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| From: John Grogan [mailto:jgrogan@dir-uk.org] Sent: 24 July 2003 11:21 To: dir_uk@yahoogroups.com Subject: [dir_uk] A tale of two dives (Long) On 14 July, Ian Pinkstone and I finally made it past sump 1 in the Ressel cave system. This was a dive that had been in planning for 2 years, but poor cave surveys, poor lines and a lack of time in France often impeded our progress. Over the last two years we had been talking about doing this dive, but we needed more equipment and more experience of the cave first. Our diving in the Ressel had pushed further and further into the cave, to the point that we instantly knew where we were at any given time, how long it would take to get to our next stage bottle, how long back to the shaft. The drop points for our stages were clearly known based on our experience; we would breathe our 50% bottles on the way in through the shallow section and drop them at the top of the shaft at 20m (about 400m in). The first stage drop was at the start of the deep oxbow (830m), the second was at the oxbow rejoin (1,180m) and the third was about 1,550m in.  In May of this year, we had decided to try and had staged some cylinders at the second drop. The dive started well, but stress built up and we had some equipment problems at 74m on the way back up the other side, so had to turn the dive. You just didn't want to spend time trying to fix problems at 74m with a limited gas supply. Although very disappointing, we learned a lot more about the cave and ourselves in the process. We had seen a large chunk of new cave on this dive, which greatly helped in our understanding of the cave itself. Ian and I have had quite a few cave dives where many things have gone wrong - equipment, broken lines, gas failures and wrong turns. It's only in times like these that you truly realise your buddy's abilities and dependability. We often talked about how easy diving has become with increased reliability of equipment and how easy it is for divers to get themselves far beyond their abilities and then get caught out. A lot of people who haven't dived French caves don't really appreciate how bad the line(s) can be in places. It's not unusual to find 4 or 5 cave lines running off in the same passage, or to find poor line placement or just great big swirls of line in the centre of the passage. Often, the main line is telephone cable, or electrical cable or even monofilament fishing line. When you get back to the end of sump 1 and into sump 2, you find proper cave line, properly laid. Two years ago, a third oxbow was discovered by Marcus Schaffotal and is properly lined. As a result, people tend to rely more on their knowledge of the cave rather than the lines. With each section of the cave having its own characteristics and particular passage formation, it's not difficult with experience to know where in the cave you are.  This trip, we decided we needed 10 stages each to provide a comfortable margin as we were heading into unknown cave for us. On the first setup dive, we placed 100%, 50% and 21/35 at the first deep drop. On the second dive, we took a stage of 14/60 through, picked up the previous drop and took them through to the second deep drop. Our third setup dive involved taking another 14/60 through to the second stage drop and doing a leisurely circuit of the deep oxbow before exiting. We now had all the gas we needed to take us from the second drop through to the end. We knew we could probably do all the setup in 1 dive or maybe 2, but we decided that we should have a few easier dives to become more familiar with the cave again and to get more comfortable before doing the big one. On the day itself, Simon helped by placing our oxygen at the entrance. We carried in our 50%, breathed our 36m bottle (35/25) and took 2 deep stages as well as towing a spare scooter each. We dropped our 50% at 21m, switched from 36m gas to a deep stage at that point and headed down the first shaft. At the start of the second shaft we dropped our 36m bottles and continued on down. When we reached the bottom of the second shaft at 47m, we paused for a minute to make sure everything was ok and we were comfortable before Ian and I gave each other circular ok's at the same time. Travelling through very familiar passage is very comforting and with relatively little equipment, we made good time to the first drop. We dropped our stage, switched to our second and continued on. After another 100m, you take a sharp left, up about 8m to a higher and narrower passage. With only 1 stage and 2 scooters, this was very easy to do with the hammer down. After 100m, there is a shaft with a sharp left again and a drop, back down about 8m - again, very easy with the hammer down. We navigated passage that was different to the previous section of the cave, not just in texture and character but also in size and shortly afterwards reached the second stage drop. About two years ago, Ian and I were diving through this shallow section when he lost the switch guard from his Pro 14 light. On the exit I remember seeing the guard and both screws that held it in place. I paused, looked at them and continued on, leaving them in the passage. After the dive, I commented to Ian that I'd seen them and he was delighted thinking I'd picked them up; of course I hadn't realised that it was from his light. It became a standing joke on subsequent dives in the intervening 2 years as sometimes we 'd see the protector and make a mental note to pick them up on exit and other dives, we missed seeing them. We finally picked them up on one of our setup dives! At the second stage drop, we dropped our stage and scooter, sorted out the bottles already there and switched to the second scooters. We picked up 5 bottles and turned left. This is a very confusing junction as what appears to be the main line continues around the corner to the right. This, however, is the other side of the deep oxbow with the main passage going to the left into a smaller passage. Last year we discovered that mistake when we tried to get to the end of the deep section and the start of the shaft leading back up to the chamber at the end of sump 1. I can only assume that the person to first put in that line made the same mistake. So we continued on through the main passage and passed the new line that Marcus put in to the third oxbow (the other end of this oxbow connects to the deep section of the second oxbow). The cave at this point slowly goes deeper reaching 78m on the ceiling and about 82-83m on the floor. We reached the third drop, switched to our final 14/60 stage and continued on. After about 100m, we finally reached the first of 2 vertical shafts that takes you back up. Ian and I looked at each other as if to say, we made it, but also knowing that we weren't quite there yet. We were now in sections of the cave that were completely new to us. At 50m we dropped our stage and switched to 21/35 with a scooter ride through a shallow passage that slowly works its way back up. At one point, the line had broken and there was a big tangle of line on the floor. We looked at this for a moment, I did a 360 looking around to make sure there was no passage other than the one ahead, looked ahead and could just see the other line about 10m in front, so we continued. This eventually took us to another vertical shaft that took us to 21m. At the top of this shaft there was a 'T' with one line going to the left and the other to the right. From the survey we knew that the passage by-passing the chamber at the end of sump 1 was to the left. Interestingly, this passage was missed a number of times by divers and the main line takes you through to the end of sump 1. As one ascends up the shaft it's very easy to understand why; the by-pass passage is higher up to the left with a lip and smaller. Most divers would see the passage to the right and take that, thus it wasn't discovered until a diver returning from the end of sump 2 found it. Sometimes, being a long way back in the cave plays mind games with you and your focus narrows a little, even when you've got an END of 20m or so. There was a ledge at this junction that was exactly at 21m, so we dropped our 21/35 stages and switched to our 50% bottles. We stopped a few minutes there before a gentle scooter up to shallower water. There was another small shaft that took us to 5m and at 6m we switched to our oxygen bottles. After completing our deco, we had a gentle ascent to the surface pool. When we surfaced, we kept our regs in for a few moments before tentatively taking them out. The dry chamber has been sealed off for probably thousands of years, so we weren't too sure about the air quality. We knew that the quality in chamber 1 was poor, but that was also due to divers having camped overnight in that chamber on previous pushes. We knew nothing about this chamber, but it proved fine; oxygen levels are definitely lower, but probably about 17-18%. We took our masks off and looked at each other with both of us displaying the widest grins ever. We were both thinking that we'd finally made it through after all these attempts. The previous failures had made it even more enjoyable and sweeter. The chamber was much smaller than I had imagined. Immediately ahead of us and slightly to the right was what appeared to be a low passage that leads to chamber 1 with a bunch of boulders leading out of the water. Back behind and to the left, was a passage that connects to sump 2. The chamber we were in is normally flooded, but exceptionally low water levels meant that it was partly dry. This has a more gentle path out of the water. We decided not to take our kit off and explore, but to rest on the surface for a while. We took a page out of our wetnotes and wrote a little note which we left behind and just sat there grinning for a while. We realised that we were probably numbers 8 and 9 to reach sump 2, with most of the others having used rebreathers to get there. As far as we know the others are Rick Stanton, Jason Mallinson, Marcus Schloefel, Reinhard Buchaly,Sandro Madeo, Michael Waldbrenner and Herve Dechamps. After an interval of about 40 minutes, we decided to return, so dropped back down and scootered down to our 21/35 bottles. I've always found it funny that the first time you go through a passage, it seems far longer than it actually is. I've just assumed that as your mind has more to take in, it fools itself into thinking that you've covered more ground than you actually have. It seemed like no time before our 21/35 bottles at 21m came into view. We picked them up and dropped down into the shaft scootering out at the bottom and down another passage. We then reached our deep stage, picked it up and stowed the previous bottles. We then dropped down the final shaft and into the deep section of the cave and shortly reached our next stage. We were using tow loops to hold our used stages and the bottles were going to pile up on the return as we decided to take them all out with us (including the spare gas we had stashed). We picked up our next stage and continued to the deep oxbow. Still not halfway home, this was where we also had to pick up our other scooters so we used this junction to sort out our bottles. We now had 5 used bottles that we put on the tow loop and clipped to the left d ring. We stowed the scooters we used and picked up the other scooters. The bottles were now affecting our buoyancy a little and I was grateful for the v-weights that I took along on this dive to compensate for the empties. Again, we kept the hammer down going back through the shallow section of the oxbow and reached our last deep stage at the start of the oxbow. At this point, I took out another tow loop and start putting bottles on that which I then clipped to a d ring on my canister. This d ring was originally put there to clip off the switch block of the Halcyon RB, but with all these stages, it made sense to use it for that. Ian continued to put empty stages on loops on the left and with 6 empty stages there it started to look busy. As we scootered back through the final part of the deep section, I really thought we had done it - it was finally sinking in. The passage was big enough for us to scooter side by side so we did. I looked over at Ian as we went around a bend and thought that we looked good. Despite all this stuff hanging off us, it all still looked slick. There were some German divers at the Ressel that day with an underwater camera. I had this thought that if we screwed up and looked awful with all this kit, they'd be there to photograph it. But, if everything was slick, they'd be nowhere to be seen. As it turned out, they were no where to be seen. We reached our 36m bottles at the top of the deeper shaft, stowed the stages we were breathing and went to the first deco gas. We slowly worked our way up the second shaft to our 21m bottles and kept stowing the empties. When we finally reached 21m, we took everything off and clipped it to the line, went to our 50% and chilled for a few minutes. Ian's HID was giving some problems, so I placed my light head where it could provide us both with illumination. I then started going through my stages, sorting them out and taking out the 21/35 bottle to use as "air break" gas on my oxygen stop. I split my empties into 2 equal piles and grabbed the spare 50% bottle as well. I clipped my 21/35 and 50% off the usual place and clipped the 2 tow loops with empties to the canister and hip d rings and then clipped off the 2 scooters. We started our exit from the top of the shaft at about 350m and gently worked our way back up through the stops. The scooters were running slower due to the amount we were pulling back out of the cave. I had 10 bottles on me at this point, Ian had 9. We finally made it back to the entrance where our oxygen was awaiting us. We both took everything off; scooters, empties, 50% bottles and picked up our oxygen. The cave mouth is not particularly big and Ian and I have our favourite deco spots here. Ian likes to rest off the bottom at about 6.2m just to the left of the entrance while I prefer to pin myself to the ceiling and blow up my suit. Simon pitched up and took all our bottles and spare scooters back to the shore (about 80m down river) and returned to join us for our deco. We were doing cycles of 12 minutes of oxygen and 6 minutes of 21/35 for that stop. Having completed our 6m stop, we slowly started ascending up into the river. At this point you can start to feel the warm river water (a good 10 degrees warmer) and it's difficult to resist the urge to go shallower to get the warmer water - the cave water is 12 degrees! After a slow ascent to the surface we popped up, inflated our wings and just relaxed. Ian and I reached over to shake each others hand. A dive that was 2 years in planning had finally happened. |
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