Ginnie, April 5&6

[chrisp]

I dove Ginnie this past weekend with TecTerri and Tony. The water is crystal clear and the flow is strong.

The place is mobbed with college kids camping, rafting, and drinking there over spring break. There is lots of eye candy running around. The have installed a temporary permanent line from the room just inside the entrance from the eye down to the gold line.

Those new "You Are Here" signs they installed in the cave make navigating much easier!

[deanme]

Yes, the "you are here signs" are great. I only tend to see them at depth. The signs go away at shallow depths. Couldn’t be because of narcosis. I also really like the buttons you can push to hear explanations about the geological history of the cave. I used to think the voices were due to narcosis, but I hear the voices on the surface as well.

Yeah, the mob of kids was a bit overwhelming. I believe a mob of kids is called a ram of kids. Or is that a ram of rhinos? Or is there a need to distinguish between a ram of kids and a ram of rhinos?

There were some campers that I was afraid of, but given the massive number, I think it is kind of amazing there aren’t more problems. Kind of like being on interstate 95 with everyone going 80, and only 3 car lengths between each car. Just amazing there aren’t more problems. It must be because of Eric’s amazing ability to emanate calm in a sea of turmoil.

Is it legal to use gill nets to catch cave divers? Going into the Eye, there were 5 reel lines set at strategically spaced intervals to be sure and tangle any cave diver entering the cave. Upon returning from my dive, I noticed an open water diver had become entangled.

Could this entanglement be a new strategy to keep open water divers from entering the cave? Is there a pattern we should publish to be able to safely navigate through this maze? We could keep it a secrete and start a society. Instead of GUE or DIR, we could call it MAZE, and appoint MAZE priests to hand down the well guarded secrete of how to safely enter the cave. Only MAZE divers would be allowed entrance to Ginnie, kind of like another cave up north that is only allowed to be enjoyed by GUE divers.

[sskasser]

Exiting the eye was "fun" as well. I kept looking around expecting to see a huge spider lying in wait for one of us to become entangled in her well-spun web. There were quite a few lines run beyond the temp line Ginnie has in place. The one that went dead-center through the middle (not touching any rock, anywhere) was my favorite.

I agree that we should all keep our line skills up-to-date, and should run reels even when not required (ie past the temp line) for the practice. But...how about run it in, then turn around and check out your handiwork. Then, pull it back to the start of the temp line and go on with your dive.

[Sludge]

The place is mobbed with college kids camping, rafting, and drinking there over spring break.

You're kidding! There are college kids at Ginnie? And they drink ALCOHOL?

[Tony]

I kept looking around expecting to see a huge spider lying in wait for one of us to become entangled in her well-spun web.

Oh he is there alright... caught me in his web!!! Chrisp saw it happen!! did manage to make speedy escape

[packman]

Ginnie was definitely entertaining when we were there last week. One guy drove up with a raft the size of his car. We did stop him to let him know that it has fallen off his roof and he was dragging it. I guess he never heard the scraping noise that we heard before we saw him.

[sskasser]

Ginnie was definitely entertaining when we were there last week. One guy drove up with a raft the size of his car. We did stop him to let him know that it has fallen off his roof and he was dragging it. I guess he never heard the scraping noise that we heard before we saw him.

It's a shame he didn't stop before the four people that were riding the raft fell off. I think one of them may have spilled their beer.

[chrisp]

How could I forget to mention the gill nets? Must be the narcosis.

At one point Tony and I are doing a short deco stop (non mandatory) in the small room just inside the entrance from the eye and a student comes in and lays line right between my fins and straight across Tony's tanks.

On our next dive there was a line run down the stepped area right down the middle of the path that I needed to take to avoid running my manifold into the ceiling. (I'm "hydrodynamically challenged" and don't have much clearance through that part of the entrance.) I kept having to push lines aside and hold them out of the way so I could get into the system. On the way out we decided to exit through the ear in order to avoid the rats nest of lines. (oh shoot, I didn't admit that in public did I?)

[tecterri]

Tony & Chris it was a BLAST diving with you guys!!! Got to dive again on Monday with Jean. We had the whole place to ourselves. Quite a difference from Saturday. She lead through the catacombs . . . yes we actually made it all the way through and back It does get a bit tight, but it was a alot of fun! Looking forward to diving with you again.

Terri