Lot & Dordogne April 2007 (bivouac hall)
Team: Roland Kring, Robin Sporrer
We skipped the planned French tour in March in favor of plenty of practice hours on the RB2000 and the execution of several deeper Trimix dives in Lake Constance and decided in April to dive through the Ressel both with the rebreathers to the end and to surface in the bivouac hall.
Since we had worked our way through the cave successively with each tour and we had already done Sump 1 and the Complex Circuit in the deep part in last year's Open Circuit, we knew the area up to 1500 m very well in the cave.
The bivouac hall is one of a total of 4 possible ascent points at the end of the Ressel. The challenge is to decompress about 2000 m from the entrance and then surface after about 2500 m from the cave entrance in the bivouac hall, after you have first got an orientation back there, because there are several branches that lead to other surface points. The actual TG to the bivouac hall was done with 2 Gavinscooters/divers (Magnum/Long) and a total of 6 stages per diver (2 x O2 40 cf/80 cf, 2 x 50/25 40 cf/80 cf, 1x 35/35 80 cf , 1x 80 cf 17/60) and one heating tube each.
In order to make quick progress we decided to do a smaller setup and check dive with 5 stages on the evening before the dive and deposited one 80 cf O2 in the entrance area at 6m, one 40 cf with 50/25 at 21m just before the shaft at about 350m and one 80 cf 35/35 at the bottom of the shaft at 42m.
After that we scooted to the junction at 830 m for a short time and turned around, the visibility was sufficient with about 20 m. Since we only had about 30 min bottom time and a max. depth of 52 m we decompressed the whole thing quickly with the 50/25 and resurfaced after 90 min in the Cele, cleared the scooters and the remaining equipment into the car and made our way back to Carjac to the Domaine Gayfie, where we had our domicile.
The next day we started early after the obligatory noodle breakfast, because we wanted to secure a good parking space on the road and also our Stages deposited the previous day should not get feet. We descended on the rebreathers with the 50/25 and scooted briskly to our deco gases deposited the day before, checked them again, swapped the 80 cf 50/25 we had with us for a 40 cf 50/25 for deco in Sump 1 and clipped the 80 cf 50/25 to the line and switched to the Trimix 17/60, leaving our heater tubes at the wellhead. We then scootered into the deep part of the Ressel.
After an unspectacular scooter ride we reached the deepest part of the cave (approx. 80 m/1500 m) and started to clean up the bad line chaos back there and knotted the numerous loose line segments to a continuous line. We continued all this line patching and re-tensioning down to about 30 m depth. While we were diving up the shaft and enjoying the corridor profile we were annoyed because it took us a good total of 30 minutes to sort out the line chaos. At all possible places new lines start and end partly blindly or hang loosely in the passage profile. Finally we left the used Scooter and the Trimixstage at a side passage and began the Deko with the 50/25 and dived finally into a small passage which leads to three well-known Aufaufaufstellen and began on 6 m with the O2 Deko, after this was sat down to three-quarter
we scooted following the further course of the passage and finally reached several line branches.
We placed appropriate cookies, mended and knotted again line and stowed loose line ends under the numerous boulders and almost my scooter also pulled line, just 2 km in the cave you do not really want, but just for such cases you just use a sufficient number of backupscooters. Finally we emerged in a dead end before a versturzhalde in a small but beautiful waterfall and realized that we had dived, this was not the bivouac hall!
We relaxed a few minutes on the water surface, enjoyed the super beautiful sight of the waterfall and briefly discuss the further procedure. We decided to scoot back to one of the dived passage branches and dove into another side passage, eventually reaching a prominent spot with a slump.
We climbed out of the water and left the scooters behind. We had to wade in knee-deep water for a few minutes, being careful as hell not to damage our suits or fall down and break our bones. After a few meters the water level was deep enough to dive down again, and after a few minutes of flopping we finally surfaced in the bivouac hall. Since we had no dry tube with us and had plenty of hunger and so a cool beer after the dive
after the dive is also a fine thing, we decided to dive back after a half hour stay.
The following decompression was unspectacular with the deposited 3 deco gases and chubby warmth of the suit heating and we finally surfaced in the middle of the night in the Cele. In total we were in the water for just under 9 hrs, taking it very easy on the way back and dawdling plenty, enjoying every meter of the way back and briefly exploring the other corridors. The pure diving time on the rebreathers was about 480 minutes.
In this sense,
Your Cavebase
Gallery
