First time at Hole in the Wall
For my dive buddy's birthday we decided to head up to Marianna and look for blind cave salamanders. We packed up the gear the night before and left at the butt crack of dawn headed to Cave Adventurers. We listened to the book on tape of Shadow Divers on the way up.
About two miles before we got to Edd's place, we saw a baby gray rat snake crossing the road. We stopped and helped the little guy across the road.
We got to Edd's and rented a pontoon boat for the day. Jay was kind enough to load our gear and take it down to the boat on the ATV. A while back I'd emailed Kelly Jessop and he suggested we try upstream Hole-in-the-Wall for cave salamanders. Jay gave us a briefing on hole-in-the-wall. We took off up the millpond. Let me tell you right now, that pond is probably one of the prettiest places I've ever been. The water is clear and there is a ton of plants and fish. I could spend a whole day just snorkeling around in there. We got tied off to the dock and started gearing up.
My buddy said a little curse word and I asked what was wrong. His wing nuts were back in the truck. Back down the millpond we went and back up to the truck he went. Edd asked what was wrong. I said my buddy left his nuts in the car. That got a chuckle.
Take two, now that my buddy got his nuts, back up the millpond we went again. Tied off to the dock at hole-in-the-wall and started gearing up again. We looked over at the little dry cave (the hole in the wall?) and saw a huge down covered bird. We were trying to figure out if it was a baby tricolor heron or what, when a big mama Black Vulture flew up to feed it. Cool! a baby buzzard!
We got finished gearing up and down in the basin we went. We tied up the primary to a log outside and dropped off our o2 bottles outside the restriction. As I was tying my bottle into the line I remembered the story in Dan Linehan's book Submerged where he talked about sitting in this very spot and doing deco along with sheck exley and the stiff rigor-mortised body of a dead diver. It gave me a little bit of a chill and a renewed effort to make this a careful dive.
The restriction going in was a lot like the rabbit hole at Madison, but I believe a bit smaller. Just through the restriction there is a chimney about 10 feet wide that drops down to probably 40 or 50 feet. We found the upstream gold line and tied into it.
We went probably 200 feet in and the vis was probably only 20 feet. We saw our first salamander and got a couple of shots of him with my friends point and shoot camera. I got what I could with the gopro. The backscatter from the video lights on my helmet made the bad vis even worse.
I can see how this cave has killed people. There are lots of places where the main tunnel looks like an offshoot and the offshoots look like they should be the main tunnel. There is a good thick layer of mung on the floor and even just the wiggling of a salamander or crayfish will cause a little mushroom cloud of silt. If you've ever dove p3, the floor looks a lot like most of the side tunnels in P3. The tunnels are just bigger in Hole.
We ended up seeing probably 20 or so salamanders and a few cave crayfish too.
About 600 feet back the vis improved drastically. We found the Tee leading to the century tunnel, cookied and went down it a ways. I'd burned a lot of air taking pictures and video of salamanders. It was a low flow cave so I decided to turn it about 400 psi before thirds. On the way out I killed the video lights on my helmet and really enjoyed the slow swim out.
As we neared the cavern I saw a couple of really big bull or flathead catfish. They were really stocky. I put my hand down in front of one. he stopped as his barbels touched my hand, swam around in a circle and tried again, working hard to push my hand out of the way. I couldn't help but laugh. Apparently catfish don't give exiting divers the right of way.
We only had a few minutes of deco. That's when I saw three of the biggest crayfish I've ever seen. These things were like mini lobsters. They were scary big. It was an awesome dive. We headed back to Edd's to get fills and lunch. I got the tanks filled while my buddy ran to Hardee's for a couple of grease-burgers.
Our original plan was to do Twin next, but we decided at the last minute to do Jackson Blue.
We parked the boat outside the docks and swam under the docks over to the shallow area to the right of the diving board. The long grass (Vallisneria?) flowing in the current is beautiful, almost hypnotic. We rested for a minute at the surface and got our breath, recalculated thirds and headed in. Can you say strong flow? wow.
All those days of diving Ginnie paid off. We did a pretty good job of finding the dead spots and places to pull and pull. (You can forget gliding there) We made it about 900 or 1000 feet back and I was starting to get winded. About the time I was ready to turn it I saw a .... TARPON? .... what the heck? It turned out to be a 3 1/2 or 4 foot long carp that probably weighed 40 or 50 lbs. I can honestly say I never expected to see a fish that big in a cave. We tried to turn him around and guide him out, but he was bound and determined to swim upstream. He will probably die and feed a lot of crayfish, but I felt sorry for him. He was working so hard to get to his death.
Getting out of JB was a lot easier than getting in. When we got back to the boat I still had about 2500 psi in my lp85's so we decided to do another dive in hole in the wall.
When we got there something had changed about the vis, it was a lot worse on the second dive. It was probably ten feet at the beginning and cleared to maybe 25 or so feet back in the cave. Due to the small amount of gas we made this one short and easy.
I'm not sure what changed about the vis, it didn't look like anyone had stirred up the floor. The water just had a lot more tiny particulate in it.
We got a room in Marianna and went to Florida Caverns State Park the next day. It's really nice. They have a cave tour that lasts about 45 minutes. You get to see some really nice speleothems and some really pretty rimstone pools.
It's worth the 8 bucks for the tour. It was my first time in a dry cave too.
The whole trip was fun. Hole was one of my favorite dives (right behind Madison Blue. Madison's still my favorite)
We will definitely be back. We still have to go see Twin.
