Telford . .

[aw]

A couple of weeks ago, I made a dive on Sat and Sun. I'll only tell about the dive on Sat. The dive Sun was at Madison. I used my underwater camera with a wide angle lens. 20 pics turned out, but I accidentally deleted the memory card. So I don't have them. So let me tell you about my Sat dive. PS - the wide angle lens for the reefmaster is the way to go in caves.

I dove Telford Spring. I was doing a solo swimming double stage sidemount dive. I had never done a double stage in sidemount before (only single stage). So I wanted to try it out. I knew if I went all the way with all my gas, I was looking at a 3 hour dive. So I never really decided if I was going to make the full push that day or not. If not, it was going to be a test dive for the double stages in sidemount.

I suited up and got everything clipped off. I use the Armadillo harness, so the D-rings on the front made great places to clip stage bottles. I started breathing off the right stage first. I ran the reel to the main line and proceeded. One thing I noticed is the stages, when full, drop real low below you. So pull-n-glide is a bit harder. But once they get closer to half full, their buoyancy characteristics make them ride real nice up against your stomach.

I set the gap spools in both the sinks and continued. At 30 minutes into the dive, I dropped the first stage bottle at 1,000 ft of penetration. I proceeded breathing the left stage. The cave started getting a little deeper than the earlier section. So the second bottle lasted 22 minutes when breathing to 1/2 plus 200 psi. So I was at 52 minutes of penetration in total at 1,800 ft and I still had not touched my sidemount tanks. I was well inside Beulah Land area.

I had had absolutely no problems on this dive. I had passed the only team in the cave much earlier. I had a lot on my mind that day and decided not to drop the stage in Beulah Land and just return to the entrance deciding it was a good test dive. The Beulah Land area was extremely silty anyway. So the stage would have had to rest in the silt if I couldn't find a rock. So I decided to turn. I had no deco to do. I surfaced after 90 minutes of run time with a max depth of about 72 ft.

I plan to return again on another day to complete the double stage sidemount dive. That Sat just wasn't the day for it. Like I said, everything went absolutely perfectly. Ready for the real thing now.

[lonestarfl]

Keep the stage on through Beulah Land to where the "y" is before the Ripple Canyon area. It is a good drop point. I regularly drop my stage and scooter at this point when I sidemount this system. There are rocks and the bottom here is more sand than silt.
Safe Diving,
Lee

[aw]

Great suggestion. Thanks. I know where you're talking about.

[TN]

What were the vis and flow like?

[aw]

At that time, vis was probably 40-50 ft and flow just shy of normal. Was perfect conditions.