Team: Tobi, Flo, Yvonne, George
Diving times completely different!
That was the motto on Friday 04.01.2019 at -3 degrees and snowfall we met with George at the lake to test his new diving helmet with him.
Here are a few pictures that were taken on this day.
In this sense,
Your Cavebase
Team: Max, Tobi, Flo, Steffen, Zeljka, Steffen B.
It has already become a kind of tradition in the Cavebase to go to Lake Garda between Christmas and New Year. So we did it also this year.
What makes Lake Garda so attractive for us? First of all, Lake Garda is very warm, it never gets colder than 10 degrees even at depth. Here the difference to domestic lakes is already clearly noticeable. In addition, Lake Garda has gigantic visibility of up to 20 meters in winter, which is further enhanced by the white rock.
For deep divers all over the world Lake Garda is a very special attraction, it is 356 m deep and has countless steep walls, some with overhangs. A perfect training area for us.
Many of our project caves have depths of 100 m or more. Therefore it is important for us to train such dives in the comparatively easy "open water" environment.
On December 27th we arrived in Riva del Garda in the north of Lake Garda with best weather, 16 degrees and sunshine. Steffen Burger, a friend of the team, was with us this time.
On the first day there was a familiarization dive to 80 m in the harbor of Riva, where also some world war bombs are to be found and in Dekotiefe a large Jesus statue stands. The evening program consisted of course of Dolce Vita à la Italia, with lots of pizza, cappuccino and tiramisu. Our families were also part of the party, so of course there was a vacation atmosphere.
The next day one of our favorite dive sites, the so called "Crack" in Tempesta was on the program. This is a large crack in the rock, which extends from just under 50 m to well over 90 m water depth. We found it right away and dived down the wall on the outside of the crack to the start of the crack at 110 m. Two hours later we were out of the water again and made some more videos in best sunshine.
The next day we repeated this really great dive again down to 130 m where there is a big plateau and great rock formations. At the edge of the plateau it goes clearly further towards the depth.
On the 30th the majority of the team went home again. Steffen B. and Max had not enough and made a scout dive on the so far unknown west side of the lake. This is where Luca Pedralli set the Italian deep diving record in 2017. This was the spot we wanted to visit. We followed the verbal description and dived right next to the road on a gigantic wall and did some bottom time at 50m before heading home in a good mood and full of new experience from the good training, where snow and bad weather was already waiting for us.
Surely we will come back to our favorite Trimix training area soon.
In this sense,
Your Cavebase
Team: Max, Steffen, Zeljka, Heinke
Guests: Mats, Fabi, Sven
Fun diving is very important for us and so we decided for a weekend together with some friends and supporters of our team to check out the German mines.
On Saturday the 11th of August we went to the Nuttlar mine, where some of us have been before. The really great thing about this mine is that it is very shallow and so even the OC divers can get long dive times with little effort. In two dives we looked at as much as we could from the upper bottom and had a really great time, no long distances to carry, great visibility and a fun group. Really a great change to the European caves.
After the second dive Steffen unfortunately damaged the HUD of his JJ-CCR while dismantling the equipment, which we were able to fix in the evening in a cozy round of community work. Hearty miner food strengthened us for the next day.
On Sunday we had something very special planned. We wanted to visit the newly opened Felicitas mine. Wolfang Röhr, the operator of the mine, had opened only 2 months ago. The mine is much more challenging, just because of its depth of at least 30m and the poor visibility in the 120m long brake mountain. On site were some other rebreather divers with whom we were able to exchange interesting information. Also in the Felicitas we did 2 dives again and reached the EOLs in both dives without much effort. We were totally enthusiastic about this mine so that we offered Wolfgang our support for further exploration of the mine. So we planned to do a project here.
Full of great new impressions and thoughts about the future project we made our way home.
In this sense,
Your Cavebase
Team: Steffen, Zeljka, Max
Guests: Marcel, Beatrix, Markus
Together with the DLRG Dillingen and the Hunderettungsstaffel Augsburg, we started a test in the course of a doctoral thesis to see if trained rescue dogs can also locate rebreather divers (since no bubbles). On two different depths five divers lay in the mud and let themselves be searched once for 100 min and once for 80 min. At the first spot after 10 min of quiet lying there was also a few games of underwater Jenga. At the second spot, the visibility with about 20-30 cm was no longer suitable ?. Thanks for great support from Marcel Schüßler, Beatrix Schober and Markus Rauh.
We wish Katharina Ciupke all the best for her doctoral thesis and are available for further assignments.
In this sense,
Your Cavebase
Team: Anke, Ben, Wilke, Guy, Max, Tobi
2017 was a rainy year for Cavebase. So the project at the Vis in May, after much preparation and hauling had to be canceled due to rain and rapidly deteriorating conditions.
In late summer we had a similar situation and the targeted caves were not diveable due to rain and the team had to move to Lake Garda for diving.
But for the end of the year we wanted to dive caves in Valstagna again. With 4-5h journey from Munich, the caves are also suitable for a short trip. But all rain things are three and set the rain before Christmas, so that between Christmas and New Year's Eve the conditions were so bad that diving was no longer to think. After we had learned to appreciate Lake Garda (at a similar distance as Valstagna) as a training lake with optimal conditions - 10°C water temperature, good visibility, breathtaking walls and depths for every experience level - for scooter and TMX training dives, we decided to go to Lake Garda for the second time at short notice.
On the day of arrival, the first hurdle turned out to be the burner, because the later the team members left, the more difficult the conditions on the road became. At Lake Garda, the snow had turned into rain and so we decided to end the first day without diving in the hotel's spa.
On the first day the sun came out and in perfect conditions (cold is just part of winter) we dived in two teams at the sports harbor in Riva del Garda. Dive time was about 90 minutes for both teams. Max and Tobi reached a depth of about 80m. Anke, Ben Wilke and Guy were content with 30m.
To get a little cave feeling, we wanted to dive the crack on the second day. This can be reached by scooter from the dive site Tempesta. The whole group scootered with our XK1 and SF2 / JJ /Kiss for the breathing gas preparation towards south in search of the crack. Wilke and Tobi went the farthest with 45 minutes but neither they nor the other dive teams found anything. So all resurfaced after 100 minutes. Enthusiastic about the dive spot it was quickly clear that the last word regarding crack is not yet spoken.
Since New Year's Eve was just around the corner, we left it at the two dives and made our way back in the evening or the next morning.
This was certainly not our last visit to Lake Garda. However, we all hope that in 2018 we will go to Lake Garda specifically and it will not be the fallback solution because of bad cave conditions....
To all of you a good start into the new year and have fun diving. Maybe we will meet at the lake or at the cave.
In this sense,
Your Cavebase
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