The Grand Traverse - Orange Grove to Olsen to Peacock

The Grand Traverse from Orange Grove to Challenge to Olsen to Peacock I

The Grand Traverse through Olsen with above ground mapping

Peacock Springs Distances

With three dives into Peacock under our belt, we decided that we were ready to do the Grand Traverse. Everyone talks about this 4671' (1.4km) route from Orange Grove Sink to Peacock I. We had not explored the 3207' (almost 1km) from Orange Grove to Olsen through Challenge, which made the dive all the more exciting. It is much easier to make this traverse on a rebreather. Kev and I carry 4 Ali 80s with us, and at our breathing rate at 30m depth, one Ali 80 would give us 2000', so we can individually be at least 3000' away from air at any time, and together about 6000'. The average depth in Peacock is also only about 15m which is half the depth and should mean we'd only breathe out an Ali 80 in 4000', which gives us an extra margin of safety. Even if we got from Orange Grove all the way to Olsen and found we couldn't continue onto a known line and both our rebreathers failed at that point, we would still make it back to Orange Grove on the gas we carry. A person on open circuit would have to make sure that thirds could get them halfway from each side before attempting the full traverse. What also gives you peace of mind is that you are actually never more than 900' from one of the sinks or springs, and this also adds some flavour to the journey.

The mozzies at the moment are killer, and it was rainy, so we took a black plastic bag to the Peacock entrance parking lot and left shorts, t-shirts, shoes and mosquito repellant for when we climbed out and had to make the walk back to Orange Grove.

Kev leaving the mosquito repellant and bag of clothes at Peacock parking lot

Our clothes and shoes waiting for us at Peacock parking lot

Kev walking back to the car in his booties at Peacock parking lot

Then we measured the drive from Peacock to Orange Grove ... about 0.65 miles (1 km), a 400m shorter walk than the windy route we were about to swim through underground.

At Orange Grove we took our cylinders down and had a look at the extremely swampy smelling and duckweed covered sink.

Kev walking down from the Orange Grove parking lot to the sink

Platform leading to Orange Grove Sink

Orange Grove Sink, covered in duckweed and smelling pretty swampy

Beautiful swamp tree in Orange Grove Sink

Aside from the duckweed, the water beneath was dark red with tannic water. We started to get concerned that we wouldn't even find the entrance to the cave as we'd never dived here before. All we knew was that one diver had told us that if descended below 50' then we would have missed the entrance. Already nervous about this long dive, our concern sky-rocketed.

So we kitted up and climbed into the swampy, dark water. At first, and together (because I couldn't see Kev if he was more than a body length away from me), facing the steps in the water, we tried going down and following the slope to the right. After going down about 6m we came back up. Kev thought the entrance still might be there on the right, but I'd noticed some rocks to the left, so I suggested we went down left. I started down and followed the rock face until I saw a tree which I swam over and kept heading downward watching my depth gauge. Between 12 and 15m the opening of the cave yawned in front of me, large, crystal clear and blue. I then spotted a temporary reel leading into the cave from a log just outside which has been placed there to help divers in these poor conditions. We'd found it! And it was clearer than Peacock had been! Yes!

I turned hoping to find Kev right behind me, but had to ascend up a little towards the tree before I dimly saw his light and could signal him over and show him the entrance. Woohoo, we were ready to start the Grand Traverse!

I would be leading today. The dive from Orange Grove to Challenge was calm and relaxing. Orange Grove is pretty much just a solution tube with an orange looking floor of sand and clay and silt, and orange looking limestone walls that actually looked a bit like melted plastic. The water visibility seemed fantastic compared to Peacock and there appeared to be much less of the dark-red tinge in the water. But the tunnel also isn't huge and I was in front, so I didn't really notice how green Kev's torchlight was, it may just have been the distances from side-to-side and ceiling-to-floor that made the water appear clearer.

Orange Grove Sink entrance with walls and floor looking melted

Orange Grove

Orange Grove solution tube

Orange Grove

Orange Grove, really showing the orange clay bottom

At about 700' from the Orange Grove entrance we approached a huge opening in front of us, but the line hooked right at 90 degrees through the rocks and then hooked left again at 90 degrees opening out into a wide room. I waited just outside for Kev to get through and to exchange a wide-eyed "this is cool" moment.

Then we set off again, passing the 900' halfway mark where the line arrows start to count down towards Challenge Sink. As we approached Challenge the passages got more winding and narrower with lots of red silt below us and some mud banks. We also saw more and more domes where tannic water was just hanging there stagnant against the ceiling. And then we were climbing up the slope into Challenge Sink. I made my way through the sticks and debris and when I got to the end of line I saw that another reel had already been laid making the jump across the 1 to 2m gap to the other line leading out of the sink.

Kev joined me at the gap, and we decided to poke our heads out and have a look at the sink above water and breathe some forest air. It is really cool popping your head up after a long swim into some unknown opening in the forest. We had taken 50 minutes to swim the 1773' (540m) to Challenge. The sink is very small and circular with a diameter of about 3m and steep walls heading out and up into the forest. I would not like to have to try and clamber out of there! As we had a quick chat and look around, we could hear the traffic from the road nearby. Challenge Sink is actually across the road from Orange Grove and Peacock, so at some point in our swim we had passed underneath the road, and we would be passing back again at some point on our way to Olsen.

After just a minute or two we descended back down to continue our journey. After I'd dropped back down to 12m I changed the set-point on my primary back to 1.2 and checked the battery. It was already at 3.9 and we weren't even halfway, so I changed the display brightness down by pressing the right button a few times until the screen was black to my eyes. Only about a minute later I looked to check my PO2. A few presses on the right button should highlight the display again, but I pressed twice and then saw my handset turning on and displaying the start screen! Not again! I'm still not sure if this was brought about by pressing the buttons or by bumping the battery compartment a little. This is the second time my primary has switched off or restarted during a dive since the service. I was not really concerned as we've learned not to trust that our handsets stay on, so I continued the dive without even trying to show Kev what had happened.

The passages and rooms just after Challenge on the way to Olsen are, I think, the most beautiful in the whole system. The rooms are huge and white, vast and cathedral like. There are cracks and domes and crevices. It is magnificent. The visibility was excellent, I loved this part of the journey.

We hit the 700' halfway marker where the countdown starts to Olsen Sink. Just after that we hit a jump where a reel had been laid by someone else that went across to a gold line that went upwards to the right and disappeared into a small hole in a pile of sand. That had to be the Peanut Restriction. Then our line ducked left and went through a very low passage where my face was inches from the silt and my fins touching the ceiling. I hoped I wasn't making too much of a mess for Kev. Then we wound our way upward to Olsen Sink and this time without hesitating I made my way upward and out through the trees and debris into the opening.

Olsen Sink information board

Olsen sink viewing platform

Olsen Sink (we poked our heads up for the second time in there)

Soon Kev joined me. We made a bit of a mess of the pool coming out and then hunting around for the other opening that would take us back to Peacock.This time Kev spotted it and called me over and we were back on our trip. We had done this part of the line before, so it was a bit like coming home.

2h12 after setting off from Orange Grove, we ascended into Peacock. We had made it! The Grand Traverse!

Rain was pouring down which put a bit of a dampener on things :) There wasn't much point in getting into our dry clothes which we'd left in the black plastic bag. But worst of all, the mosquitoes were out with a vengeance, and the mosquito repellant just washed straight off. My forehead was bulging with bites afterwards.

Flooded Peacock Springs parking lot

Mosquito-bite head

Kev walked the flooded road back to Orange Grove while I pulled our stage cylinders out of Peacock Springs. What a day, what a dive, what a tour :)

http://www.underwatercavephotography.com/

Peacock 1 - The Crossover Circuit

On Sunday our plan was to repeat our effort to make Olsen Sink from Peacock I which is 1464' (446m). We wanted to try and go through the sink and continue up towards Challenge Sink which is another 1434' just so that we could see what the route looked like, so that when we did the Grand Traverse from Orange Grove to Peacock we would recognise the route. But we also wanted to do The Crossover jump so that we could find the reel we'd laid yesterday from the Peanut line so it was going to be a long dive.

I was leading this time round. We descended the chimney and I'd been told to look out for turtle bones that were resting on a ledge in the caves. I wasn't sure if the bones were here or at Pothole Sink, so I had a good look at all the ledges to the right after the chimney and as I looked upward I saw what looked like a skull looking down at me! I got a huge fright and checked it twice to make sure I wasn't seeing things. Then I chuckled and thought "well that's a great omen for the start to a dive" and on we went. We took it easy to Pothole and just after the turn I spotted the turtle bones I'd missed yesterday just sitting on the ledge. They were huge!

Skull someone has put up on a ledge looking down at you as you swim into Peacock I

Turtle bones found in the cave and laid on a shelf for divers to see just after Pothole Sink

We headed around and onward toward Olsen. Just before Olsen the rooms start to get really beautiful. They're tall and a bit narrower so that you can get the reflection from both sides of the white limestone walls in this level of visibility. The main line ducks through a hole in one of the limestone walls but there is also space below to pass through the structure. I really enjoyed this section of the cave. Then it started to get narrower and head upward on a huge slope of silt. At about 10m the line ducked right and there was a jump marked. We followed the line up to Olsen Sink and I pushed myself forward to a narrow point where I could see the light and the trees, but I could also see that there were lots of branches and debris in the way on the route out. I decided against heading up there, in fact I couldn't believe that there was enough space up there for another entrance or line, so I moved back down and indicated to Kev to go and take a look, and then we turned around and headed back to the jump.

At the jump we swam across and looked at the line and Kev indicated that it wasn't yellow. This meant that it wasn't the main line from Olsen to Challenge, but it was most probably The Crossover jump. So I grabbed Kev's reel and we made the jump and then I headed on along this white line. The passage was narrower, dark and extremely silty. As I swam into one room I pointed my light upward and it was just black above me. As my light moved upward along the white limestone wall it just disappeared into blackness. This had a very ominous feel and I couldn't quite work it out. Was there another blacked over opening above us? What was going on? Then I moved along a bit further and my light disappeared onto wall of darkness ahead. It was then that I clicked ... this was tannic water. We'd been told about the pockets of tannic water left over from the flooding and this was it. There was no way I wanted to swim into that wall of blackness. This had to be the first time ever in a cave that I've thought of "monsters in the dark". It was scary and I wanted nothing to do with it just yet. So I signaled to Kev a turn around, and we headed back.

Kev collected up the reel and I picked up my cookie and we started on the return journey. Now Kev was in front, so I had more time and light to examine the cave. Now that I'd seen a tannic pocket up close and personal, I could notice both the tannic in the water blocking our light from reaching the walls, and the very dark tannic pockets above us that closed in around the ceiling blocking off our view of the real limestone rock above us.

The cave depth in Peacock goes up and down constantly. And at one section as I watched Kev disappear under a wall I tried to clear my ears and my left ear stuck. Uh-oh. I signaled my light quickly left to right to try and notify Kev that I needed to go backwards and up a bit but he kept going. I tried to make the duck under but it was painful and since I still had space above in which to clear it I didn't want to push it. So I signaled again quickly this time up and down and he noticed and turned. I showed him ear problems and asked him to wait on the line while I went up a couple of meters to clear the ear pressure. This was my first time ever to feel a real bout of nervousness inside a cave about my ears. I knew we had over 300m of traveling up and down to get back to the entrance and if my ear wouldn't clear I faced possibly bursting the ear drum and lots of pain. But about 3m up it cleared and I quickly descended and indicated to Kev "let's go". Phew!

We passed some divers heading in as we headed out and up the chimney. At about 9m in the chimney we had a quick underwater exchange about heading back along the Peanut Line and picking up our reel. Our dive time was only about 90 minutes at this point, and we were equipped and prepared for at least another 90 minutes or more. We were still warm in our cosy dry suits, so we decided to go and fetch the reel.

Once again, I took the lead and we headed off. The Peanut Line was just as nice as our first dive here. In 6-8m visibility, close walls are the difference between feeling dark and feeling light. Plus it's fun to pull yourself along a narrow passage that isn't silty and it gives you a break from swimming. After we descended down the breakdown, I lay down on a huge flat limestone rock and pulled off my mask and cleared my sinuses and got all freshened up and ready for the swim ahead.

Once we got to our reel at The Crossover, I indicated to Kev that I wanted to follow the line we'd jump to and see if we could meet back to the main line we'd left at Olsen about an hour ago. I couldn't have swum more than 100-200' when once again I encountered the black wall of tannic water. This time I wasn't nearly as spooked as I'd been on the Olsen side. Both Kev and I closed in on it and where exclaiming how amazing it is that it forms such a wall. There isn't much flow in that tunnel, so surely the layers should mix with each other, but they don't. They form a layer as oil would on water. What is in the tannic water that means that the viscosity is so different to that of the spring water? Not only that but when I floated into the tannic water along the line with my fingers circling it because visibility was so low, the temperature spiked upward. We thought that we would try to push through that tannic layer, and Kev took the lead (clearly I was still a bit spooked by this weird warm dark block of "mist" in our way), but after just 3m where I could barely see my own hand on the line, Kev also turned back into me and we exited. We later found out that if we had just followed the line for another 10m or so, we would have come out of the tannic to where we'd been on the Olsen side. What an awesome experience though. I still want to know what's in that water and why it doesn't mix with the spring water.

We got back to our reel and I collected it up and then I followed Kev out on a nice relaxing exit. Our total dive time was 2h20, our approximate distance was 5274' which is a 1.6km swim non-stop underwater! ... very nice dive :)

Map of our swim around Peacock 1, Olsen, The Crossover and Peanut