Another Tennessee Cold Hole
We made it back to Three Sisters the other day. Hadn't been in there since I fell backward off the limestone sink and rode the doubles back into the water. This time I was a bit more careful, almost shy, and carried the gear piecemeal to the water's edge for assembly and donning. I'd made up a set of old double 72's, small and light, so that I could manage the climb down and back up again. The broken foot still won't hold much weight on its' own.
We dropped into the small spring with almost no flow and waved the minnows, bluegill and crayfish out of our way as if they were gnats and no-see-ums fliting about. At 15 feet we entered the cavern, found the line, and took the 90-degree turn. Viz was not as good as we thought, about 10 feet. As we turned and dropped to 20 feet deep, leaving daylight behind, there on the left was the slab of limestone crushing an old tree trunk, and a bit further on was the big black bone, probably a cow's femur.
An albino crayfish, the size of my pinkie, shot by like he was late for an important date. A southern cavefish, minnow-like, darted the wrong way, making me wonder why every living thing caught in headlights acts the exact same way, as if a death-wish ultimately controls us all.
I'm following mike, leading the dive. I see his head between his legs, looking back at me and shine my light to the side up ahead: I'm still here. He makes circles with his light and I lace my spot around his. Ok. We continue on and enter the tight overhead, barely enough room for us to squeeze the back-mounted tanks through, but soon it opens again and the ceiling is gone in the void overhead. We've done this dive many times now. We come to the T left by Marbry and TJ on some past dive in which they found the sidemount passage on the left and pushed it a bit more than 500 feet.
We continue on ahead, with back-mount we can't follow that left turn. We are looking for the southern cavefish. We count four in this early part of the dive, and turn well before thirds to retrace and count again on the way back out. The southern cavefish lives here, and in a few other tennessee counties, a few southern kentucky counties, and one or two in missouri. It's listed as "in need of management" and our dive today is simply to see it again. We've seen as many as two dozen in this part of the cave, and sometimes see none at all. The number here appears to fluctuate with season, so we return every so often to watch and count and wonder.
Today we see four, and two albino crayfish, but no external gill salamanders, the tennessee state salamander. But then viz is poor and our bubbles and lights spook most creatures. Sculpin and rockfish dart away when we approach, the southern cavefish just goes manic. They have a highly developed sense of vibration, two lateral lines to pick up the slightest movement, and more neurons dedicated to processing vibration than nearly any other living thing, so we probably "sound" like a train wreck to them!
The return trip is uneventful and soon we surface in the grotto to a freight train of thunder, rain, wind, and lightening. An afternoon storm is breaking tree branches and the rain is so hard it almost hurts even through the 6mm hood I'm wearing. Mike is removing his gear, but I have plenty of gas and tell him I'm going back down on this end of the spring bowl - I've seen some "windows" in the rock in this corner on past dives and am interested is seeing if there is more passage here. I wave goodbye and drop the 8 feet to the bottom.
I enter a small window, just big enough for my old skinny body with itty-bitty old steel doubled 72's (which I wish I could say are older than me, but they aren't). I tie off the line, and follow a flat rock to a fracture and squeeze through the crack down to 18 feet deep, where it turns to the left. It cracks off again, but I just can't squeeze through it, so follow the crack back to the right and find a narrow slit that I can get through if I go vertical and suck in my belly and chest. It opens again and I return to horizontal, shining my light along a passage of clear dark water.
Fractured limestone hangs at odd angles here and there amid the fissures of a three-d maze. My line zig-zags along as I have the option of going up and over, or down and under, left or right, this way or that, until it seems that I've twisted and turned more than a rubics cube!
I turn back, reeling in the line that always surprises me with the direction it suddenly takes. I knew I was twisting and turning, dropping and rising, but dang I had no idea it was this crazy. I came back out to where Mike was waiting. "You just disappeared!" Mike said. "Yeah, there's a bunch of passage back in there. It may go over to where the mainline is, but it's so convoluted I'm not sure where I was!" I replied. The rain was still pouring.
We made our way up the limestone cliffs forming an uneven steep stairway, now slippery with rain, and stood by the truck wondering if it was wise to get out of our drysuits. Then the lightening bolted and the thunder boomed and tree limbs cracked and crashed to the ground. Hail pelted us. It was so noisy we couldn't even hear each other when shouting.
It finally abated somewhat. No hail, just hard rain and wind. A few bolts of ligtnening lite up the dark afternoon sky. We quickly stripped to undergarments and hopped in the truck, nearly soaked through, the rain was so hard. At home, Mike dropped me off. I piled my gear on the porch and went inside for a warm shower hoping the lightening would stay off my plumbing and let me shower in peace. And then it just quit. Just like that the sky lightened, the lightening and thunder stopped, and rays of sunlight beamed to earth. I smiled and stepped under the warm shower water thinking of the southern cavefish and how different its' world is from ours. How without light or sun it see's and hunts and eats and even finds a mate. How its' world is so small, no more than cracks and situ's among broken bits of limestone, but still it carves out a life, a society, and a culture. I shake my head, shrug my shoulders and feel the warmth of the water showering down covering me in the softness of wetness and am glad to be home again.
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