Tennessee Cave Diving

[Webmaster]

Finally got all my regular 'cave diving' gear back together after some sumps. Met S, and headed out to the spring. It's been pretty dry here so we expected some good vis, maybe even 20' or so.

Arriving at the spring it looks pretty good from the surface, the algae is thick but maybe not quite as bad as last time. I get my shiny new tanks rigged up for their vigin cave dive,we do our checks and we're off. The plan was to go in to a few hundred psi of 3rd's then turn around and survey back out.

The vis was probably 20-25', although there were a few spots where I could swear I could see 40'. It's amazing how many leads I'm seeing with this great vis, when you can only see 5' in a 25' wide passage you're never sure if you're swimming past something or not.

We finally get to a point where S decides to turn and he starts hauling butt out. I'm looking at leads, isopods, crayfish I look up and he's taken off. I'll swim a little and catch up, although I can't figure out how he can be recording survey data that fast. I see one very tempting lead on the left, the passage we're in is a 30' tall canyon and there is a large 40' wide alcove that opens into blackness. I can't see any walls from where I'm at, but some how I resist the urge to break the reel out and place an arrow to mark it since there's no way we'd ever see it in normal visibility.

I catch back up and we make the surface pretty quickly. Turns out S had a pretty good leak in the drysuit and was getting cold (56deg F water).

There was a couple sitting on the small outcrop above the spring pool and were a bit surprised to suddenly see all these bubbles breaking the surface not sure what might be down there. Obviously divers emrging from a cave is not as common a sight as it is in some places.

I'm unclipping my tanks at the bank when I suddenly hear a shout and a loud 'clank!!'. I look over and S is on his back bouncing his way back down the thankfully short bluff on his back on his tanks.

Now I'm just waiting for it to snap his manifold off or something but he comes to rest head down apprently none the worse for it. I finally get free of my gear and go over to him disconnected and unstrapped. Showoff backmount divers. He's complaining that he dislocated his toes or something but seems to be in otherwise good shape.

The forecast is for clear weather for the rest of the week so maybe I can get the video camera charged up and get some footage on a weeknight dive soon.

[Cindy]

Maybe you could do a video of falling caver and divers. It would make a good special! Cindy

[DeWayne]

I'd pay to see that.

[Webmaster]

I would but unfortunately I doubt I could talk him into reenacting the fall.