Following on from a shakedown/poke around dive at Taj and a lot of stress in my dayjob I felt ready to take a stage and my team of ponies ( I love the pony/scooter metaphor) and blast down from Cenote Chac Mool past The huge stalactite, Xix Ha Tunich, the Monster house (Cauac Na) and on past the impressive Cenote Mojarra.

This was my 4th recce dive in this area. I started coming down here just to blast away on the scooters and get the cobwebs out of my propellers after travelling for work, but every time I start poking around in this seldom visited part of the cave,  I get to know and love it a little bit more.

As I started the dive,  adjusting the reins of the newly returned scooter, I noticed a line tied into the open water and heading the way I intended to go. I am pretty sure I know where these cave divers will be heading to.

Chac Mool has the largest underwater flowstone in the world, Xix Ha Tunich, descending an impressive 42 feet and guarding a cave within a cave, the Monster House (Cauac Na).  Its a popular dive, though few will take the gas or equipment to go past it. On a scooter its about 12 -15 minutes but swimming closer to 30. Wide open power passage I just blasted away until I found the other divers where I expected to find them, photographing Xix Ha Tunich. That was pretty cool. They had a decent amount of light, so I stopped for a minute or so to take in the unusual view. As I am usually solo and use a 10W hid, I dont usually get to see so much in the massive passages. This was a rare treat and I thoroughly enjoyed the moment.

Time to move on. I jump on the trigger and head down to end of the line at Mojarra. Just before I get to Mojarra I am suprised to see the visibility drop rapidly. There is a clear strata of dirty water. No diver has been here for a long time I am sure of it. It’s pretty certain to me that there was a recent collapse, the event that I fear most cave diving. I move forward through the dirty water and eventually arrive at Cenote Mojarra. I run a line  around the debris cone and pick up the Mojarra downstrream line. 10 minutes or so later I tie up the ponies and stage at the minor silty restriction that has the look of an open mouth.

Its liberating to shed all the big equipment. Just two Al80′s balanced perfectly on my razor harness, I am able to drop quite a bit of gas from my 6 liter buoyancy bag (MSR water bag). I stretch out and slide forward on the propulsion of the first frog kick. Ahhh ! Nice

The dive from here consisted of  lot of ups and downs and backwards and forwards as I tried to get a better ‘feel’ for the cave. I am very interested in this cave now but really need some survey data to make sense of it all. The cave is on two and sometimes three levels with tunnels crossing over and under each other and a spider web of lines. While Matts map is helpful, nothing can compare to a a few pages of survey data!

I check a lead into what seems to be an unlined organic passage and find one of Matt’s old green arrow marking the beginning of  a line that has clearly be hidden. I follow it for a while feeling some flow, but decide its time to get back. I leave my jump arrow in place so I can find it when I come back. Nobody is coming back here anytime soon. I can be sure of that.

I am cold at the end of this dive. I need a better wetsuit.

Article posted by AlanF

As the line dips before entering The top of the room of cheers I notice a little hole to the left that looks interesting. I tie in and head off scraping my helmet hard as I  slide through a fairly easy restriction and into a decent sized passage.  Definitely need to knock off more cave rust. The passage goes a bit and I am suprised. It can’t go far as either the French triangle or Backstreet must be in front of me.  Right enough after about 100 feet I end up at the bottom of the French Triangle. I wonder why I never saw this passage before, as return back reeling in my line though its pretty big, it is well hidden. One for the memory and another detail that will be needed for the map. As I get to the restriction,  visibility is pretty much zero due to my entry. I visually playback my awful first pass through it and orient myself where I expect to pass. A bit of grinding and I pop out the other side. Directly opposite where I tied in is another ‘lead’. I jump over the line and lay down line as I poke around what I guess to be the back of Sagrado.  Suprisingly the passage opens and after 150 feet or so of Line I realize I am in an unlined part of Cheers that leads down through a small silty hole to the Sagrado to Cheers (Sag2Chz line, the line from the North side of Sagrado). I know this from before. Another mental note that I need to return and survey temporary lines that will nicely define this section of the Room of Cheers, but thats for another day. Today has been designated for poking around.

I reel back to my tie in and continue of the Taj2Sag line in to the middle of the room where the French Triangle starts and ends. I decide to poke around the SW wall and have a great time running through the unlined passage there until I hit thirds and head back out.

No survey this dive but a lot of fun and a plan for the future pretty much formulated.

Article posted by AlanF

After a while out of the survey project, here we are back on track and armed with strength and determination…and for me much more sidemount experience aka solo diving!

We set our primary goal to re-adjust the COA line in order to clean up the blunder created in earlier stage of the survey. As we are approaching the completion of the stick map itself, we will also share what we have with Don Feliciano (owner of the Cenote Tajma Ha) as well as the close group of friends lucky enough to be around!
The cartography part of the project will start once all the lines are surveyed.

Start off from Sagrado, where Alan sets it’s dive onto Twin Cenote GPS coords and I go and check out a French line lost in the middle of City Of Agre. Bloody French lines, they are everywhere!
If you are not familiar with the history of early exploration of Tajma Ha check out this earlier post.

Survey tools

As Alan, in front of me, sets off to Twin Cenote, I place my jump spool to connect with the line that will take me to COA. This jump is really in an awkward place but it takes you into a series of collapses and some very nicely decorated passages…Decorated passages, collapses, isn’t that all confusing? Yes and no I shall say! Tajma Ha has a lot of very nice sections but this one is very Nohoch like… Ok, ok, we are not in Lithium Sunset line of Sac Aktun but still that organic, brown sediment on the floor and very delicate and numerous stalactites and columns riddle the passage. I remember the first time I saw that section, it was with Alan and I was ‘still’ diving backmounted doubles. I know, it’s history now!

As I progress along the line and negotiate few minor restrictions, I can’t stop but thinking that Taj must have a second floor. If you dive Taj enough, you will understand what I am saying. In many places, especially where the sea water layer eats off the limestone, it looks as if steps are making their way for an underground layer… Maybe it is just more soluble rock sediment or as the step itself being a bedding plane type of rock and underneath would be the soluble rock sediment… Another question to as Dr Patricia Beddows!

Let’s get back to our French line!
This line is actually visible when you swim along the COA going in either directions. It seems as if it is a by-pass but  in reality it is just behind a huge rock wall but it is in fact in the same room as the main COA line. Maybe it was an actual passage few eons years ago but it got eaten away!
It takes us where and why I did this dive. Survey the jump from COA and take all the DAD data and get Compass to work a bit. When you think about it, this line has a total of eight stations and basically, serves no real purpose as for cave exploration… Cheeky French cave divers!
So question will be asked at one of our Safety Officers to see if lines like this one serve any purpose and therefore, should they stay in place, or not.

After surveying this line, I remember Alan telling me to go check out the jump to the right just after getting back on main line. I did. Can you guess what I saw there? In an awkward place? I give you a clue. It has little pieces of tape-like markers on it… Any idea? Come on, it’s dead easy!!
More French lines…

To be continued.

As most cave divers know,  GUE  has always been a little  uncomfortable when the subject of sidemount inevitably raised its ugly head.  GI3 and a few others claim that when they need it, it’s as simple as running two stages either side of the standard DIR backmount setup. Of course nobody really buys this  and after a bit of a pregnant pause and a bit of hrrumping and clearing throats the subject is changed.

Sidemount doesnt fit into DIR, we all know that,  and for a while this was fine for those at the top table at  High Springs. Sidemount was for the poor strokes. Poor as in they have no money. GUE and DIR are very much focused at the opposite end of the financial spectrum, so I guess they didn’t really didn’t really care too much.

So what broke the happy Status Quo? Has the Status Quo even been broken at all?

Who knows really why, but many cave divers have started to embrace sidemount. In this post I wont go into the SM vs BM debate. It would serve no purpose, however the undisputed fact is that a lot of cave divers are switching to sidemount. This means they are spending money on new equipment and in many cases spending money on training, Unfortunately not a single cent of this cave diver cash wave has landed on the beaches of High Springs HQ.

Ex GUE Training director,Andrew Georgitsis of UTD fame wants his piece of the action and with astute business skill and timing has launched the attractivly marketed Razor clone (with bells and whistles), The Z system. Not really my cup of tea but with the increasing popularity of OW sidemount its easy to see where he is going.

On the other hand though keep in mind before we all get to excited, it is worth remembering that at a previous GUE conference in 2009, CCR rebreather presentations were made by Brett Hemphill and Phil Short, leading many to believe a Halcyon rebreather was on the way. It never transpired however and maybe GUE and DIR sidemount will go the same way.

So will we see GUE sidemount course and Halcyon sidemount gear any time in the near future? I believe so, but with the double underlined caveat, “A Mission Critical Tool Only”.

Article posted by AlanF

Sistema Minotauro is a really wonderful cave. The required precision along with the  challenging complex navigation especially in the downstream make it one of my favourite caves. It is hydrologically connected to Sistema Tajma Ha and there have been many unsuccessful attempts to connect the two systems, the latest challenger being Patrick Widman.

I have no desire to attempt this tortuous challenge of no mount pushes in  precariously unstable limestone breakdown. I will leave that to the likes of Patrick, however I do have an interest in the connection of the two systems from a cartographic point of view.

My Nachich coordinates tie in almost perfectly with the survey, which leaves a nice warm feeling . The COA N location however is way out. There are some known problems to be fixed in the survey data,  but still, they don’t account for the scale of this error. Alex Reato gave me a great tip about GPS that is, “Make sure you know the accuracy when you take the reading. If its bad come back another day”. I have the accuracy constantly displayed on my GPS screen now, to be sure of all new coordinates.

You can read more about the COA N and Nachich coordinate gathering trip here.

I haven’t been in the water for a while as I’ve been out on the road doing my real job, so Minotauro also offers the perfect tune up. No stages, no scooters just two AL80′s and some nice smallish cave that requires some precision. Just perfect to sharpen rusty skills.

It feels good to be back. I descend, get neutral and slide of to the vertical slit entrance of the Minotauro upstream. I change my orientation to match the entrance and easily slide in. I have  a sense of relief that I haven’t lost too much it seems.

I arrive at the surface of Escalera, basically a huge breakdown of boulders leading up about 15′ to the jungle. I take off my tanks, helmet and fins, making sure the gear is secured so that I can find everything when I return and cautiously climb out to the jungle above.

A little steep in places and a wet wetsuit and neoprene booties are certainly not ideal for rock climbing. However I wont get the GPS reading from inside the cave and so I push on. Escalara is a wild cenote. That is there are no paths to it,  just dense jungle.  I take the GPS from the camera housing and start it up. It takes a good 5 minutes to find the satellites and even then I have an unacceptable accuracy of 60 feet. I find a long stick and jam the pointed end into a little hook on the GPS and raise it into the jungle canopy. After some fiddling I get 10 feet accuracy and quickly save the coordinates.

Now things get tricky. Climbing out is one thing, but climbing back down is another. I grab at thin tree trunks precariously rooted in the unstable breakdown of boulders that were once the jungle floor above the cave. A few slips and slides, scratches and grazes and I am back in the water gearing up. I exchange the sweet humid fragrance of the jungle air for the dry mechanical gas being delivered on demand from the tanks on my side and submerge back into the darkness.

Article posted by AlanF

Steves Loft and the T

A previous survey dive took us about halfway through  Steves loft, leaving a small section through the top of the breakdown. I was particularly interested in  finishing this survey as I was looking at a break down on the waterfall line that most likely came from Steves loft. I was poking around in this breakdown making sense of the cave. This kind of vision of the cave will be essential later when the real cartography kicks in.

I scootered up the East side of the waterfall passage, I guess we can call this ‘The Steves Loft Line’.  I  tied of the stage and scooters at the T and headed right following the line up into Steves loft. Finding the cookie marking I started the survey and as moved slowly between stations. A constant rain of limestone from above peppered with an uncomfortable amount of cave rat size pieces made me hold my breath few times. Steves loft is undoubtedly one of the more unstable areas of Tajma Ha, though has some interesting features which make it worth a visit.

The line ends in front of a ledge . Beyond the ledge there is an unlined passage running right to left that most likley connects  back into the waterfall ine through the breakdown. I tied off my reel and poked about for a minute or so. But with heavy cave rat attacks and being very close to thirds I decide to play there another day.

Article posted by AlanF

Better to let divers know what is going on!

Today was for me, after a while, back into survey mode.I had with me Steve Martin, a very good friend who did his cave course couple of years ago and works around the world as a Course Director for PADI and is actually promoting sidemount in Asia.

It was an Intro to Survey class sort of! For both of us in a way as I decided to leave the tape measure home and go with the ‘Reatometer’*. Very handy, as accurate as a piece of string and ideal for solo survey.
Hour plan was to get on the Taj down stream line and take the firt jump to the right taking us towards the Deep Bone Room, right under the car park.
It went pretty well, I started with the survey while Steve was in charge of taking photos and it was not long until I realised Steve could get bored so I handed him the knotted string so he could get a go at surveying.
We had dived this line before and knew it was doable to survey up to the jump to Bone Room and to go further it would require a stage…and the Harley’s..!! Alan???
It is a long swim but when surveying you are moving slower so it does not seem to bad.
It is a very nice passage, high bedding plane with halocline close to the ceiling and the usual dune like silty floor.
We managed to reach the first huge room that i suspect is below the car park and seeing how huge the rrom is, you tend to wonder how long before we see some cars in the cave…No, I’m just kidding, but still, it’s high ceiling so earth crust is way thinner.

One of the three main plots needed for a basic cave survey.

We turned after having around fifteen surveyed stations, feeling reasonably cold from not moving too much. It went great and we are now planning to continue, pass the Bone Room jump and carry on towards the end of this line. By the way, the end of line is a classic bedding plane with silt on the floor and endless possibilities to find some lead…going south.

More on the Taj to Deep Bone Room survey in a few days.

(*)Reference to Reatometer – advanced measuring technique – that’s all I can say for now!

You can read the  new article about the Sistema Tajma Ha Taj to Sagrado North/Cheers  Line by going through the Projects menu above or clicking this link :

Sistema Tajma Ha - The Taj to Sagrado North/Cheers Line

Article posted by AlanF

Sistema Tajma Ha – The Waterfall Line

Article posted by AlanF

We are all looking for a moment of fame in our life and last wednesday was Alan’s.

It was going to be an underwater video and photo shoot, just that. I was gonna make him a Star!
Well, it was going to have some sort of survey too, but nothing that could make the dive unbelievably complex and difficult. As the previous dive was done in sidemount configuration and me being cautious for my comfort level in the cave environment, I decide to stay with my sidemount gear and prepare a rock solid procedure for camera and light handling.

Filming underwater is not an easy task, let alone filming in a cave!

We head to resurvey a little passage along the permanent line as well as a short side line that connects to the Room of Reflections. Alan is to get himself in ‘solo survey’ mode and I turn into a almost realistic Nat Geo underwater camera operator:let’s film some solo tape survey along two different type of line, the gold line and the knotted one.

Making sure to stay well above the ground and without touching the side walls while filming is as always my primary concern as without cave conservation there would be no real need for what we are undertaking. Each time a new team comes into survey, the risks of leaving some permanent marks on the cave formations is high hence the preparation and short incursion in the cave while filming.

Taking photo and filming in underwater caves is a contributing factor to dive accident. If you decide to take your camera on your next dive make sure to ask yourself few questions:

-Are you ready to handle cave navigation and filming/taking stills?

-Do you know who you are diving with?

-Do you know the cave?

Do not push your comfort zone just for the sake of taking back images to the family. There is nothing in those caves and in any caves for that matter, worth dying for.

Safe Diving.