Heading back to push it with more of the right gear and plans soon. I had longstanding plans to dive a different North Island cave the first week of September, 2012. But this new discovery warranted switching to this cave instead. I discussed this with Peter N. and he was cool with that so I got to work convincing Kevin, Brian and John to switch our plans. With our plans changed we were good to throw a decent sized team with various skills and resources.
Early September, 2012
Kevin flies up from SFO on a Friday afternoon while Brian left Edmonton on the previous Thursday. John had to work so he flies into Comox from Edmonton Saturday. While Peter N. left from Vancouver on Saturday morning at about the same time Kevin and I leave for the Port Angeles-Victoria ferry at 4:45 am. We all meet up halfway up the island and everyone introduces themselves in a brewpub in Campbell River.
Caravaning up island we make a last fuel stop in Sayward Junction before heading into the forestry road wilds. Bonus, the stand next door has ice cream. 2-2.5 hours out of Sayward Junction we’re at the trailhead. Eager to see what conditions are like we all scramble down the riverbank. Yay! The river has dropped 18” or more, flows should have dropped as well. The trail is downright snazzy too, Peter C. has left his mark. We drive up the last mile of forest road to camp where we meet Peter C., the last member of our Wet Dream team :p
We put up some pop ups but the wall tent is at another cave this week. Figures, it rains the first night, maybe 0.1”. Sunday, dive day 1 dawns clear though. John has hurt his back on the flight or drive out. And Peter N. is organizing his Meg CCR. So Brian, Kevin and I arrange a familiarization dive to the EOL with scooters and a stage. Brian is diving his KISS CCR although, Peter C. helps us haul gear to the cave entrance.
After a few hours of hauling, we’re soon zipping along my line from 3 weeks ago. Less than 15mins later between the reduced flow and the scooters we’re at the EOL. What the hell, we all look at each other like “that was easy” so I whip out the reel and add about 150ft of knotted 18# to the line. Unfortunately the cave is going down so our OC 32% poses a fairly quick limit to our impromptu exploration at 110’ max depth. Some of our hauling.
Me
Brian
The incomparable Peter C
Monday, dive day 2.
Kevin and I plan a double stage dive to just see if we can “duck under” the deep bit and see if the cave is trending upwards. Unfortunately that was not to be, the battery came loose in my borrowed Cuda and after fighting it for about 8 mins and way too much gas I grabbed Kevin’s rear D-ring and he towed me out. Peter N. and Brian had better fortunes swimming to yesterday’s EOL and proceeded to add another 175’ or so of line to a depth of 137’. The reported the cave was still going down, ugh.
Kevin and I had some conferencing and examined our available helium supply; an AL80 full of 3/91 and a full T bottle with 290cf of helium. It was only Tuesday, so I pondered how to maximized this limited resource and we agreed to try a double stage dive, one stage of 32% as a travel gas to 100ft, one stage of 21/35, 21/35 in Kevin’s lp85 doubles at 3600psi and 21/35 in my hp100 SM tanks. Needless to say, there was a lot of filling that night.
We would do ratio deco 1:1 but using O2 from an AL40 due to the what was called the aviary being a poor place to start EAN50 deco. So a 3 stage dive for us OC people’s. The aviary got renamed on this trip to “the shaft” since that’s what we naturally kept calling this 40ft high vertical borehole. Brian came along on his KISS. I don’t know what dil he was using this week, but we dropped an AL30 of O2 at 20ft, an AL80 of air bailout at the top of the shaft, and he carried another AL80 of trimix bailout along with an AL63 of 32% bailout for this dive. Brian came with Kevin and I to try to get video of the EOL getting pushed. Here’s Brian entering with his camera.
John decided his back was too sore to dive while Peter C. stole Peter N. to go survey a nearby dry cave. They named this cave Nunga Punga or “naked” in Urdu slang after the tiny Indian village in the Himalaya’s they discovered (after 20 years of friendship) both of their mother’s had been born in. While generally tough skinned British Columbian’s, both Peters quickly discovered they weren’t completely made of leather and Nunga caving was best avoided.
Back in the water, we made fairly quick work of getting to where Brian and Peter N. had left off the day before at 137ft. Fortunately that was the deepest point for our dive too as the cave started gradually rising. As we passed 100ft ascending at a 45 degree angle or so, the percolation was rolling downhill as fast as our bubbles ascended. The floor had been wavy sand hinting that this was the way on, but the silt suggested maybe we were in a dead end? We made it up to 85ft before calling the dive and swimming down through the 3ft vis until it managed to clear enough around 110ft depth and we were able to scooter home. We did 12mins of O2 deco although our max depth of 137ft and average depth of 75ft with a dive time of just over an hour didn’t call for much more than 5 mins. A bit extra O2 time was prudent, the chamber is a long helicopter ride back to Vancouver.
Dive day 4. Kevin, Brian and I plan a 3 stage plus O2 dive. The plan was to scooter to 100ft and drop a 32% stage, then carry on through the deep section with a stage of 25/25 until we hit ~90ft on the inside, drop that stage, then survey in as we continued the penetration on 32%. To add to this complexity Brian was videoing this while I carried an AL80 of bailout to drop at 100ft for Peter N. Peter’s plan was to survey the deep section from the 137ft mark back to arrow #3 at the 830’ penetration point. So I had O2, 2x 32% stages, 1x 25/25 stage, and an air bailout bottom for Peter N. This plan proved to be a PITA and took forever to ineffectively execute. The fact that my borrowed Cuda’s reed switch was faulty added to the slowness, but it was really all the stages which were killing us timewise. Compounding the mess, the fancy survey sheets I had printed on waterproof inkjet paper proved to not accept pencil. I had imprints of notes but no actual pencil graphite would transfer to the page, grrr. Dive time 97 min, max depth 137’, average depth 80ft, 12 mins O2 deco. 3 stages with dry gloves, laying line, surveying, and video was all a bit excessively complicated of a dive plan in retrospect.
Learning from yesterday, Kevin and I plan a 2 stage dive + O2. The plan is to scooter to the EOL then recheck our survey. On the exit we are going to finish Peter N.’s survey from yesterday from 100ft up to arrow #3 at 830’ p. I used my personal CSI Sierra to avoid the Cuda issues which were plaguing my loaner. We also skipped any sort of 32% travel mix and just blasted in on less than ½ an AL80 stage of 25/25 with 21/35 for backgas. We killed one stage and used part of stage #2 on this 65 min dive, never touching backgas, although Kevin was in backmount and avoid switching from stage to stage so he used about 300psi of backgas per day. In SM 100s I was able to switch stage to stage without much excess drama and saved even more backgas, using maybe 150psi from one tank for buoyancy. Hauling doubles or 2x hp100s back up the bank to refill was not high on our list of vacation must dos. Al6s were fine for suit inflation on all our trimix dives. It took us about 17min to scooter to the EOL even as a double stage dive using a Sierra. The survey was successfully amended so today was a big success.
Video from today, its dark, but duh it’s a cave and I was mostly focused on correcting/checking yesterday’s survey.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/D6I5UiV8CXk[/youtube]
The final tally for 2012 was about 1900ft of virgin cave
In plan
And profile
Peter N and Brian spent some time today on the downstream (siphon) line. It’s only 100ft long or so, and predictably ends in a gravel strainer. Peter N. thinks the cave will continue with an hour plus of rock gardening, but Kevin and I didn’t close enough to look that well.
Day 6
Brian and John decide to haul gear to the road today, to get back to Edmonton by Sunday. Kevin takes a rest day to haul his doubles up to the car and camp. Peter and I decide to do a scooter demo dive in the cave. This is Peter N’s first scooter dive, although he played with the trigger in the cavern earlier in the week. We joked about how I’d give him a cave DPV card if he survived :P Apart from one little unplanned dil flush, he did pretty well for scooter attempt number one.
