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WKPP had another great weekend ("little piker weekends", as the great Bill
Stone says). On Saturday Keith Suderman and Ed Padgett ran a crew consisting of
Lee and Roger Herring (not maried , yet) , Jess Armentrout, Bob Weiss, Steve
Dittner, and many others (maybe Sudermann can tell us who did what), while Wes
Skiles and Tom Morris took pictures, and Wayne Head, Julius Tomsits and John
Rose ran three safeties and six stages to 2400 feet. Barry Miller , Rick
Sankey,
and Derek Hagler cam in behind them, breathed two and took one to 3500 , and
one on to the Mountain. Jarrod Jablonski, Brent Scarabin and I went in on a
double, and used the third bottle to scour the wall between K Tunnel and the
Mountain.
Finding nothing, we droped the big scooters , and the third stage bottle,
and went to nicad scooters, which we were towing. We continued with Brent on
the
line, JJ in mid water, and me on the right wall. Again we found nothing all the
way to the Split, the point where A Tunnel appears to divide into two equal
caves. This is just before the Mega Junction where The Kahuna ("K" Tunnel)
comes
back into A Tunnel.
Here we dropped the fourth stage, 5600 feet in now, and tied in with the
Kahuna Reel, Brent laying, JJ wrapping, and me surveying. After 200 feet it
became obvious that this was not a "conduit" tunnel, but the biggest spring I
have ever seen. I measures 100 by 40 and varies from 299 on the roof with a 320
floor , up to 260 in spots. The walls are white except in one stretch, where
the
left side was pure black, and the right side was pure white. There were all
kinds of formations in the limstone, as if it had been dry at one time.
The cave water turned reflective blue, and had a glow to it. This was
much more relaxing than the usual "red alert" Tallahasseee Power Cave, so we
relaxed and got some great gas mileage, despite the extreme depth. We were all
also riding the quick little scooters, rather than the locomotives that get us
back there. The cave twisted and turned, heading East and then back onto the
Park Property. It remained undiminished in size, and proved to be the biggest
clear water source so far found in Wakulla, and definitely the best looking
cave
other than A Tunnel itself.
I saw in the book where Brent must be coming to the end of the reel, and
I could not remember whether I had filled it to the brim (1700 feet, or left in
at 1600), but when I looked up he was holding an empty spool, and JJ was giving
me the "should we add another reel" signal. I checked my gas, still had nearly
full hundreds, and gave them the " go fo it" sign.
JJ tied in and dumped the Gavin reel, making quick work of the 1100 feet
of #24 with a few 250 foot shots, and then we met at the end , with Brent and
JJ
showing each other the empty reels, and me holding up the monster WKPP marker,
which we installed at the end of the new "M" tunnel, the next open letter, and
appropriate for the Monster Spring Tunnel. We had "eeked out" another 2,732
feet
of line in one dive, or another 20% in one day, with "open circuit heroics",
which we call a good day of cave diving. When you get to deco without hitting
thirds, there is little question that it was done right, but if we had only had
a rebreather with us, we could have had something at least to worry about,
other
than where to have dinner.
We made record time coming out, netting out better than 150 feet per
minute, considering that we pulled all of the bottles and gear with us, except
for the safeties. We hit the first deco stop with a 114 minute bottom time, not
bad for a penetration of 8,332 feet. We had just shy of 500 minutes of deco,
starting with a stop at 240. 300 of it was on oxygen in the habitat at 30 feet.
It started to rain, so the crew was able to get all of the gear out
during the day (usually we wait until the Park clears).
Today, Brent , Ken Sallot, and John Rose did a dive past the Monolith
Room in B, Wayne and Julius did a little tunnel of of the B,C complex, Wes and
Tom took pictures again, and Barry and I did the cleanup dive, running to J
Tunnel, dumping a reel at the finger, before pulling the safeties, and
roundtripped the whole ordeal, covering more than 8000 total feet, in 36
minutes, averaging incredible speed (no bottles going in), and only had to deco
for 100 minutes.
The Narcosis Club, with the Texas Trout , Dittner, and Young Ed
Padgett, ran the water tubing out to the Bone Pit, and everybody else seemed to
have a great time, but I never saw any of them either day.
We will give it a rest for two weeks, and then go back to this , and
Turner to keep trying to put it all together. Everybody get their gear and
theri
bodies back in shape, and we will do the stuff past the Split , and push
downstream Turner. We will kick it off with a three day deal so we can do
photos
on Friday, then the setup, then a big dive, folowed by a long shot in Turner
the
next weekend.
Wakulla A Tunnel out to 3500 feet is the clearest I have ever seen it.
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