Tom Falardeau
June 24th, 2007, 07:59 PM
You gotta wonder how much the inventor of the snooze button on the old radio alarm depressed North American productivity. Take this morning as a case in point: seven AM, radio turns on - 5 seconds later ZZZZZZ........ 7:15, radio turns on - 5 seconds later ZZZZZZ...... 7:30 radio turns on - Marie gets up..... me: ZZZZZZ
Then, as the dogs are yapping their welcome to the new day (or the tastiness of their morning kibble - whichever - I never tried the stuff myself), I remember that the Ottawa Sidemount Cave Divers are getting together for an outing. Meh... we need to leave at 8:15, so another 5 minutes... ooops Marie kicks me out of bed.
We load the gear, still damp from the previous day's outing at Lock 21 and hit the road.... to the gas station to fill up the truck... then we hit the road... to the bank - in case we have to rent a boat... then we hit the road.... to Timmies for the morning coffee - and hit a roadblock. Some kind lady was picking up coffee and fat pills for her entire whatever group, paying each little coffee and donut with a separate pile of change. It took the brain trust at the Timmies darn near 10 minutes to open a new cash register and get that ever-growing line going. Scratch that location from the list. Finally, with coffee and danish in hand, we hit the road....
As we near Jim's place for the meet-up, Marc calls to say he'll be late: problems at work. No matter. We'll wait - that's the kind of buddies we are :D Fifteen minutes later, Marc calls back - the work problem remains unresolved, and he tells us to head off without him. Yeah, right.... like we'd do that to a fellow sidemount cave diving nut. While waiting for Marc in Jim's driveway, the sidemounter gearheads (Jim and me) start discussing butt-mounting our canister lights for better trim, comfort, etc.... Twenty minutes later, all three of us were in the process of re-jigging our can light mounting hardware to hang on the back of the rig.... Marc, work problem finally resolved, joins us.... AND WE HIT THE ROAD :D
Just under two hours later, we arrive at the Ottawa River-side property whose access Jim has secured from the owner - for our use as launching point. Quickly, the scooters and tanks get dropped on the beach and we change into our dive gear (really quickly - the skeeters were out in force and they were in a partay mood).
The mission this morning (or by then, this afternoon) was to find the deep resurgence connected to Gervais cave, somewhere out in the deeply tannic river. DPVs come in really handy. After a good 30 minutes of cruising the river by DPV, Jim finds the opening and calls us in. The tunnel is still lined from the original exploration and provides a handy way to tie in our DPVs while we vanish in the darkness.
What followed was a dive in a pristine tunnel, some thirty feet below the water's surface. Visibility was measured in small increments - anyone claustrophobic would not have enjoyed it a bit. The tannic Ottawa River water absorbs light like it was going out of style (for those playing clich? bingo - that was one of the oldies but goodies), and there was plenty of silt dislodged by our bubbles. The limestone was heart-breakingly fragile and wafer thin in spots, with colours ranging from pure white to black. This kind of pristine environment bears no relation to the usual caves in Florida, most of which have been beaten and battered by generations of cave diving wannabes.
After about 20 minutes, Marie and I ran into (literally) Marc who was enjoying the solitude of a true sidemount, low-viz cave dive. We continued to our turn around point and thence to the exit as a loose team of three solo divers, connected only by the tenuous glimpses of each other's lights - more than six feet away and even a 21w HID light vanished. Jim, meanwhile, made it through the delightfully named Sawatsky's Delight tunnel to the main Gervais cave, repairing line along the way. On the way back, we noticed fossils of shells, sponges and even a faint spiral - next trip there will definitely include the camera.
Back at the resurgence hole, we picked up our DPVs and motored back to the beach 400-500 feet away.
Marie was a little bit chilled and decided to sit out the second dive. On this one, the three of us would be doing our own thing. No matter what the team-diving purists say, Gervais cave is NOT a place where team diving will work. In fact, relying on a team in that cave can kill you. As I've written elsewhere, you need to shake off paradigm paralysis, whether it is self- or agency induced.
I scootered just below the surface to the main entrance, tied my DPV off on the line and headed in. The flow was kicking and progress was slow. Being alone, I was able to progress at my rythm without worrying for the buddy behind me. At the first T junction, I took the right-hand branch and quickly found myself in a tunnel tight enough that even in sidemount, I was scraping top and bottom. This would have been an impossible tunnel for a backmounter, and was proof positive that helmets when diving other than "tourist" cave, were a great idea.
I emerged in Sinkhole 2, looked around a bit, and turned back the way I came. This time, the silt I was raising by going through the tight passage was going in the same direction I was - needless to say, the visibility dropped to naught - and I maintained constant contact with the line. Pushing and shoving my way through the restriction, I made it back to the T junction and took the other branch, all the way to the emergence on the other side of Sinkhole 2. By then, I was getting a tad chilled and decided to head home. Once back in the main tunnel (which is probably all of 3.5ft high), I let the flow carry me along, riding in perfect, effortless trim with my light canister riding horizontally across my back, just above my butt. Definitely the way to go for a sidemount rig.
I met Marc at the entrance and we picked up our scooters. Marc and Jim had done small, winding side passage, one going in at either end. All too soon, we were back at our entry point, stripping down and loading the trucks. If anything, the skeeters were even worse than before, which means that summer will be "interesting" diving the upper Ottawa Valley.
The magic of diving the Ottawa River caves has nothing to do with distance, depth or difficulty. Just being in a cave, in the darkness doing the diving we love best (perhaps the only diving we love), makes the almost four hour round-trip worthwhile. Even though the cave has been mapped and lined, finding an entrance at the bottom of the river, hundreds of feet from shore makes it almost as exciting as first-time exploration - indeed, for us, it was the first time in the deep resurgence and the Sawatsky's Delight tunnel.
Mind you, this kind of cave diving isn't for everyone, not even for most cave divers. It takes confidence in one's skills, calm nerves and gear to enter such a low visibility, tight environment with only an old line to guide you back to open water. These are not the clear, wide Florida or Mexico tourist caves. This is CAVE diving.
Then, as the dogs are yapping their welcome to the new day (or the tastiness of their morning kibble - whichever - I never tried the stuff myself), I remember that the Ottawa Sidemount Cave Divers are getting together for an outing. Meh... we need to leave at 8:15, so another 5 minutes... ooops Marie kicks me out of bed.
We load the gear, still damp from the previous day's outing at Lock 21 and hit the road.... to the gas station to fill up the truck... then we hit the road... to the bank - in case we have to rent a boat... then we hit the road.... to Timmies for the morning coffee - and hit a roadblock. Some kind lady was picking up coffee and fat pills for her entire whatever group, paying each little coffee and donut with a separate pile of change. It took the brain trust at the Timmies darn near 10 minutes to open a new cash register and get that ever-growing line going. Scratch that location from the list. Finally, with coffee and danish in hand, we hit the road....
As we near Jim's place for the meet-up, Marc calls to say he'll be late: problems at work. No matter. We'll wait - that's the kind of buddies we are :D Fifteen minutes later, Marc calls back - the work problem remains unresolved, and he tells us to head off without him. Yeah, right.... like we'd do that to a fellow sidemount cave diving nut. While waiting for Marc in Jim's driveway, the sidemounter gearheads (Jim and me) start discussing butt-mounting our canister lights for better trim, comfort, etc.... Twenty minutes later, all three of us were in the process of re-jigging our can light mounting hardware to hang on the back of the rig.... Marc, work problem finally resolved, joins us.... AND WE HIT THE ROAD :D
Just under two hours later, we arrive at the Ottawa River-side property whose access Jim has secured from the owner - for our use as launching point. Quickly, the scooters and tanks get dropped on the beach and we change into our dive gear (really quickly - the skeeters were out in force and they were in a partay mood).
The mission this morning (or by then, this afternoon) was to find the deep resurgence connected to Gervais cave, somewhere out in the deeply tannic river. DPVs come in really handy. After a good 30 minutes of cruising the river by DPV, Jim finds the opening and calls us in. The tunnel is still lined from the original exploration and provides a handy way to tie in our DPVs while we vanish in the darkness.
What followed was a dive in a pristine tunnel, some thirty feet below the water's surface. Visibility was measured in small increments - anyone claustrophobic would not have enjoyed it a bit. The tannic Ottawa River water absorbs light like it was going out of style (for those playing clich? bingo - that was one of the oldies but goodies), and there was plenty of silt dislodged by our bubbles. The limestone was heart-breakingly fragile and wafer thin in spots, with colours ranging from pure white to black. This kind of pristine environment bears no relation to the usual caves in Florida, most of which have been beaten and battered by generations of cave diving wannabes.
After about 20 minutes, Marie and I ran into (literally) Marc who was enjoying the solitude of a true sidemount, low-viz cave dive. We continued to our turn around point and thence to the exit as a loose team of three solo divers, connected only by the tenuous glimpses of each other's lights - more than six feet away and even a 21w HID light vanished. Jim, meanwhile, made it through the delightfully named Sawatsky's Delight tunnel to the main Gervais cave, repairing line along the way. On the way back, we noticed fossils of shells, sponges and even a faint spiral - next trip there will definitely include the camera.
Back at the resurgence hole, we picked up our DPVs and motored back to the beach 400-500 feet away.
Marie was a little bit chilled and decided to sit out the second dive. On this one, the three of us would be doing our own thing. No matter what the team-diving purists say, Gervais cave is NOT a place where team diving will work. In fact, relying on a team in that cave can kill you. As I've written elsewhere, you need to shake off paradigm paralysis, whether it is self- or agency induced.
I scootered just below the surface to the main entrance, tied my DPV off on the line and headed in. The flow was kicking and progress was slow. Being alone, I was able to progress at my rythm without worrying for the buddy behind me. At the first T junction, I took the right-hand branch and quickly found myself in a tunnel tight enough that even in sidemount, I was scraping top and bottom. This would have been an impossible tunnel for a backmounter, and was proof positive that helmets when diving other than "tourist" cave, were a great idea.
I emerged in Sinkhole 2, looked around a bit, and turned back the way I came. This time, the silt I was raising by going through the tight passage was going in the same direction I was - needless to say, the visibility dropped to naught - and I maintained constant contact with the line. Pushing and shoving my way through the restriction, I made it back to the T junction and took the other branch, all the way to the emergence on the other side of Sinkhole 2. By then, I was getting a tad chilled and decided to head home. Once back in the main tunnel (which is probably all of 3.5ft high), I let the flow carry me along, riding in perfect, effortless trim with my light canister riding horizontally across my back, just above my butt. Definitely the way to go for a sidemount rig.
I met Marc at the entrance and we picked up our scooters. Marc and Jim had done small, winding side passage, one going in at either end. All too soon, we were back at our entry point, stripping down and loading the trucks. If anything, the skeeters were even worse than before, which means that summer will be "interesting" diving the upper Ottawa Valley.
The magic of diving the Ottawa River caves has nothing to do with distance, depth or difficulty. Just being in a cave, in the darkness doing the diving we love best (perhaps the only diving we love), makes the almost four hour round-trip worthwhile. Even though the cave has been mapped and lined, finding an entrance at the bottom of the river, hundreds of feet from shore makes it almost as exciting as first-time exploration - indeed, for us, it was the first time in the deep resurgence and the Sawatsky's Delight tunnel.
Mind you, this kind of cave diving isn't for everyone, not even for most cave divers. It takes confidence in one's skills, calm nerves and gear to enter such a low visibility, tight environment with only an old line to guide you back to open water. These are not the clear, wide Florida or Mexico tourist caves. This is CAVE diving.