Mailing List Archive Mailing List Archive
This weekend WKPP started exercising its permit in Big Dismal Sink
in the Leon Sinks Geological Area . The team met at the Forest at 8:00
and went in together. We set up immediately, rigging our safety lines and
rope and pulley system to get the gear to the water. Jim Wei, Ken Sallot,
Pete Gomez and co built a floating platform in four peices which was
lowered down the 100 foot drop to the water and assembled in the water
by Ed Padgett. A 40 foot ladder was lowered and tied to a tree and the platform.
We then lowered the stages, deco bottles, and doubles. This whole thing took
very little time, and was a model of teamwork, with no injuries. Julius
Tomsits and Barnaby had their harnesses and climbing gear, and were abole to
suspend over the cliffs to get things positioned.
Several teams began to dive, led by Pat Watson and Julius, but found every
tunnel tannic, even though the basin was clear. We then pulled everything out
and looked at some other sinks, before heading to Lucy Ho's for dinner. We did
get some incredible video and stills of the setup, and we now are ready for
when
it clears.
Today, we decided to use our gas to determine if there was any other source
of bad water between Cheryl and Sullivam. Chery is black, Big D is black, and
Sullivan is clear. Early this morning , at 7:00 am, Casey McKinlay, Brent
Scarabin and I went downstream from Sullivan on a single stage towards
Far Point Station to see if the bad water was only coming from the Big D side.
While intending only to run for twenty five minutes wide open and then turn
back, expecting to spend a lot of time fixing line and figuring our way,but
it turned out to be one line unbroken, but without line arrows. Trying to
stop every 500 feet and put one down, we inadvertently discovered huge
incoming Tallahassee Power Cave about 3500 feet donwstream along the
"Boulevard of Broken Dreams" at the beginning of the "Crucible", an
area of true monster cave, much like Wakulla, with white walls and black
ceiling only a little shallower at 240 feet deep.
We stuck to the plan and quit at 25 minutes, leaveing ourselves plenty of
room for gas error. This proved unnecessary, as we made it back without
ever hitting gas turn. We will go back next week with a full assult and
get the water figured out, and some new cave added to the map. Hopefully,
this is a whole new infeeder to Leon Sinks.
The rest of the team worked the upstream of Sullivan, a beautiful
spring with giant rooms. Above the only tannic infeeder, the "Maxiblow"
tunnel, the water turns air clear, the cave gets white, and the tunnel
widens out to over 100 feet and the floor to ceiling is about 30 feet.
A 1000 foot long section like this strats at 3000 feet upstream, and then
there are two more big rooms , then regular tunnel, so far.
We had some new people show up to help out , and they were able to get
a nice scooter dive in Sullivan today. Steve Dittner joined us for the first
time, and pitched right in like he had been there all along. It was ecpecially
encouraging to see this level of teamwork. - G
Navigate by Author:
[Previous]
[Next]
[Author Search Index]
Navigate by Subject:
[Previous]
[Next]
[Subject Search Index]
[Send Reply] [Send Message with New Topic]
[Search Selection] [Mailing List Home] [Home]