Jura (France / Switzerland) 18 - 20.11.2011
Team Cavebase: Manuel Fiore
Team DIR-Schweiz (www.dir-ch.com): Chris Sandrini
Finally, my friend Chris Sandrini and I found a weekend where we could pursue our passion of cave diving together.
Fri. 18.11.2011
With a fully loaded car I started my road trip to Switzerland in the afternoon. Chris welcomed me directly in his underground garage and we immediately started to analyze all gases and prepare the equipment for the next days. Afterwards we had to plan the dive and the deco for our project in the Gouron. Details and the general procedure were then discussed in detail in the open air Jacuzzi : )
Sat. 19.11.2011
We started around 7:00 am and reached our destination in France after an approximately 3-hour drive. The entrance of the Gouron is located at the bottom of the river Loue.
The clear water of the Loue aroused great hope to find ideal conditions for our planned clean-up project in the cave. I myself did not know the cave, but I was told by several divers about the countless wildly laid lines in the cave.
Chris and his team had already started in July to clean up the line chaos down to a depth of about 33 m and to lay a new line ( http://www.dir-ch.com/articles.php?lg=de&lang=de&art=122 ).
After a short briefing we immediately started with the setup of our equipment. Chris dived with D20 and 2 x BTM 18/45, 1 x 50/20 as well as O2. I was with RB in the D12 frame and 1 x BTM 18/45, 1 x 50/25 and 2 x 40 cuft O2. Since it is easy to damage your suit during such "work", we each equipped ourselves with a heater just in case.
In the right picture my "self-made universal Reel" for Caveline reels. The Caveline was knotted by Chris in handwork in 3-meter intervals.
After a short refreshment we finally started, diving a few meters in the river to the cave entrance. At 6 meters we clipped the oxygen into the caveline and dived on quickly. The visibility was not as good as we had hoped. At 21 meters we put down the next decogas. At the second narrower passage, at about 33 meters, Chris connected the reel with the new line brought in in July and our project started. Chris laid the knotted caveline and I began winding up the lines and steel wires, which had been laid as many as five parallel or crosswise. The wire itself was a messy business and did not make the undertaking any easier. The cave descends relatively steeply to about 42 m, reaching the deepest point at about 55 m. As expected, visibility increasingly deteriorated during the cleanup to less than a meter in places. This made the work a bit more unpleasant, but we were well organized and only moved as far away from each other as necessary. The cleanup was very very tedious and we decided to extend the time to turn around (the average depth was shallower than anticipated).
Chris knotted the line into the wire that ran further and we turned around. On the way back we began to collect the coiled up billets. We had not expected the enormous weight of the collected material. The deco itself was unspectacular. After about 76 min at an average of 45 m we stretched our heads out of the water again after a total dive time of 3.5 hours. Dusk was already setting in and we hurried to put away the equipment. An instructive, exhausting but successful dive! As a reward we had fine steak :)
Sun. 20.11.2011
For today we had planned a relaxed dive in the Source de l'Orbe. On my last two visits, this beautiful cave had unfortunately denied me access. We each took a D12 EAN 32 and the remaining 21 meter gas from the previous day. We put the stages down in the "shaft" at 21 meters. Shortly before the end of the mainline Chris put in another jump and we surfaced in the lake. We looked around in peace and then started the way back. After a total dive time of 71 min. and a max. depth of 26 m, the pleasure was already over again : (
We packed up our things and made the long way home. A cool, eventful weekend came to an end!
Many thanks to Chris! The action screams for a continuation!
In this sense,
Your Cavebase