Another day at the Gourneyrou

Another day at the Gourneyrou

It has almost been one year now since we dove the Gourneyrou cave in the south of France.

After a successful setup day it was six o’clock in the morning and we wanted to do another exploration dive in this cave.

We got up and I was preparing the usual exploration breakfast which usually consists of noodles, but this time it was spaghetti with tomato sauce. At around 8 o’clock we were down at the cave and JP, Ralph and Jörg were first gearing up because they wanted to film us on the way in with JP’s new HD-camera.

The water level was around 5 meters higher than last time and visibility was not as good. We geared up in our normal pace and shortly before nine o’clock we waived goodbye to our team and started the descent.

This time we descended on our 36m gas, which meant that we had to breathe open circuit down to 6m and then switch to the loop. This was due to the fact that at 36m most of our gear was deposited and so we saved another stop at 21m where only the trimix 50/25 was waiting for the decompression phase.

When we passed the habitat, Reinhard checked everything with a short glance. We took one scooter each to the 36m depot and then passed the video team while descending deeper into the cave.

Ten minutes into the dive we picked up another scooter each and switch to this one to make sure our backup scooter was working flawlessly. We switched to a smaller 40cuft tank with 36m gas, with the same trimix 35/35 for the shallow parts of the dive. We were also carrying two 80cuft stages with trimix 14/80 bottom gas.

We also clipped on a 40cuft stage with a 54m gas as first deco gas and checked our heating-tubes. Additionally Reinhard took the exploration reel.

Suddenly Reinhard passed me another stage, which I did not expect since I had all my gear already with me now. It read “80m” and “breakgas habitat”, so it was there accidentally. No big deal, we will pull it upwards later and the support divers will drop it for us at the habitat.

I heard Reinhard pulling the trigger of his scooter and so we took off.

At 20 minutes divetime we passed the 40m mark and descended deeper. When passing the 54m depth line we dropped the 54m gas tank.

Clearly we could see the multiple lines of previous divers. Looking at the way they were placed they must have been very narked. This is very likely as in the past people always dove with a homoeopathic helium percentage.

26 Minutes into the dive we reached the first deep part at 88m. 10 minutes later we reached 22m, the first shallow part. Of course we had to switch gas on the way up due to the risk of hypoxia with the deep trimix gas.

3 Minutes later we switched back to our deep mix and descended again, reaching 94m at 50 minutes into the dive.

15 Minutes later we again passed the 36m mark on the way up and switched to the shallow gas. A few minutes later we went down again and stopped at around 65m to deposit one scooter and one stage since we would reach our old end of the line pretty soon.

At 83 minutes we recognized our old end point. Reinhard unclipped his reel and handed it over to me. We went deeper into virgin cave and at 87minutes we reached the deepest point of 108m.

On the way up, after a divetime of 100 minutes, we ended up at 62m where a horizontal restriction stopped us and we agreed that for this time it was enough. This place was very silty and until we found our way through the restriction visibility had become very bad.

Deeper into the cave the visibility was a lot worse than last time. With 10m this was around the lowest suitable visibility level for cave exploration.

We wrapped the line around the top of a rock, cut it and knotted it.

The way back was uneventful. At 160 minutes at 70m we did our first stops until reaching the 54m mark. There we switched to the first deco gas. Half an hour later we reached the depot with the heating tubes. We plugged in the 36m gas and heating batteries. We also left all unneeded gear for the support team to be retrieved.

The first support team approached us now. We told them everything was OK and that they should get the gear from 36m upwards and bring the habitat tank to where it belonged.

At 233 minutes we plugged in the 21m gas containing 50% oxygen and 25% helium. Since the habitat was at 11m because this was the only point were it could be floated against the ceiling we decided to go into the habitat after the 15m stop and do the rest of the decompression inside the habitat. Water temperature was 12° Celsius as usual, but I got a bit chilly and was looking forward to the warmth of the habitat.

After being in the water for five hours Reinhard and I entered the habitat. We got some tea and had shrimps from the barbecue. The next course was steak, chocolate bars and some fruit juice, so it was far to early to leave the habitat at 450 minutes! 10 minutes later we surfaced in the small entrance of the pool.

Since the dive was no big deal and we felt very well we decided to drive home a few hours later because Reinhards son René had his birthday the next day.