Jackson Blue - King's Canyon

http://www.underwatercavephotography.com/
A 2700' penetration wasn't enough for the day, now we wanted to go back to do King's Challenge and King's Canyon. When we were in South Africa we bought and imported a dvd of people swimming through King's Canyon in Jackson blue, and so it's been something we've wanted to do from the start. Now that we'd been passed the jump's start and end three times, we felt we were ready.

Blue Springs Park was getting really busy, there was a group from Atlanta on their monthly dive trip (they had also rescheduled to Marianna because of the flooding at Ginnie), there was a guy from Moscow (!) with a guide called Kevin from Alabama, Edd was taking a course, and there were a few more people who we didn't get to chat to ... it was a mad-house.

Amongst the chaos we descended for our dive. The front section of the cave was definitely milkier from all the cave diving traffic, but we were headed out to the King's Challenge jump at pace, so it didn't really matter.

The jump to King's Challenge comes at about 1550'. After you've swum down a breakdown after the 1200' T, you swim along a flat passage that opens out and up with a large limestone dome forming the floor and then a crevice in that floor to the right with a limestone wall forming up against the right. Just before this, as you're swimming upward along the main line, you will notice the jump to King's Challenge at right angles to the main line and about 2-3m below it.

We had left our scooters at the breakdown after the third T (about 1400'). Kev was leading the dive, so he tied off our jump reel and off we went into King's Challenge.  From the jump the line cuts across open water and then follows the ceiling which slopes down and narrows. After 30m or so the line was hugging a horizontal crevice against the left wall and ceiling. The floor was a massive bed of deep thick silt. The line was about 1.5m to my left, my feet were touching the ceiling and my face was 20-30cm above the silty floor. It was hair raising. You always have to imagine the worst scenario and how you would recover from it while cave diving. The worst scenario in this case would have been a silt-out and having to squeeze ourselves further into the crevice and silt to get hands on the line, and then somehow follow it outwards with us on the floor and it tight to the roof. It would have been very tough, and was definitely something to avoid.

We followed that narrow passage around to the left and then we hit King's Canyon. The canyon towered above us. We followed the crack along the line upward from about 28m to 20m and when we started to swim forward again there was still a huge canyon above and below us. Spectacular :) Eventually we turned another slow bend to the left and there ahead we spotted the main gold line.

We were very naughty here in terms of cave diving. We knew from the maps and topography that the jump had to be to the main line. I even saw the arrows on the line, and it was gold with knots. But the rule is one continuous line to the surface. We should have either reeled the jump and then swum along the main line to find our first jump, or turned around and gone back through the canyon the way we'd come. But after hovering over a large limestone rock that the main line was tied on to, and chatting away at each other about whether or not to follow the line without putting in a jump, we decided to risk it. We both memorised that rock, and although we were 110% sure that this was the main line, we also spent the next few minutes in doubt, swimming along making sure that we didn't pass any other large rock tie-offs. I heard the whoop when Kev spotted our first jump reel and was washed with relief. We had made the circuit, we had seen King's Canyon! :)

Jackson Blue to 2700' (Sweet Passage)

http://www.underwatercavephotography.com/
It was time. We wanted to push the main line to the Sweet Passage ... about 2600' (800m). In preparation we asked for diluent fills to 30% helium and ended up with a 20/37 mix (20% O2, 37% He). This was a bit rich, but we worked out that the helium would only double our decompression time to about 15min for an 80min dive. Although the max depth of Jackson Blue is only about 28m, you still get "narked" to a level of 3 shots of whiskey, and although we hadn't noticed being narked, our memories of different areas of the cave differed and were a little bit vague. Helium would solve this problem, and for a dive to 800m penetration, why not?

The helium worked brilliantly. We reeled in and then scootered to just beyond the third T where the main line splits into the lower and upper route. There, at the rocky section before the chimney down to the trash room, we clipped off our scooters. At this point the dive time was just 26min, we had made good time. I was leading this dive, and as I swam down into the trash room I couldn't believe the difference to the last time we'd been here: the chimney wasn't as tight; it was crystal clear how the line from the lower route joined the line from the upper route; the floor didn't even look as silty, in fact the room was huge with plenty of space. We got familiar with the tie-offs and then continued deeper into the cave along the main line. Just after the trash room, there is a huge passage with tall ceilings and nice topography. In fact, after that chimney the route didn't get narrow again, and while I was swimming up ahead of Kev, I kept thinking how he'd be cursing that we were swimming this section instead of scootering.

We made the 90 degree left around the Elbow on the map, and swam on until about 100' after the 2600' marker to 2700' (820m). We were just in front of another massive room where the line dipped right when we hit 42min and it was time to turn the dive. Sweet passage really is sweet :) This was a beautiful dive! The way back was more beautiful than the way in because I was behind Kevin and could swim above him and see his light reflections as well as mine. It was awesome, and no problems with the machines. I also had my heated vest at 60% from where we clipped off the scooters and 100% on the way back, and it managed to keep the freezing shakes away. Woooohooooo :) Total dive time 86min, max TTS 13min.

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!