Reports from Hell - June. Towards the Highway to Hell.

You know that feeling when things go so brilliant for such a long time that you know it's just a matter of time when you gonna screw everything up? And so I did... Exploration is an obsession, once you taste it nothing else will taste remotely as good. It will give you all you ever wanted: self-fulfillment, the wildest childhood's dreams come true, people's respect, illusion of grandeur and the equally illusive promise of eternal life but it's a jealous and possessive bitch and if you don't keep it on a tight rein it will destroy  everyone around you...

Exploration wise I was about to embark on things that needed me at my best but I clearly wasn't there.

Did I become complacent? Or lazy? I've been lazy all my life but more than anything else I've lost motivation... I didn't see that the source of it, my inspiration, got destroyed by the obsessive nature of what I was doing. 

I had the open leads all over the country, burning mysteries just waiting to be resolved and I was sitting at home doing nothing, feeling sorry for myself , my life slowly slipping away through my fingers ... What happened to that guy from 2007 who would jump on a bus with a twinset and three other tanks, tent, sleeping bag, drysuit, 5 sets of regulators and bag of spares just to find a few metres of virgin passage?!

Despite of all my vanity and self-indulgence I used to have an ability to get myself off the floor when I hit the rock bottom; now I was almost there again and it was time to act. Somehow I knew straight away what to do: I had to go back to where it all began for me, to Hell Complex in Doolin, the place that shaped my best qualities as a cave diver, to where time and tide ( and something EELSE as I was soon to find out) awaited my attentions.

Introductory Cave Diving course in Ireland. Report

By MATTHIEU
So I had enrolled in a cavern course with Artur some time ago, did an open water dive in Sandycove, laying some line, do some belays, that kind of things, but the weather didn't really work out in Doolin for a while. Finally the stars aligned for the 9th and 10th, and off we went. In the meantime, owing to a little misunderstanding, the course had become Cavern+Intro. Yeah well, I wanted to see what cave diving was like, anyway, so cool.

First overhead dive is a demonstration dive. Artur would lay a line, I would follow. Simple. We go down. And back up. "You don't have to hold the line all the time." "Ah, right." Back down. 3m. A couple of belays later, Artur turns around, "out of air". Pass primary over. Put secondary in my mouth. We start back. Cut. So it begins… A couple of extra belays, we're over a drop to 10. Rock below, rock on both sides, rock above. Really cool. I'm not a big fan of caves in the dry. Cold. Damp. Oppressive. But just floating there, motionless, (dry, warm  ), it's… different. Better. Much. Anyway. We drop to the bottom. A belay there and we turn right into a passage that turns into a big room. Lit passage on the left (an exit? yup), and in front of us the mudblock Artur told me about, reaching all the way to the ceiling. We follow up a bit, then it's time to turn around. Follow the line… Down, up, left. Out.

Diving in the Hell Complex, Ireland. UNEDITED.