Little River

http://www.underwatercavephotography.com/

The day after Madison Blue we headed to Little River Springs which also contributes to the Suwnannee River about 20 miles south-east of Peacock Springs.

Road map from Peacock Springs to Little River Springs

Like Madison, Little River currently had a hectic current, but you are allowed to dive the cave system with scooters. We hadn't used our scooters since Ginnie, so we were excited to get them in the water again.

I couldn't find a map for Little River that is commonly used by people or published, but I did find a survey map from 1996 which has been upgraded with readable print (this is the one I used to mark our route), and then there are various other hand-drawn maps and even a cross section of the system. 

Map of our route through Little River to 1600' on the main line

Cross section of Little river

The actual 1996 survey map for Little River

Hand drawn (not to scale) map of Little River (entrance to the right on this map)

We knew that the tunnel from the entrance would lead us in an anti-clockwise corkscrew to a chimney that would drop us down to about 32m. We knew there was a T on the main line at the start of the "merry-go-round". And we planned to always stick right on the main line, leaving named cookies to mark our exit path wherever there was a T.

Little River is not a State Park, it is a County Park. It didn't have any built restrooms, but it did have some port-a-potties and huge wooden platforms leading down to the spring and river below the parking area. Similar to Madison Blue, the spring pumps almost directly into the river, but there was no noticeable bubble or boil of water coming out of the entrance which made us hopeful that the current wasn't flowing too strongly.

Little River Springs Board

Little River parking lot, spring entrance behind the Holiday Ford

View from Little River parking lot entrance out to the Suwannee and some boaters

Little River, clear blue spring water unmistakeable to the right, Kev walking to the river in the distance

Little River Springs, the cave system is pretty much below me, steps from parking lot on the right

There was one other diver getting ready to dive and we chatted to him while we kitted up, but he also hadn't dived here in a while and was unsure of cave conditions.

We carried our four stages and two cylinders down the many steps to the basin below and I realized just how much fitter I've gotten for carrying equipment, I hardly even noticed the weight of the stages. We jumped into the water and clipped everything on and then went to investigate the entrance. There is no current in the basin, but as soon as we got to the actual spring opening to the left of the dead tree in the water, we felt it pumping out hectically from the narrow shoot.

Me all clipped in and ready to dive in Little River

Dead tree looks like it's coming out of the entrance (left) to Little River

Kev was leading and he found a stake on the left hand side of the entrance which he hooked on to as the start of our line. Then pulling himself forward in the strong current with one hand and holding the line in the other, he managed to lay the line all the way down along the left hand side of the chimney to meet the main line on the left. The STOP sign is to the right as you enter. This first chimney (cavern entrance) goes from roughly 3m to 15m in depth and is about a 15m penetration. I got the nice easy job of following and using the scooter to maintain my position in the water, so I got to experience a full mid-current blast of the water flow in the entrance which would have been impossible if I'd been swimming, but using the scooter it was just fun.

Cavern entrance into Little River

Cavern entrance into Little River, over the ledge to the STOP sign

Once Kev had tied off, I took the lead. I had decided to keep the torch in my left hand even though my right hand was holding the scooter. I'd started putting the torch in my left hand at Peacock because my right knuckle is still injured and bruised from the scooter course we did when we first arrived. This was my first attempt at a left handed torch and right handed scooter since the course, and luckily worked really well. Even the added complication of dry suit inflation was easy to handle, and I noticed no additional drag scootering with the new dry suits.

The current was blowing hard, and I was thankful for the scooter to pull me along. The tube runs hard left from the entrance and then keeps bending left in a fairly tight circle descending to about 20-22 meters.

Photo taken from the STOP sign with cavern entrance up to the left and me entering the cave system

Little River cave entrance from the STOP sign, the tube bending left before me

Further along the corkscrew entrance in Little River

Still turning anti-clockwise towards the chimney in Little River

Then the passage hits the chimney where you turn 180 degrees as you drop straight down to 32m. The current was really blowing out of this chimney and I used the scooter at full speed but it hardly moved me forward and down at all.

Approach to the chimney in Little River

At the chimney in Little River, main line leads down on the left

Swimming down into the current at the chimney

Straight down the chimney (I'm heading vertically in this pic)

 I was pretty narked when I hit the bottom and I pushed along a bit to a little rocky indentation on the right and then lay down there to wait for Kev and check all my readings were ok and we were good to go. Kev joined me and we both checked our machines because a diluent flush with 32 percent at 33m gives a PO2 of about 1.3, so we couldn't flush our machines down which is a bit unnerving.

Then we set off again. The visibility wasn't great, but the walls are close so you could almost always see the whole tunnel. It is beautiful down there, once again very different from the other caves. The low part of the tube is worn away by the swirling water so it forms beautiful wave-like patterns. The floor is rocky with some sand. And then the upper parts of the limestone walls are streaked and pocketed. The higher flow is evident in the rounded off rock structures.

Towards the bottom of the chimney, I'm kicking hard to make the refuge over the ledge and to the right below me

At the bottom of the chimney, coming out of my refuge on the right with the beautiful twisted shell-like passage ahead and to the left

Little River Merry-Go-Round

The first T was much farther than I had thought it would be at 400', but I think it just felt further because it took us so long to get through the chimneys at the start. At the T, I marked our exit and we followed right. Very shortly after this we saw the jump to a tunnel that cuts through the center of the merry-go-round (the shortcut tunnel). It seemed that very shortly after this we hit another T, so the merry-go-round felt very small although it's shown as a full 400' loop to the right (again perhaps the scooters made this 400' go really fast). We continued through the system winding our way left and right along the passages, flying into that current with our scooters, it was fantastic.

At 1600' the passage started to narrow and the silt on the floor had been getting thicker since we left the merry-go-round. When I stopped using my scooter to start swimming through the passage because it was getting too tight, Kev stopped me and we turned and used both the scooters and the current to fly out of there at pace. It was about 45min time into the system, but we already had our TTS climbing towards 10min with a deco stop at 15m, and we still had to make our way back through about 1400' at 32m. We shouldn't have worried because combining the scooters and the current we often had to stop and use a finger on the walls to turn us and push us along into the passage. So cool!

When we got to the chimney, we checked our decompression stops and then used the walls to hold ourselves back and make a slow ascent while the current tried to spit us up and out. Then we floated with the current up the corkscrew, but as we approached the final chimney the pace of the current was hectic and if you let your fins point in the wrong direction you were going to get flung head-over-heels.

First we cleared our 12m stop down at 17m. Then Kev went to collect the reel and attempted to reel it in, but he was in the dangerous position for being flung out, so he handed the reel to me and I held it while he turned himself around. Now he had his face pointing into the current and his fins pointing up and out the rock-face. He took the reel back and reeled out and backwards like that. I tried turning to exit that way, but I didn't like it, so instead I put my fins back into the current, and used my heels to make sure that they didn't tip me over. Then I removed my buoyancy and lay flat down against the wall, pushing out from the rock-face with my arms and letting the current pick me up a few inches and then push me flat back into the wall. This was the most extreme exit I've ever made with deco, and it was great practice for us.

At 3m we could get out of the path of the spring current and into the restful basin and we hovered here allowing the memories of the dive to wash over us ... Hectic, but very cool and a lot of fun. Plus I think some of Kev's best cave pics yet. Awesome :)