Blue Spring Resurgence, TN
Blue Spring Resurgence
As seems to be the case, it has been more nearly two years (within 10 days) since our last real dive in The Blue Spring Resurgence. I say real dive, as there have been two dives since- One, a few months ago, when Tamara Thomsen came down for a "girls" campout in blue springs cove, and made a short dive into the resurgence to find the line chopped to pieces. The second, about three weeks ago was made when I went in to replace the front 200 feet of line, which seems to get blown out annually in the strong spring floods. With the front line replaced, and weekly reports about how great the water looked, Chrissy and I finally got around to heading back to the Blue Spring Resurgence, which happened to correspond with another camping trip with the now infamous TAG video-biographer Anne Elmore.
After attending the Tennessee Cave Survey's fall meeting, I met Chrissy and her crew at the spring, fresh from racing around with the landowner Lonnie Carr on his four-wheelers and getting a full historic accounting of the happenings on his property over the last 200 years. Chrissy and I had decided that we would make a short dive into the system to get refamiliarized, check line conditions, and look for a side passage in the front 200 feet of the cave. She had been having issues with her new shoulder dump leaking into her drysuit, not a good condition in 50 degree water.
On the first dive, despite all of the crowing about fantastic conditions, we found the water clarity to be in the 5-6 foot range, not the best we have seen, but certainly not the worst. Curiously, it had the same milky look as Cow Crap the week previous.
We entered the cave and began the search for the side passage, and within 200 feet we found one. I'm not sure if this was because we just wanted to find one, or there are really a whole bunch of side passages that we never see in the poor visibility. Either way, it took about 200 feet of line, and went shallow, ending at about 11 feet of depth. There was a deep crack leading off, but that most likely dropped back into the main passage. We continued up the main line, eventually passing the end of the Woody's line, and coming to the three way T. As we turned past the T, we began to hit pockets of clear blue water- ocassionally it would be at the ceiling- you could see across the ceiling for 20 feet in any direction, and below would be a white haze, almost like a hydrogen sulfide layer, ocassionally it would be on the floor- where you could see herds of blind crayfish on the flat floors. Eventually Chrissy hit thirds and we turned the dive, for a total bottom time of 90 minutes.
Excited by the clear water pockets, and the possibility of encountering the clear water passage we had seen two years ago, we were ready for a big dive on Sunday. We decided that since we had reached the T in less than thirds, we would only have Chrissy carry one stage, so we would be able to move more quickly through the smaller front of the cave. Late sunday morning, we geared up, and headed into the water, with Lonnie, Anne and Clinton taking watch posts at the springhead. We told them jokingly, "we should be about 2 hours, plus or minus 2 hours," and headed into the cave.
After about 45 minutes of swimming, passing the wallbones, the coral head, the ceiling tie-off, the deep space room, and finally the end of woody's line and the three way T, the water began to clear again, and soon we could see all the way across the passage- a flat floor and ceiling about 30 feet across with blind cave fish and crayfish coming at us from all directions, and then we were at the end of the previous survey. I whipped out the book, and we began surveying, with Chrissy lighting up my book from behind (we couldn't find a good mask light) and made quick work up to the walrus beach. Chrissy was excited- she had carried her stage much further than the last time, and still had nearly 500 pounds remaining until thirds in each tank! This meant we might just be able to make the anticipated connection to the CR survey on this dive! We continued the survey across the walrus beach, and plopped back into the water on the far side. two hundred more feet of survey and we were at the end of the line. The water had gotten a little milkier than the deeper passage, possibly from people walking in the streams in the cave, but it was difficult to be sure. I tied in the reel, and began streaming the line down the huge passage. Tie offs became scarce- there was no more breakdown in the passage and the walls were covered with fine mud- all of it too soft to tie off to. After about 300 feet we came to a waterfall splashing into the passage- We stuck our heads out and looked up the narrow chimney. I tied the line off out of the water, on the off chance that someone might peek down the waterfall and see our line. We continued on, but the air on the water became more common, and our max depth was hovering around 6 feet deep. Soon, our fears became realized as the floor climbed to 4 feet, then 3 feet, then 2 feet. Soon, we were groveling in the mud trying to avoid the horrible air filled passage. Resigned to failue, we sat up and tried to comprehend the walking borehole stretching out in front of us. I wanted nothing of it, and was ready to tie off the line on a mud pile and turn around. Chrissy wasn't having it and was already taking her tanks off. Used to being told what to do in our relationship, I dutifully removed my tanks and walked the reel over to the wall and tied if off, about 3 feet from the floor, just in case we were in known passage and some cavers wandered by.
We started strolling down the passage- a nice solid floor with a small stream running between chert slabs and mud panels, easy walking. After a few minutes, when it didn't seem to want to stop, we started wondering where exactly we were. Chrissy had no luck finding survey stations, I was seeing no footprints or any marks on the walls indicating anyone had been here. We continued on up the passage. I tried to reason with Chrissy that this was really no fun, and we should turn back as Lonnie was surely going to be worried when we overran our two hour dive time, but she ignored my protests completely and skipped off down the borehole. After about 500 feet we came to an intersection- Ahead, a large room above- nearly 30 feet tall, and possibly passage leading off the back. To the right appeared to be the way the water was coming from, there were some pools amidst clean washed breakdown blocks. The travelling looked easier ahead, so we clambered up the muddy blocks and continued on through the large room, and the passage that continued past it. We dropped our hoods, masks and anything else we might break on a rock and slipped and slid our way through the passage. We finally stopped after about 20 minutes as we started to worry about tearing one of our suits in a muddy fall. On the way out we turned and looked up the water source passage which turned into another crystal clear sump about 100 feet beyond.
During the 10 minute walk back to our tanks we talked about the logistics of working the sump and surveying all this passage and whether or not this was known passage. Excited, we donned all our gear and had an uneventful exit from the cave.
As I suspected, Lonnie was nearly in cardiac arrest due to our delayed return- He had convinced everyone that we were surely dead- with a nearly 3.5 hour dive time that surely couldn't be possible with the gear that we had. Of course, nobody had suspected that Chrissy would want to tour the entire dry cave in the middle of our dive. They were all much relieved, and Anne videotaped our surface confessions of the dive.
Though we now have 3608 feet surveyed, with 570 feet of new line layed for roughly 4900 total feet of line in the cave, the location of the tie-in is even more confusing as we move further and further from the CR sump. Where will it tie in? Only more survey will tell- and the next trip with both wet and dry survey will likely bring us within a couple hundred feet of known cave in Blue Spring Cave.
Jason Richards
September 2010
