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.
20th of JUNE
The decision to go was rather
spontaneous and moments after I started looking for the excuses not to go. As you do. I could give at least five valid reasons that
would make the hole venture look daft, utterlly impossible or simply
life threathening, the most solid of them being the fact that I could hardly
walk: two days earlier I was swept downstream by an underground river
in a cave near Westport and I injured my front thigh muscle when I
hit it against some submerged boulder. Sounded like a pretty good
excuse to me given the fact that I would have to carry three
cylinders and all assorted diving/cave diving gear across the country with no car. And then down to the Hell, one way or another.
Unfortunately I knew it was just an excuse. Pretty good one, all
righ, but just an excuse. Over the last couple of years that I
spent in Ireland I have come up with a system to conquer my laziness and to get things done. You see, there's always some important reason that prevents you from doing things that require a substantial effort. But since I couldn't really trust
myself when it came to decision which of them were valid enough to
give up and which were not, my approach was to always dismiss all of them
as the creations of my "lazier half " that preferred to mellow out and just lounging. With this
approach I can guarantee you pretty much two things: first , you'll
get the things done whatever it is you want to achieve, and the
second, it will fuck up your personal life sooner or later if you
still have any at that stage. You get to choose ...;)
And if you back it up with a basic
research of the area or the cave you're going to ( it's funny like some
people think that I'm just a thick Pole who instead of contributing
to the national GDP wanders randomly nights and days around the
country and accidently keeps stumbling upon new caves, passages and
connections) I guarantee you that sooner or later you will start
discovering new stuff. Either that or I'm simply good, I can't rule
out the latter possibility completely...;)
10 hours, one Dart, two buses and one mile walk later I was at Doolin Point. I carried all three tanks to the edge
of the cliff above Bedding Cave entrance and then spent some time
lowering them down on a limestone ledge just above the water level.
I first tackled the site in late 2007 when I was looking for an inland
breakthrough in the Hell Complex but even though I was sidemounted
back then it seemed like I would get nowhere without a lenghty
underwater dig. So I dug. Through a sticky glutenous mud I dug. And I got
nowhere. Then I moved to the underwater dig in the Honey Pot chamber and I almost killed myself during the return in the late November. A planned 45min dive turned into a 2h drama during which I ticked off ALL possible cave diving sins...but that's the story for another time. I had realised (apart from a few other things;)) that I didn't have to kill my self while 'creating' new passages by digging underwater - I could still do it while exploring the existing ones. Somehow the second option sounded better ;)
But the tide has changed and now I was back in Hell. I planned to have a look in a small passage near the Bedding Cave entrance that seemed to be going towards the Mermaid's Hole, the other big system just north of Hell Complex. Although 'small' was a substantial understatement; after shifting some boulders I could squeeze through first 10m sidemounted with Ali 80 (11 litre tank) and steel 12l, to move any further I had to swing the Ali in front of me and to pass yet another squeeze I had to leave the 12l behind... Riding a single tank in front of me I got through (just about) yet another constriction 2 m further. Even though I've been eaten by the guilt for breaking a fundamental cave diving rule - breathing gas redundancy - I must say it felt so good, so free...almost right ( here we go...GO ON Mr Sneaky Peevalve, report me! ). From there the way on led underneath some offending, a few tonnes boulder and testing its stability seemed like a pure lunacy, even according to my standards. I was done there.
Not having enough gas for any serious investigation in the other parts of the system I looked at the start of my dig from 2007 in CJ's Despair passage, only metres away. A quick look there and Hey! My old line from 2007 was still there ending at a pile of small boulders with some decent size continuation visible behind! I got to the job right away and after few minutes the way on was open. Well, it would be with a bit extra work with a shovel :) I already knew where my next dive would be.
On the bus back to Dublin I analysed my old sketches from four years ago and I couldnt believe my eyes! Suddenly it was so obvious! The CJ's Despair (1) must have been the continuation of the main Hell's tunnel, the way from where the water that created all the known Hell passages came initially. For all those years, since 2007, I haven't seen the whole picture
even though I had all pieces of the puzzle in my hand...
A word of explanation here. Hell Complex is a maze of big tunnels which have solutional origins. It means that they were created and shaped by the fresh water , an underground river that descended from Burren hills long time ago and discharged into the sea when its level was lower.
 |
| CLICK TO ENLARGE |
So Hell was just an end section of the system, a spot where the river came out from the underground. It came from east via a possibly single
tunnel. So what happened to this tunnel and most importantly, where was it? I already knew where: three big mud blocked passages in Hell ( marked 1,2, and 3 on the sketch below) had the very same mud deposit encountered nowhere else in the cave (except for the Mermaid's Hole system which was explored for over 1km from its submarine entrance). I would imagine that somewhere further inland they were joined together in a one big passage size of a highway, a Master conduit, the Highway to Hell.... Of course they were almost completely filled by mud and there was a chance that only metres further the fill would reach the roof. But there was one thing no one or only very few (Chris James himself (CJ) and possibly Martyn Farr) knew about CJ's Despair passage: like in the Mermaid's Hole system a strong tidal current flows for hours into the passage and then, after the tide changes, out of it. Which pretty much meant to me this:
somewhere beyond there is a vast air space being filled with sea
water with every flood tide and emptied with each ebb tide. A dry, possibly unknown cave, passage or chamber somewhere inland. And judging from the size of its resurgence ( the whole Hell complex) a bloody big one. Wishful thinking? Maybe. Sure there will be lot of smartasses proving scientifically the unlikliness of that. No bother. If I'm wrong I'm wrong, life goes on. But if I'm right I'll be on the Highway to Hell soon...
23rd of JUNE
2x Alu80 (11 litre cylinders)
1x3 litre steel cylinder
shovel
80m 4mm polypropylen reel for the jump
100m 3mm nylon for the exploration
Farrworld sidemount harness with 2kg
weight on it
once 5mm wetsuit
3 sources of light and the rest of diving instruments.
It was a fine evening, the eve of the
St John's night and the hills surounding the village were dotted with
the bonfires.
I was a bit heavy at the start of the
dive but once I staged one of the Ali80 on the line in front of the
dig my buoyancy was perfect.
After I removed some medium size boulders from the innitial squeeze three days ago the possible way on continued in the corner of the passage, along the left hand side wall (Crossection A). In order to move foreward I had to lower down the floor by digging but with the shovel the work advanced briskly and in a short period of time I gained an extra 5m of the passage.I kept both of my tanks (Ali80 and 3l) sidemounted and dug only enough space to get through. I was about to pass another low, dug out section so I tilled my head on one side ( to lower my profile and to prevent the reg from ploughing into the mud) and pushed my upper body through. It didn't go. Ok, it needs more digging, let's reverse . But I couldn't . There was no space behind me to reverse into, I got stuck. I'm not a particularly claustrophobic
type but this didnt feel right. I stopped to relax. I closed my eyes
and focused on breathing. Before the dives like that I always calculate my air reserves expressed in minutes of breathing. I do it BEFORE the dive coz I know that first reaction when the stress hits will be GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE IMMEDIATELY OR YOU WILL RUN OUT OF AIR AND DIE!!! Which is rarely true. But you might be too distressed to realise or quickly calculate that you have a plenty of gas to stop, relax and think yourself out of the trouble.
So I relaxed. I had 30min
of gas in Ali 80 and another 10min in the 3l, I could afford a short
snooze down there. But it didn't change the fact that I still
couldn't move.
Now, why is it that tight behind me? I
closed my eyes again to picture the way I laid the line. Close to my
right hand side and away from the passable route, in the bedding (
this way you can keep the line at the arm length and avoid
entanglement once the visibility drops). So why the fuck are you
trying to reverse straight into the line? Seriously Artur, did you
consider a career in some less task loading business?!
I moved 20-30cm away from the line and
probed the way behind with my fins. Yeah, way more spacious there...
A minute later I was back out of the squeeze.
Unsurprisingly I decided to leave the further digging for the next day.
Out of water past midnight.
24th of JUNE
Rain pissing since 5am. A failed
attempt to get up at 8pm. Same at 9, 10 and 11am.
11.15am. Come on you lazy bastard!
 |
| CLICK TO ENLARGE |
Straight into Hell's Kitchen and CJ's
Despair passage (1) with a single unmounted Alu80 pushed in front of me (an attentive reader will notice that I dropped the 3l cylinder somewhere on the way. I'm not gonna elaborate on that ;). Smoothly through the
squeeze, then I tie the reel into the end of yesterday's limit and I
keep wriggling ahead through another muddy constriction. I dig my way
through along the left hand side wall and after an 80 degree turn to
the left which I secure with another silt screw I get into a small
chamber 1.5m high 1.5m wide and 2m long. I let my self to take a
fuller breath and to float up to the roof for a 20 second break. It's
going well, let's hope it stays this way. You wished! The way on
continues low, less than 40 cm along the left wall. There's a gravel
underneath the mud and the silt screws don't hold in well. Luckily
there are decent size rocks in the chamber so I bring two of them and
use them as the belay points. Two metre long legs between belays seem
a bit ridiculous but hey, whatever keeps your mind at ease! It's my
call and I don't need to explain myself in front of anyone. It's me,
not anyone else who has to make his way back to safety.
I'm facing another constriction but
even though it doesn't look too challenging I already feel I won't
make it today. There's only such amount of pushing you can do on a
one go and I feel I reached my daily quota. I hesitate for a moment
but no, that's it. It's enough for the day. Pretty good job man, it
was a really tough shit, you can be proud of yourself. All right,
cut that mental masturbation, focus on the return.
to be continued...
WARNING: SOME OF THE PROCEDURES AND TECHNIQUES DESCRIBED HERE ARE NOT USED OR ACCEPTED IN RECREATIONAL CAVE DIVING COMMUNITY, PLEASE DO NOT TRY THEM YOURSELF, ANY ATTEMPT MAY CAUSE AN ACUTE DEATH AND ETERNAL BURNING IN HELL
No comments:
Post a Comment