Pit | Mexico Cave & Tech Diving Blog

Two days ago Camilo and I returned to The Pit to revisit the “Cardea Passage” leading to the Wakulla Room. Our objective on this dive was to reconfirm distances, depths, gas volumes, communication and procedures based on our initial estimates and experience of the first mission.

We both chose to dive back mount configuration with a single stage whilst diving a similar plan as before. However; where the first dive was turned at minute 11 we would now turn at minute 15 giving ourselves a total run time of 25 minutes at 200ft and a deeper horizontal penetration into the passage.

With a slow descent of 33ft a minute we reached our maximum depth at minute 6 giving us 9 minutes of penetration and 10 minutes to return to the start of the line. Our planned RMV calculations proved to be sufficient as our turn was ahead of pressure. By this point we had reached the junction leading to the ‘bypass’ to the Wakulla Room the line for which we could clearly see extending into the darkness to our left below us. The main line in this section slopes gently down and the temptation to keep following it is almost overwhelming with thoughts of what awaits ahead; the restriction of the bypass at 260ft and then the room itself at 300ft.

On leaving the passage we had agreed to do the deco run inside the cathedral like space of the cavern area of The Pit to enjoy the majesty of the view it affords. Ascending first through the misty hydrogen sulphide layers up into the halocline and then into the noticeably colder fresh water above. The longer shallower stops can be spent enjoying the beauty of the stalactites and formations in the ceiling of the cavern area or investigating the entrance to the shallow cave passage. Having started the dive around mid-day the water was now free of other divers and we had the entire site to ourselves. With big smiles behind our deco regs we headed to our favorite ledge at 10ft for our final stop, to rest and play games on our wet notes, to rid ourselves of the chilly final 30 minutes of the dive.

Conclusion: An extremely enjoyable and successful second dive. Great team work. What’s Next: Gain more local knowledge and advice about the dive to confirm depths, distances and times. Plan the full dive. Buy some helium…. Have fun!

Paul Kirby

: Technical Diving Gear

: Paul Kirby and Camilo Garcia before a 200 ft technical cave dive to the Cardea Passage

: Technical Diving Training

Photo credit: Paul Kirby

Video and edit by Camilo Garcia

http://www.diversunderground.com

Last week, after an exploration dive from Cenote X-tabay, my friend Paul Kirby and my self started talking about a deep dive to the Wakulla Room. I told him I had been talking about this dive with Geraldine Solignac who is another member of our little kind of a cave diving club and we knew she would be very keen to go.

We then decided that we should set up a meeting and see where it would take us.

We met on the evening of July 9th/2013 and to our surprise we all had next day free to go and do a deep air dive to get to know each other a little better. Even though we have been doing quite a bit of cave diving together, we had not been deep diving together; let alone deep diving in a cave.

So we all agreed we will have to be well prepared for the final dive which is going to be a Hypoxic Trimix Dive to a max. depth of 90 meters / 295 ft. We decided to go Cave Diving from “The Pit” to the “Cardea Passage” which sits at a depth of 60 meters / 200 ft.

Geraldine agreed to drive and we set up a pick up time for 8:00am. Like any other female, Geraldine shows up half an hour late but with the tanks, so it wasn’t too bad, but we still like to give her a hard time about it. We then loaded my gear in the truck, picked up Paul at his hotel / home and headed south to Dos Ojos for our first Deep Cave Dive in “The Pit”.

After analyzing all cylinders and setting up our gear we got in the water for checks and dive plan review.

Then we descended into “The Pit” and found the main line after 3 minutes at 155 ft. We continued descending to 175 ft where the line flattens out with a much lighter slope and followed it until minute 11 where we turned the dive and reached the 200 ft max. depth.

The ascent was quite good for our first deep dive together, we found things we could all improve on and we definitely got a good feeling for each other with all the communication and following the ascent schedule.

The dive also helped for fine tuning team skills and procedures as well as for gathering more data for extremely accurate RMVs and reserves calculations.

We will do another deep air dive this weekend and plan for the first trimix cave dive of this series to 75 meters / 246 ft before the big one to “The Wakulla Room”.

Will be posting more about this project as soon as there is an update.

Camilo Garcia.

Here is a link to the 720 HD video shot with a Gopro Hero 2 camera attached to my helmet: