploration during the next cave country trip in the fall.
Before surfacing, we entered the Balcony tunnel at the 25ft mark and swam to the Pea**** II cavern zone. This time, I surfaced to satisfy my curiosity as to the exact location of the opening. It proved to be about 20ft from where we'd entered the water, in the pond between the Pea**** I and Pea**** III ponds (d'uh :? who'd have thunk it). Total dive time: 69 minutes.
After my first dive in Pea**** III last fall, I dismissed the system as uninteresting. Boy, was I wrong. It's proving to be more interesting and fun than Pea**** I - nasty, silty, dark and thoroughly devoid of tourist cave divers.
Tomorrow, Madison Blue.