Jackson Blue to 2200'

Monday dawned and it was moving day. We had found out that through Cave Adventurers we could get a diver discount at the Marianna Inn, so we could stay there for half the price we were paying at the Comfort Inn. On Friday night we had checked out the rooms because two other divers we met (Warren and Moody) were staying there. The rooms weren't as clean, nor the motel as fancy, but for half price they would definitely do. The Marianna Inn is actually next door to the Comfort Inn, but because you have to check out by 11am and can only check in at 2pm, we had to get everything into the holiday Ford. Kev is a genius packer! He managed to get everything packed in and still keep all our dive gear assembled and accessible for easy diving all day.

Marianna Inn on the left, Comfort Inn on the right

Today we would do two dives. Our first would be a proper cave dive in the new kit and scootering. We wanted to go back to the 1200' mark on the scooters and time it with the scooters, and then Kev wanted to bail-off on the way back at the 1000' mark and then swim the scooters back so that we could calculate how much gas we need for our bail-outs later on for deeper penetrations. I also wanted to take the left route from the first T to the second T to find out what Court's Squeeze was like.

Dive 1 to 1200' through Court's Squeeze

Scootering out was so much more comfortable. The wetsuit was warmer than the "dry" suit had been, buoyancy was better, the torch sitting in the glove on the right had was brilliant, having 2 stages one on each side improved my balance so I stopped falling over to the left, and our trim was so much better, we were actually getting speed going. The pics reveal a bit of redemption to the bad diving style I had on course.

The left passage is much prettier and more interesting to dive than the right, but the going is a bit slower because there are more twists and turns. Court's Squeeze is pretty tight for a back-mount profile like we have, but nothing too terrible. You can see through the tightest part of the restriction to the 2nd T, so we knew where we were as we went through it. It took about 30min to get to the turn around point that way.

Right on plan, Kev bailed out from 1000' and at 25m average depth we swam the scooters back (with the current). The bail-out test went off without any problems, and Kev only breathed 90 bar, so now we know that 1 cylinder could get us out 2000', and we each carry 2 cylinders, so we are safe for multiple rebreather and gas failures.

For dive 2, we wanted to go through King's Canyon, but when we looked at the map later, we must have missed a jump right to King's Canyon.You can't tell from the maps which passages are main (gold) line and which need a jump to a secondary (white) line. But now we know that King's Canyon needs a jump.

We scootered to 1200' along the right passage in a record time of 26min. After 1200' we scootered again until we got to another breakdown. Then we scootered again until we hit a place where there was a T. I was expecting more than two routes available, one for Queen's Canyon, one down the center and one to King's Canyon. Our plan was to always stick right, so we did. I thought maybe we were en-route to King's Canyon, but a bit further on we hit a wide and tall passage full of mounds of silt! This had to be the Hall of the Mountain King, so we were dead center.

We were going much slower now, and swim pushing the scooters. The floor was very silty, and neither of us wanted to disturb the silt. We were also pretty nervous. We were getting far into unknown territory. We hit another T and again stuck to the right. We must have gone through the upper route. Things were getting tight, and then we descended down a very narrow chimney into a very silty room. There was one rock where the line tied to, and close to it there was a large red light and a fire extinguisher, so this had to be the Trash Room, which gets its name because for some reason people's trash from the surface sometimes gets washed in and lands up here. I guess that's why the floor is so silty as well. At this point we were 2200' in (670m). We decided to turn around and head back, happy with our day's explorations. Wow! What a dive!