patrick and i arrived at p1 a little later then i like to on tuesday to find that a few teams and a couple of classes had set up shop. our team had planned to run the ever popular crossover circuit as a shake down dive, with the nicholson as a backup. my buddy had completed all of his cave training in mexico and recently moved back to the states, and was anxious to see what north florida had to offer. after talking with some of the folks about where they were going (nicholoson, waterhole, and crossover of course!) we decided to take a swim up the peanut line and plan our dive based on gas supply and diver traffic.

after some gear rigging and a 6 foot one minute dive revealing a reg problem that stressed my save a dive kit to the max, we finally got moving. we picked up the pace through the peanut tunnel and into the breakdown room in an effort to avoid a class prepping for lost buddy/lost line drills. they were the last team we saw on our two hour dive.

we passed reels installed for the waterhole and for the crossover and decided to continue up the gold line in hopes that no one would be around. easily passing the peanut "restriction" we jumped to the olsen line and headed up to challenge. this section of the cave is one of my favorites, and i spent most of it flipped over taking in the large domes as well as the drapery rock formations. this section reminds me of telford, but is much wider, and without monsters. surfacing at challenge for a few minutes we decided to return to p1 via the olsen line after collecting our jump reel.

the olsen line was littered with cookies, presumably left by folks setting up for the grand traverse, but we didn't see any of the other teams. we poked into the crossover, checked out the arches on that side of the dark water tunnel, and took a quick look at the nicholson tunnel before exiting a few hundred psi away from thirds at p1.

i spent the entire dive as team second and enjoyed slowly looking around the mainlines that i tend to take for granted while traveling to more interesting parts of the cave. slow is fast i suppose.

water level continues to be way down, the spring run is dry, and the giant stride into p1 is gnarly. i used the steps to get in and out. it looks like vert equipment will soon be required gear to get into the water. vis is great.

122 minute run time
no deco
32% in bm 108's at 3600 psi.