Aach Quelle

After a one years delay I finally had the chance to dive the Aach Quelle last weekend.

The Aach is Germany´s biggest spring with a discharge of 2 - 20 m^3/s, which makes it a magnitude 1 spring.
It is mainly fed by the water of the river Donau which disappears underground about 10mls away.

Access isn´t easy due to permit regulations and cave conditions. If i.e. the discharge is more than 8m^3/s it´s impossible to negotiate the nozzle at the entrance.

Last weekend the discharge was about 4m^3/s which made it easy to enter the cave by pulling along a thick knotted cable.
As friends told me: "The Aach has to accept you as a diver" I didn´t intend to penetrate to deep and turned my dive before reaching the first room called "Seenhalle". It was fun though to explore the first 500ft with sidetunnels and nice decoration like fossils and ametists.

Besides the dive in the main spring I decided to take a look at two other cracks in the main pool. Both are sm at the entrance and turn nomount quickly. One of them is a syphon, which doesnt make a difference concerning gas managment because you have to squezze through in either direction...
After I got stuck for the second time I had my share and left.

There is 1km of explored cave up to know, but expected 80km of waterfilled passage with scientific proof of giant rooms which still have to be found.
I´m proud member of the exploration team now and I really hope the Aach accepted me because I intend to come back to help digging

Unfortunately (but wisely) I didn´t bring my uw-housing for the camera, so the uw-pics below were taken by a friend of mine, Stephan Schild.

Congratulations Tom! That is one place on my list of caves I want to see.

I love the helmet :-D

Glueckwunsch Tom,
guess forrest and me have to plan a Germany trip

Serh gut Tom. Du hast viel spass jetzt in Deutshcland ich glaube aber kommt zuruck hier manchmal.

I bet the four of us would make a good team to dive the Aach, let me know when...