POLLATOOMARY INCIDENT Part II

So those were my thoughts down there. I didn't give up yet but I'd spent the last quarter wandering blindly from wall to wall, from the collapsing ceiling to the boulder strewn floor and as a result my morale was quite low… No, certainly I wasn't giving up, it's just what I was doing simply didn't work... I knew I had to keep trying, trying to the last breath but what if I was doing something wrong? You can't expect  good results if you do things the wrong way, no matter how many times you repeat it. I was 33 and I've learned that lesson in a past in a hard way. And I didn't have THAT much time here to keep repeating ineffective procedures. I need to focus. Clearly keeping going up wasn't working, the way out there was blocked. But where am I in the first place and how did I get here?! I understood that staying at -30 m was a bad idea – my synapses clogged by dissolved nitrogen from breathing compressed Air at that depth didn't make me the sharpest tool in the drawer plus at -30m I was using 4 times more gas than on the surface. With my current surface breathing rate surly between 25-30l per minute I was too scared to finish that calculation... Focus, focus! I knew I needed to go up but I needed a plan firstly. So again - How did I get in that dark shithole?! Why is the way up blocked? Feeling like a character from one of the Kafka's novel who just woke up in some strange, alien world with no recollection of the past ( I reckon my short term memory was gone due to nitrogen narcosis and stress ) I kept interrogating myself. 
This can't be the Main Shaft! Did I jump off into some side passage? A side passage... a side passage?! OF COURSE! The horizontal passage! That's how I got here! I must have found a parallel shaft that no one including me knew about! Jesus Christ! And what was the depth there? -20m? -23M? Something like that... With a huge mental effort my mind was slowly shaking off the debilitating fog of nitrogen narcosis and the stress. I knew what to do now. Somewhere in the  darkness up there, somewhere between -23 and -20m there was a small hole in the wall that would lead me through the diver size passage back to the Main Pollatoomary Passage. At least that was the current plan. Content gauges. No, I don't want to look at them. I'm composed, I don't need reassurance, I know what I have to do. If I have plenty of gas left it's not going to change much now but if I'm already running low on air I might lose the composure and let the stress retake control. So fuck it. Let's keep going. I've only checked if all three valves were open, I switched the regs and went straight up to -23m laying an emergency line from the bottom. The search begun. Almost immediately I felt an opening in the wall and I started squeezing in but after only a metre and a half it became too tight. Shit! That's definitely not the one I came from! I reversed backwards, finished a circular search around the shaft at -23m, found nothing else and then moved one metre higher. There I felt another hole, slightly bigger, which went for about two metres before it closed down as well...The cave, she likes me...she wants me so badly...Fuck You! Out of the crawl and back to the blind search again. I realised at that point that if I found the right hole eventually my line should be there too; there was no freaking way that the guideline, even a floating one could be pushed out of a horizontal passage since there was no flow there whatsoever. At -22m, the same level, I found another opening in the wall, nice in size, felt almost like 1mx0.5m. I investigated its edges by touch thoroughly- Shit, no line... Not that I could be very picky and had multiply choices of getting out of there so I decided to give it a go. I was quite bulky with my three big cylinders and when the passage became quite tight after only a couple of metres I removed one of the 11 litres tank from my side and clipped it onto a little butt d-ring on my Farrworld sidemount harness. Streamlined I could continue. The only thing was that there was no way this could be the route I came from... it felt way too tight and too horizontal while I had a strong impression that the one I came from was more spacious and gently sloping.

I got stuck for a brief moment but after moving some rocks aside I could continue again. And how long is it?! It must be good 10m now? I would be delighted in any other situation but this one. Exploring to the very end … I laughed to myself but there was more despair in that laugh than anything else, I knew I was at the edge of breakdown... After what felt like tens of metres the crawl opened up into some sort of small chamber or a bottom of another shaft. First thing I started examining was the floor in search of my previous belay point. Nothing. Not good, not good at all...

I rested there for a while, working on my breathing rate but the truth was that I was too scared to check the roof of the 'chamber' or the shaft, whatever I was in, scared to find out that there was no way out there either, scared to hit the roof again. I entered into the second crisis, more dangerous coz “rationally” justified: there was no line in the horizontal tight passage and there was no belay around here in the chamber. So pretty much I knew I didn't find the way back; I must have moved even further into the dark belly of Pollatoo-Mary and the chances to reach any surface there were close to zero.

I want to leave a note. 
The decision surprised myself, I've never thought I would come to that point. 
I left so many things unfinished at the surface, things that I should have said to the people that I loved and cared...

And this is probably the funniest part of the whole story: I was trying to decide whom should I write the note to, but the list was long and I didn't want to offend anyone! This is a fuckin' nightmare - I thought, and I didn't mean my current situation - It will be easier to have another go and try to save my life instead...
Ok, it's a lie, funny or not but a lie, I've made it up. The truth is that there was only one person I could think about in that moment and whom I wanted to write to but I knew she wouldn't care so there was no point in the end... What an irony... And what would you possibly say, that you were sorry? Everyone is fuckin' sorry when his number's up, get your shit together ya little bollocks and try to get your ass out of here alive! Fucking drama queen...

So I got a grip on myself, placed a belay and started ascending feeling the walls around me by touch but expecting to hit a ceiling at any moment. I moved on for a couple of metres up, the shape of the wall was driving me crazy as it created an overhang there but the way up was still open. Suddenly I felt some bits of a soft, flimsy line in my hand, I brought it up to my mask immediately and I recognised my old 3mm nylon line from 2008! Shut up! It's probably been washed in here by winter flood, doesnt' have to mean anything! I was trying to keep it real and not to get unnecessary excited but I must have admitted there was a slight chance I was back on the way out: the line was completely loose towards the surface but seemed to be solidly jammed ( or belayed!) somewhere down beneath!

With my rescue reel in one hand and the newly found line in the other I kept ascending. At around -16m it was still going up wide open but the old nylon line was cut there. I tied it in to my rescue line, switched the regs and kept going up. I don't know if I had ever an equally tense moment in my life before: anything was still in the cards for me, a Russian roulette with two bullets in the chamber ... the only thing I got was a bit of an old line, I knew that the reality check might be cruel ...

Then at -14m a fresh, light blue 4mm polypropylene line flashed in front of my mask. I grabbed it immediately and checked its tension, then I looked at the depth gauge, then I confirmed it wasn't the line from the reel I was just using, checked the depth again and then I finally smiled. It was the nicest 4mm blue polypropylene line I've seen in a long time...I found my guideline; the long 28 minutes after I'd lost it... You almost got me Mary... but not quite yet, not quite yet... I checked the gauges: 90B, 90B and 100B. Not bad, I had another 30min...

I looked at Dr5 for my deco obligation but since I had forgotten to change the gas from Tmx 12/55 to Air it was useless displaying only the message: “YOU'RE ONE FUCKIN' LUCKY BASTARD - WELCOME BACK!”...;-)

I stopped for 3 min at -9m and moved to O2 staged at 6m by my buddy but after 5min I'd had enough for the day and I slowly went for the surface.

I was trying to act normal on the surface but I guess you can't just wipe it from your face the fact that for the last half an hour you thought you were dead, you can't hide it just like that...nor your bleeding hands covered   with cuts and scratches...  So the team on the surface somehow felt that something had happened but no one dared to ask any questions. We started packing the diving equipment straight away, it was late and we had a long journey back to Dublin ahead.

As I walked through the field towards the car with the last bits of the equipment I stopped and looked back over my shoulder at the dark rising where slanting rays of the setting sun futilely tried to penetrate its troubled waters.

I'll be back...

;)