A new Intro divers first time at Vortex
Hey everyone!
A few weeks ago, I decided to make a quick day trip to Morrison Springs/Vortex Springs after recently completing my Intro to Cave. After the three and half hour drive, we arrived at Morrison to find the warning signs for bacteria levels up and the water clarity to be a bit off, so we opted to go with out back up plan which was Vortex. This was my first time at Vortex since completing my cavern course a year prior. Neither of us had been past the cavern zone at Vortex and were under the impression that the gate was not considered a jump and that the main line ran past the gate.
We checked in with the front desk, paid our fees and signed our waivers. We were asked to show our C cards for the key to the gate, which they said they'd hold onto until we returned the key. We pull into the parking area to see the US Navy was training in the basin. Both to the steps into the water were occupied by either equipment or Navy dive students. We opted carry out tanks to the stairs closest to the swimming area, were a few other OW divers were located. We placed out tanks and started to suit up, we went over our plan, checked each others equipment and were finally in the water.
The clarity was not the best, but we were expecting it with hard hat divers in the springs. We made out decent and began to run our line in a counter clock wise direction to keep out line out of the way of the hard hat divers. The cave it self was exactly what we thought it was going to be, pretty much a tube. We made our way to the gate and saw that it was an actual jump. Sticking to our level of training we decided to turn the dive.
There was alot more build up of sand and silt around the gate than we were expecting, based on videos and pictures that we had seen. I don't know if this is an effect from Hurricane Sally or not. I looked as though half of the gate in the left side was covered in sand. We hit our 1/6 and began to return. About 100 feet from the light zone, the visibility dropped to zero with almost no warning. I caught a glimpse of a yellow kirby helmet and realized it was the navy divers. I grabbed to main line and we did a zero vis exit, doing touch contact until we were pretty much in the cavern zone.
We found our line still attached to the main line but with no tension to it. We are assuming the hard hat divers must of knocked our line loose. We retrieved our line, preformed a safety stop and surfaced. We both opted to call it a day and head home.
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