Beyond 1km

21.06.2009

Divers: Artur Kozlowski, Brendan O'Brien

I headed to Gort on Saturday morning hoping for an easy push in 20-30m range of depth with end of the line 500m inside the cave. However by Saturday evening situation looked quite different. In two consecutive dives Jim pushed the cave to staggering 1km from the entrance and the depth of -47m at the end of the line. So much for an easy push...

I took off and all I can say that going through squeezes between 60-80m from the entrance, with Meg and two Alus 80 was not fun. Being less streamlined than Jim I had to move couple of boulders to finally get through. I knew the cave up to 360m from the entrance from last year and I always considered it as sidemounted cave. Jim proved different. Later was somehow easier but again quite low (I'd say no more than 1m) around 800m in. I managed to explore another 200m of low but 3-4m wide passage and tied off the line at -62m. I had plenty of line on my reel to go but at this stage my left arm was well soaked as I must have cut my wrist seal while wriggling through squeezes. In fairness, I should have turned the dive much earlier, well... 

Water was 12-13deg so return was in rush, as you can imagine. Due to gentle profile of the cave I could cut deeper deco stops ( from 20's I simply fly unit on SP 1.5) but it still left me with an hour deco on 02. I did it all on open circuit for better decompression but breathing cold OC gas didn't help the fact that I was already soaked and terribly cold. Bob was checking me periodically if I was ok. Eventually I surfaced slowly after 3h50min praying to be fine. I guess I could stay a bit longer but in the state I was, from thermal point of view, that would only bring troubles.

Another lesson to keep your ego in reins and turn the dive when it should be turned. I guess i should have known better but it's so easy to forget about it in the fever of exploration... 

EOL 1.2km

Depth -62m