Dec 232014
 

It doesn’t quite feel like the end of 2014, but apparently it really is. I’ve had an amazing year with some fantastic diving – from muddy sumps in Elk River and Tasmania to crystal clear tropical water in Komodo to secret caves in Indonesia and scalloped rocks in France. For Christmas I’m headed back to the tropics. Tomorrow I head off to Bali to complete my MOD2 and MOD3 rEvo courses with Marc Crane at Tek Deep Asia. I was very happy with the rigour and detail of my MOD1 course back in 2012 and with a few hours under my belt, these courses seem to be a fitting way to end 2014. All going well I will be surfacing [read more…]

Dec 172014
 
Diving Dreamtime sump

About the cave Growling Swallet is a major sink in the Junee Florentine karst area in Tasmania. Water from the river that rushes into the cave entrance has been dye traced to emerge in the Junee resurgence, several miles away. Unlike other caves in the area Growling has an entrance that doesn’t require ropes or SRT, just a few very sketchy free climbs. The name describes the noise of the river rushing in when in flood, and as you would expect caving is only possible in low water conditions. The way through the cave alternates between following the water and climbing up and over it. From a caving perspective this means that even on the way in (usually downhill) there are [read more…]

Dec 022014
 
Elk River push dive

  We were back in Elk River cave on the weekend, once again searching for a way on and through the current final sump. Over the last year or so we’ve laid 250m of line into sump 7 over several push dives. To achieve those dives there have been 15 trips into the cave – to survey, photography, resupply and explore. As the end of the sump got further and further away the dive required larger and larger tanks. This means each push dive trip requires two or three resupply and stocking trips to carry tanks to the end. One of those was just a month ago, where we carried “normal” sized tanks into the cave. Normal-sized for regular side [read more…]