Post by L Roebuck on May 15, 2006 7:55:01 GMT -5
Into the unknown
David Raterman gets a glimpse into the fascinating but dangerous world of freshwater cave diving.
Floating under the water, a buoyancy compensator steadying my altitude like a hoverpack in a science fiction movie, I stuck a hand into the cave's mouth.
"Some formations in the caves are so pretty it's a religious experience," one explorer had told me. "Inside lie mammoth bones, Indian artefacts, huge rooms with cobalt-blue, scalloped ceilings ... more people have walked on the moon than have swum in some of these caves."
And I couldn't enter.
Even without holding the breathing regulator, I'm sure my mouth would have been forming an "O" from gaping. Scuba diving in freshwater caves: an adventure this amazing really exists?
An adventure this dangerous, too, which was why I wasn't allowed inside. The instructor swam nearby, making sure I didn't get foolish.
Early that morning I had driven from Fort Lauderdale to High Springs in northern Florida. I'd arranged this excursion after a cave-diving friend had intoxicated me with his tales.
Rob Anderson, the manager of Extreme Exposure Adventure, welcomed me, gushing about the sport's beauty and danger, that wonderful combination. "It's deceptively easy but imperative you get proper training or you could die," said Anderson, a cave diver for 24 years. "A cave diver can't just shoot to the surface if he has a problem. He has to fix it down there."
He recommends that aspiring cave divers first take an advanced scuba course, such as for deep open-water diving or night diving, then a cave course. I was going to do only a "Discover Scuba" course, a simple adventure for uncertified divers.
WEARING our scuba gear, Josh Dolan, an Extreme Exposure instructor, and I stood shoulder-deep in the basin into which Ginnie Springs flowed. Lording above us were maple trees with their lush garland of leaves and drapings of Spanish moss. The basin's surface glistened with a rare, blue-diamond sheen.
I'd scuba-dived once, 12 years before, off Corfu. And I'd caved once, seven years before, in Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. My most vivid memory of that "dry-caving" - besides the glossy stalagmites and stalactites, the swooshing echoes of an unseen waterfall, snaking through side-scraping passages - was the passion of one explorer who called caving "adrenaline rhapsody". That was when I learned of sublime adventures.
"Spit in your mask and rub it around," said Dolan. Now 31, he began open-water diving in 1989 and has cave-dived since coming to High Springs for a two-week course in 1998. He stayed. "That'll keep it from fogging up on you."
I did as he suggested, then we put the masks on. "Why do you do this?" I asked.
Adventure instructors are an extraordinary lot for whom the mind transcends mundane pursuits of money, fame and power. I like to ask them this question, usually before the adventure, because afterwards I'll have my own theories.
"It keeps them from fogging up," he answered.
"No, why do you cave-dive?"
After thinking, then laughing, Dolan said: "To me, it's just peaceful." Then he rechecked my equipment.
Unaccustomed to breathing underwater, I practised for 15 minutes by bending my knees so that my head dropped below the surface. Gradually, my durations increased.
I was a little hungry but mainly parched. "Can I drink the water?" I asked. It looked absolutely pure. "Yeah, you can drink it," he answered. I bent my knees, opened my mouth and let water flow in. I drank from the biggest cup of my life.
After I was quenched, we bit onto our regulators, bent our knees and fell forward into the warm water.
Four metres below us, among the limestone rocks, silt and hydrilla grass, two turtles were nuzzling downward. Slowly we glided above them and then descended, my head hurting from the water pressure until I pinched the nose of my mask.
Small fish darted past us. The water looked as clear as air, so I felt like a slow-motion Superman - except that occasionally I had to propel with my legs, and bubbles grazed my ears.
Fifteen minutes later, the water pressure, despite my repeated nose pinching, was hurting my head. I motioned for Dolan to surface.
We swam to the ledge of the basin and relaxed for five minutes. Then we returned.
After 15 more minutes I was gaining confidence in my underwater breathing and was adjusting to the water pressure. I swam to the mouth of the cave, half-expecting to be sucked into the outflowing spring, When, finally, I touched the cave, it felt mossy.
I hovered while looking into the black hole. Its first room looked three metres high, but I couldn't guess how wide. The second room, I'd been told, was called the "ballroom" because of its size: 13 metres wide and seven metres high. Overall, the cave extended 400 metres, although a grating blocked passage after 30 metres. (The structure had been erected to stop divers from going to where the cave walls pinch together; otherwise, an unsuspecting diver might get stuck and drown.)
I reached into the dark, then withdrew my hand slowly. I repeated this action several times.
Anderson had been right: cave diving did look easy. But he had called it "deceptively easy".
Dolan was watching me from less than a metre away. Earlier, he had told me that he had once dived almost 1650 metres into a different cave. I couldn't have been more envious.
MORE INFORMATION
See www.extreme-exposure.com to arrange a dive with, or hire equipment from, Extreme Exposure, which also offers snorkelling and canoeing trips.
See www.ginniespringsoutdoors.com for more information on Ginnie Springs Outdoors, which charges $US27 (about $36) a day for uncertified divers and $US20 a day for certified divers. It also offers camping, canoeing and snorkelling.
I did as he suggested, then we put the masks on. "Why do you do this?" I asked.
Adventure instructors are an extraordinary lot for whom the mind transcends mundane pursuits of money, fame and power. I like to ask them this question, usually before the adventure, because afterwards I'll have my own theories.
"It keeps them from fogging up," he answered.
"No, why do you cave-dive?"
After thinking, then laughing, Dolan said: "To me, it's just peaceful." Then he rechecked my equipment.
Unaccustomed to breathing underwater, I practised for 15 minutes by bending my knees so that my head dropped below the surface. Gradually, my durations increased.
I was a little hungry but mainly parched. "Can I drink the water?" I asked. It looked absolutely pure. "Yeah, you can drink it," he answered. I bent my knees, opened my mouth and let water flow in. I drank from the biggest cup of my life.
After I was quenched, we bit onto our regulators, bent our knees and fell forward into the warm water.
Four metres below us, among the limestone rocks, silt and hydrilla grass, two turtles were nuzzling downward. Slowly we glided above them and then descended, my head hurting from the water pressure until I pinched the nose of my mask.
Small fish darted past us. The water looked as clear as air, so I felt like a slow-motion Superman - except that occasionally I had to propel with my legs, and bubbles grazed my ears.
Fifteen minutes later, the water pressure, despite my repeated nose pinching, was hurting my head. I motioned for Dolan to surface.
We swam to the ledge of the basin and relaxed for five minutes. Then we returned.
After 15 more minutes I was gaining confidence in my underwater breathing and was adjusting to the water pressure. I swam to the mouth of the cave, half-expecting to be sucked into the outflowing spring, When, finally, I touched the cave, it felt mossy.
I hovered while looking into the black hole. Its first room looked three metres high, but I couldn't guess how wide. The second room, I'd been told, was called the "ballroom" because of its size: 13 metres wide and seven metres high. Overall, the cave extended 400 metres, although a grating blocked passage after 30 metres. (The structure had been erected to stop divers from going to where the cave walls pinch together; otherwise, an unsuspecting diver might get stuck and drown.)
I reached into the dark, then withdrew my hand slowly. I repeated this action several times.
Anderson had been right: cave diving did look easy. But he had called it "deceptively easy".
Dolan was watching me from less than a metre away. Earlier, he had told me that he had once dived almost 1650 metres into a different cave. I couldn't have been more envious.
MORE INFORMATION
See www.extreme-exposure.com to arrange a dive with, or hire equipment from, Extreme Exposure, which also offers snorkelling and canoeing trips.
See www.ginniespringsoutdoors.com for more information on Ginnie Springs Outdoors, which charges $US27 (about $36) a day for uncertified divers and $US20 a day for certified divers. It also offers camping, canoeing and snorkelling.
The Sidney Morning Herald
David Raterman gets a glimpse into the fascinating but dangerous world of freshwater cave diving.
Floating under the water, a buoyancy compensator steadying my altitude like a hoverpack in a science fiction movie, I stuck a hand into the cave's mouth.
"Some formations in the caves are so pretty it's a religious experience," one explorer had told me. "Inside lie mammoth bones, Indian artefacts, huge rooms with cobalt-blue, scalloped ceilings ... more people have walked on the moon than have swum in some of these caves."
And I couldn't enter.
Even without holding the breathing regulator, I'm sure my mouth would have been forming an "O" from gaping. Scuba diving in freshwater caves: an adventure this amazing really exists?
An adventure this dangerous, too, which was why I wasn't allowed inside. The instructor swam nearby, making sure I didn't get foolish.
Early that morning I had driven from Fort Lauderdale to High Springs in northern Florida. I'd arranged this excursion after a cave-diving friend had intoxicated me with his tales.
Rob Anderson, the manager of Extreme Exposure Adventure, welcomed me, gushing about the sport's beauty and danger, that wonderful combination. "It's deceptively easy but imperative you get proper training or you could die," said Anderson, a cave diver for 24 years. "A cave diver can't just shoot to the surface if he has a problem. He has to fix it down there."
He recommends that aspiring cave divers first take an advanced scuba course, such as for deep open-water diving or night diving, then a cave course. I was going to do only a "Discover Scuba" course, a simple adventure for uncertified divers.
WEARING our scuba gear, Josh Dolan, an Extreme Exposure instructor, and I stood shoulder-deep in the basin into which Ginnie Springs flowed. Lording above us were maple trees with their lush garland of leaves and drapings of Spanish moss. The basin's surface glistened with a rare, blue-diamond sheen.
I'd scuba-dived once, 12 years before, off Corfu. And I'd caved once, seven years before, in Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. My most vivid memory of that "dry-caving" - besides the glossy stalagmites and stalactites, the swooshing echoes of an unseen waterfall, snaking through side-scraping passages - was the passion of one explorer who called caving "adrenaline rhapsody". That was when I learned of sublime adventures.
"Spit in your mask and rub it around," said Dolan. Now 31, he began open-water diving in 1989 and has cave-dived since coming to High Springs for a two-week course in 1998. He stayed. "That'll keep it from fogging up on you."
I did as he suggested, then we put the masks on. "Why do you do this?" I asked.
Adventure instructors are an extraordinary lot for whom the mind transcends mundane pursuits of money, fame and power. I like to ask them this question, usually before the adventure, because afterwards I'll have my own theories.
"It keeps them from fogging up," he answered.
"No, why do you cave-dive?"
After thinking, then laughing, Dolan said: "To me, it's just peaceful." Then he rechecked my equipment.
Unaccustomed to breathing underwater, I practised for 15 minutes by bending my knees so that my head dropped below the surface. Gradually, my durations increased.
I was a little hungry but mainly parched. "Can I drink the water?" I asked. It looked absolutely pure. "Yeah, you can drink it," he answered. I bent my knees, opened my mouth and let water flow in. I drank from the biggest cup of my life.
After I was quenched, we bit onto our regulators, bent our knees and fell forward into the warm water.
Four metres below us, among the limestone rocks, silt and hydrilla grass, two turtles were nuzzling downward. Slowly we glided above them and then descended, my head hurting from the water pressure until I pinched the nose of my mask.
Small fish darted past us. The water looked as clear as air, so I felt like a slow-motion Superman - except that occasionally I had to propel with my legs, and bubbles grazed my ears.
Fifteen minutes later, the water pressure, despite my repeated nose pinching, was hurting my head. I motioned for Dolan to surface.
We swam to the ledge of the basin and relaxed for five minutes. Then we returned.
After 15 more minutes I was gaining confidence in my underwater breathing and was adjusting to the water pressure. I swam to the mouth of the cave, half-expecting to be sucked into the outflowing spring, When, finally, I touched the cave, it felt mossy.
I hovered while looking into the black hole. Its first room looked three metres high, but I couldn't guess how wide. The second room, I'd been told, was called the "ballroom" because of its size: 13 metres wide and seven metres high. Overall, the cave extended 400 metres, although a grating blocked passage after 30 metres. (The structure had been erected to stop divers from going to where the cave walls pinch together; otherwise, an unsuspecting diver might get stuck and drown.)
I reached into the dark, then withdrew my hand slowly. I repeated this action several times.
Anderson had been right: cave diving did look easy. But he had called it "deceptively easy".
Dolan was watching me from less than a metre away. Earlier, he had told me that he had once dived almost 1650 metres into a different cave. I couldn't have been more envious.
MORE INFORMATION
See www.extreme-exposure.com to arrange a dive with, or hire equipment from, Extreme Exposure, which also offers snorkelling and canoeing trips.
See www.ginniespringsoutdoors.com for more information on Ginnie Springs Outdoors, which charges $US27 (about $36) a day for uncertified divers and $US20 a day for certified divers. It also offers camping, canoeing and snorkelling.
I did as he suggested, then we put the masks on. "Why do you do this?" I asked.
Adventure instructors are an extraordinary lot for whom the mind transcends mundane pursuits of money, fame and power. I like to ask them this question, usually before the adventure, because afterwards I'll have my own theories.
"It keeps them from fogging up," he answered.
"No, why do you cave-dive?"
After thinking, then laughing, Dolan said: "To me, it's just peaceful." Then he rechecked my equipment.
Unaccustomed to breathing underwater, I practised for 15 minutes by bending my knees so that my head dropped below the surface. Gradually, my durations increased.
I was a little hungry but mainly parched. "Can I drink the water?" I asked. It looked absolutely pure. "Yeah, you can drink it," he answered. I bent my knees, opened my mouth and let water flow in. I drank from the biggest cup of my life.
After I was quenched, we bit onto our regulators, bent our knees and fell forward into the warm water.
Four metres below us, among the limestone rocks, silt and hydrilla grass, two turtles were nuzzling downward. Slowly we glided above them and then descended, my head hurting from the water pressure until I pinched the nose of my mask.
Small fish darted past us. The water looked as clear as air, so I felt like a slow-motion Superman - except that occasionally I had to propel with my legs, and bubbles grazed my ears.
Fifteen minutes later, the water pressure, despite my repeated nose pinching, was hurting my head. I motioned for Dolan to surface.
We swam to the ledge of the basin and relaxed for five minutes. Then we returned.
After 15 more minutes I was gaining confidence in my underwater breathing and was adjusting to the water pressure. I swam to the mouth of the cave, half-expecting to be sucked into the outflowing spring, When, finally, I touched the cave, it felt mossy.
I hovered while looking into the black hole. Its first room looked three metres high, but I couldn't guess how wide. The second room, I'd been told, was called the "ballroom" because of its size: 13 metres wide and seven metres high. Overall, the cave extended 400 metres, although a grating blocked passage after 30 metres. (The structure had been erected to stop divers from going to where the cave walls pinch together; otherwise, an unsuspecting diver might get stuck and drown.)
I reached into the dark, then withdrew my hand slowly. I repeated this action several times.
Anderson had been right: cave diving did look easy. But he had called it "deceptively easy".
Dolan was watching me from less than a metre away. Earlier, he had told me that he had once dived almost 1650 metres into a different cave. I couldn't have been more envious.
MORE INFORMATION
See www.extreme-exposure.com to arrange a dive with, or hire equipment from, Extreme Exposure, which also offers snorkelling and canoeing trips.
See www.ginniespringsoutdoors.com for more information on Ginnie Springs Outdoors, which charges $US27 (about $36) a day for uncertified divers and $US20 a day for certified divers. It also offers camping, canoeing and snorkelling.
The Sidney Morning Herald