Cave Diving in Mexico Over Thanksgiving with the GoPro HERO3
Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2012 8:50 am
We just got back from 2 amazing weeks of cave diving in Mexico over the Thanksgiving holiday with Austin (KitsapDiver) and Nick (LimeyX).
We had a total of 11 days of diving and got in ~36 hours of bottom time in a very nice mix of caves we’d already done, as well as new to us caves, including one that’s been at the top my “to do list” for 2 years.
I’ll spare you all the details. Those interested in a list of dives and profiles, I posted them at http://www.frogkickdiving.com/FKD_-_Cav ... g_2012.php. I'll get individual dive reports up as time allows.
This was Austin’s first time cave diving in Mexico. For our first dive, we took him to Nohoch. Nohoch was the reason I wanted to learn to cave dive, and should be on every cave diver’s to do list, imo. It’s almost sensory overload due to how incredibly decorated it is. It’s also shallow, expansive and wide, making for a nice dive to get acclimated to diving in Mexico. Though extremely delicate, Austin and I have dived together often, and I was well aware of his skill level, and I know the cave well. My only concern was spoiling him on day 1!
Over the next few days, we dived in a fairly diverse range of caves, ranging from white to dark, wide to fairly tight, large tunnels to delicate. Most of them were dives Jeanna and I had done in some of our favorites, or in caves we had done, but new to us areas of the caves. It was really fun to revisit some of them, and we found some very intriguing possibilities for future return visits. We also did a cave I'd been wanting to do for a while, but just hadn't gotten to (Calvera/Temple).
Austin was in town for 5 days of diving at the beginning of our trip, and Nick flew in for 7 days on the second part of the trip, with the both of them overlapping on Saturday.
We said goodbye to Austin, and hit the second week of diving. After our last trip last November, we had compiled a fairly large list of dives we wanted to do. Now it was just a matter of whittling down the list to 6 days of diving!
None of the dives disappointed, but my personal highlights were Hostage Hall in Mayan Blue…an enormous, airplane hangar sized room which took 10 minutes to swim end to end.
We also did a dive in Gran Cenote, one of my favorite caves. You can dive there a week and not repeat the same dive. This trip, we decided we’d try to traverse to Cenote Pabilanny, about a 4200’ swim, each way. There’s noticeable flow in Gran, so we’d swim into the flow to Pabilanny, and get spat out on the way back. This included multiple jumps and T’s (8 total, IIRC) and required double stages. We turned ~:15 before making it to Pabilanny, but it was an incredibly beautiful dive. To date, one of my favorite dives was the Lithium Sunset section of Sac Actun, and this rated very close in my book. Though we didn’t make it all the way to Pabilanny, we came up with a pretty good plan for a future visit.
The “To Do List” cave was Tux Kupaxa. We were unable to do this dive our last 2 trips, and ended up doing Lithium instead, so it was tough to complain. However, it still remained at the top of my list and I was determined to do it. Ends up, it took a lot of determination, as finding the landowner, making the trek in small rental cars on a brutally rough road tested our commitment to doing this dive. Nick had done this dive once back in 2010, and this way high on his list to try again as well. It certainly didn’t disappoint. We had an unreal 4 hour double stage dive, featuring some (very large) bones, highly decorated passage and some speleothems unlike any I’ve seen before.
Now, on to the GoPro HERO3 Black Edition. I got my hands on one just before we left and I was super excited to try it out in low light situations, and you can’t get much more low light than caves! I’d been using a HERO2, which I really liked, provided there was ample ambient light, as it simply wasn’t optimal in lower light. I wanted a camera that worked better in low light, but I also just don’t want the bulk of a larger camera and large lighting system. If the HERO3 worked well, it’d be the perfect camera for me, due to how small and compact it is.
I used it for several hours on several of our dives and I was very impressed and pleasantly surprised. I used 2 UTD Vision 24W video lights and was happy with the video I got.
It does have an occasional, annoying lock up problem, but my understanding is it is known and being addressed in the next firmware update.
The first video I edited was Tux Kupaxa. This was about midway through the trip, and I was still playing with the lighting, as well as the camera, so this isn’t the best video from the trip, but it was one of my favorite dives, which is why I opted to post this first. I plan to put up 1 or 2 more videos, which will show its performance with better adjusted lighting, but this provides a good idea of its capabilities and performance.
This was shot in 1080/30fps/Wide. I did not have the camera set to Protune, RAW White Balance on this trip, electing to just start with the basics and get used to the camera and lighting.
http://vimeo.com/54943507
We had a total of 11 days of diving and got in ~36 hours of bottom time in a very nice mix of caves we’d already done, as well as new to us caves, including one that’s been at the top my “to do list” for 2 years.
I’ll spare you all the details. Those interested in a list of dives and profiles, I posted them at http://www.frogkickdiving.com/FKD_-_Cav ... g_2012.php. I'll get individual dive reports up as time allows.
This was Austin’s first time cave diving in Mexico. For our first dive, we took him to Nohoch. Nohoch was the reason I wanted to learn to cave dive, and should be on every cave diver’s to do list, imo. It’s almost sensory overload due to how incredibly decorated it is. It’s also shallow, expansive and wide, making for a nice dive to get acclimated to diving in Mexico. Though extremely delicate, Austin and I have dived together often, and I was well aware of his skill level, and I know the cave well. My only concern was spoiling him on day 1!
Over the next few days, we dived in a fairly diverse range of caves, ranging from white to dark, wide to fairly tight, large tunnels to delicate. Most of them were dives Jeanna and I had done in some of our favorites, or in caves we had done, but new to us areas of the caves. It was really fun to revisit some of them, and we found some very intriguing possibilities for future return visits. We also did a cave I'd been wanting to do for a while, but just hadn't gotten to (Calvera/Temple).
Austin was in town for 5 days of diving at the beginning of our trip, and Nick flew in for 7 days on the second part of the trip, with the both of them overlapping on Saturday.
We said goodbye to Austin, and hit the second week of diving. After our last trip last November, we had compiled a fairly large list of dives we wanted to do. Now it was just a matter of whittling down the list to 6 days of diving!
None of the dives disappointed, but my personal highlights were Hostage Hall in Mayan Blue…an enormous, airplane hangar sized room which took 10 minutes to swim end to end.
We also did a dive in Gran Cenote, one of my favorite caves. You can dive there a week and not repeat the same dive. This trip, we decided we’d try to traverse to Cenote Pabilanny, about a 4200’ swim, each way. There’s noticeable flow in Gran, so we’d swim into the flow to Pabilanny, and get spat out on the way back. This included multiple jumps and T’s (8 total, IIRC) and required double stages. We turned ~:15 before making it to Pabilanny, but it was an incredibly beautiful dive. To date, one of my favorite dives was the Lithium Sunset section of Sac Actun, and this rated very close in my book. Though we didn’t make it all the way to Pabilanny, we came up with a pretty good plan for a future visit.
The “To Do List” cave was Tux Kupaxa. We were unable to do this dive our last 2 trips, and ended up doing Lithium instead, so it was tough to complain. However, it still remained at the top of my list and I was determined to do it. Ends up, it took a lot of determination, as finding the landowner, making the trek in small rental cars on a brutally rough road tested our commitment to doing this dive. Nick had done this dive once back in 2010, and this way high on his list to try again as well. It certainly didn’t disappoint. We had an unreal 4 hour double stage dive, featuring some (very large) bones, highly decorated passage and some speleothems unlike any I’ve seen before.
Now, on to the GoPro HERO3 Black Edition. I got my hands on one just before we left and I was super excited to try it out in low light situations, and you can’t get much more low light than caves! I’d been using a HERO2, which I really liked, provided there was ample ambient light, as it simply wasn’t optimal in lower light. I wanted a camera that worked better in low light, but I also just don’t want the bulk of a larger camera and large lighting system. If the HERO3 worked well, it’d be the perfect camera for me, due to how small and compact it is.
I used it for several hours on several of our dives and I was very impressed and pleasantly surprised. I used 2 UTD Vision 24W video lights and was happy with the video I got.
It does have an occasional, annoying lock up problem, but my understanding is it is known and being addressed in the next firmware update.
The first video I edited was Tux Kupaxa. This was about midway through the trip, and I was still playing with the lighting, as well as the camera, so this isn’t the best video from the trip, but it was one of my favorite dives, which is why I opted to post this first. I plan to put up 1 or 2 more videos, which will show its performance with better adjusted lighting, but this provides a good idea of its capabilities and performance.
This was shot in 1080/30fps/Wide. I did not have the camera set to Protune, RAW White Balance on this trip, electing to just start with the basics and get used to the camera and lighting.
http://vimeo.com/54943507
