Lost River - Karst Information Portal

2007 NSS Convention Guidebook
missing partner and a difficult entrance.
After thinking it over he made another
attempt. Pulling himself down through the
strong current, he was able to make it into the
entrance room. The visibility was 5 feet at best
and there was still no guide line, or any sign
of Mark. When Dave exited the cave Mark
had been gone for more than 10 minutes. He
ran a line to the surface to make sure they had
a direct line to the entrance. Surfacing, he
yelled at Noel and Ralph Walter, a dive buddy
of Mark’s, to ask if they could see his bubbles.
“No,” was their answer. Dave told them that
Mark had gone in without a line to the open
water and lacking one in the entrance room.
He told Noel to get his gear since Noel was a
smaller and stronger diver. Dave went back
down to give Mark some light at the entrance
since the sunlight did not make it past 25 feet.
Upon reaching the entrance, he thought it
looked like one of the rocks on the side had
slid into the opening. After a small panic attack
Dave realized that he was just seeing it from a
different angle.
Wondering whether Mark was still alive,
Dave did not feel safe enough to make another
attempt. Mark had been gone for 25 minutes,
with only about 30 minutes of air left at the
most. The stress was getting to Dave, along with
fighting the strong current and cold water. He
decided, reluctantly, to return to the surface.
It did not look good for Mark; he had already
broken several safety rules. No more than two
minutes after Dave surfaced, Noel and Ralph
said they saw Mark’s bubbles. Mark said he
was able to find the guide line and waited for
Dave for about five minutes before going on.
He noticed on the way in that after 200 feet he
could see very muddy water coming in from
the east wall. After that, the water had about
10 feet of visibility.
Mark was very lucky on this dive, considering
that he had broken several cave diving rules. He
did not tell his partner what he was going to
do. There was no guide line to open water and
no sunshine to call the entrance room a cavern
dive. He should have come back to see why
Dave had not followed him into the cave.
66
Dive time: 35 minutes.
Dive 13. August 27, 1995
Dave went to the spring to check the
condition of the entrance. Diving solo, he found
the entrance in fairly good shape. Without
much trouble Dave was able to clear away what
little rock there was in about 10 minutes. He
still had plenty of air left and decided to install
a new entrance line. Going in head first, Dave
was able to see the main line only 10 feet away.
Tying off to the main line, Dave made a short
trip of about 100 feet.
Dive time: 25 minutes. Depth: 61 feet.
Dive 14. September 10, 1995: Warm
Water from Indian Creek Sinks
Dave and Mark want to do a real dive
today. Their plan was to try to find the righthand
passage past the third constriction. Mark
stayed on the left wall with the main line while
Dave used a small jump reel and followed the
right wall. After 150 feet they came to the
breakdown pile that led to the rest of the passage.
Discouraged by the lack of success, they called
the dive. The so-called right-hand passage
turned out to be no more than a breakdown
block. On the way out Dave stopped about
200 feet from the entrance to point out to
Mark how warm the water was; Mark agreed
that it felt about ten degrees warmer. Normally
you could feel the warmer water only along the
ceiling, but now it was almost to the floor.
After the dive Mark said that the warmwater
zone was the same area where he had
seen muddy water coming in previously. The
only reason they could come up with was that
the summer had been hotter than normal. If
so, Indian Creek, the main source of the water
for the spring, had not had time to cool off to
match the rest of the cave water.
Dive time: 40 minutes. Depth: 40 feet.
Dive 15. September 17, 1995: Like
Bathwater
It rained about three-quarters of an inch the
day before. The water was up 6 inches and the
visibility was still about 10 feet. Mark brought