So with all of the recent "Interest in Madison Blue", I wanted to check it out for myself. I've never been there as it used to be closed when I had more opportunities in that area. So when my buddy asked yesterday where we were diving on Thursday (yea, I don't plan much), I asked if he was up for the drive to Madison. We discussed a couple of plans and would head out early the next morning.
We got there and there was one team/class ahead of us and another pulled up as we were gearing up. We were planning on entering through the rabbit hole and heading to Mount Offshoot and beyond. A quick check with the other groups and we found out no one else was headed that way and then we entered the water. Vis was great, well at least in front of us and sometimes behind. :smt102 I was the trailing diver as I didn't know the system. The flow was not too bad as I easily made progress swimming against it. We got to the mount offshoot and installed the jump line. As we disappeared into the tiny tunnel I wondered why everyone was wanting to take a scooter through here. In fact even on the goldline everything was much dustier and smaller than I had imagined. I was feeling a little embarrassed at the silt that was beginning to get kicked up. I'm not the cleanest diver, but I like to think I do reasonably well. Well, it wasn't until a very short while later that my buddy stopped starring at the tunnel ahead. I swam a bit closer to see what was up. He was backmount and I was sidemount. From my perspective, at least a diver's length away, I don't think I could have gone through there without dragging through the silt, but I know my buddy would have been plowing it up with his taller profile. Disappointed, we turned and exited in less than stellar vis back to the jump. Once on the main line vis was instantly good again and we continued upstream and did the RotoRooter tunnel. This was a neat little passage with some pretty cave to look at. On the way out the vis was down a bit from our first jump, until half hitch or so when it was crystal again. Beyond there, we detoured to the Banana, Monkey, Godzilla circuit since we had plenty of gas from the earlier change of plans and I wanted to see this area anyways. We then exited the cave in the main basin and completed a short deco. I had 161 minutes underwater time and a max depth of 88 ft. All and all I really enjoyed the dive and think that it is a good system. I look forward to heading back sometime.
After surfacing and discussing what I saw with my buddy, this must be remnants from the last flood. Has anyone been back toward Rocky Horror since the last round? How is it? Seems like the silt is about 1-2 ft deeper in places than it used to be and even on the goldline there are silt mounts in places that were previously clean limestone, at least according to someone who has been there before. We decided one dive was plenty and hit the road even though we had planned for 2. Oh, well back to local haunts on/off the Chipola for now.
And dang it, I forgot to even bring my camera for topside shots. What a pretty basin.
