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Dive Reports Dive Report - Jackson Blue 3/27/10
Dive Reports Dive Report - Jackson Blue 3/27/10 | Dive Report - Jackson Blue 3/27/10 |
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| Written by Administrator | |
| Sunday, 26 August 2007 | |
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Jackson Blue 3/27/10 - The flow at Jackson Blue is the highest we have ever seen it! We scootered back to Stage Rock and headed off into the Middle Grounds area and there was even discernible flow back there. After spending some time swimming around the Middle Grounds area, we headed back to Stage Rock to pick up scooters and stages. The trip out was half the time it took the trip in! Visibility was also the best we've seen it in quite some time, easily greater than 100'! 3/13/10 - The flow at Jackson Blue is still on high side. We haven't seen a drop in it in a few months. Visibility was also not the usual clarity expected here. We were late to get in the cave on a day when there were over a dozen other divers there, so visibility might have been affected by all the activity there. As it was, we had 40-50 hazy feet of visibility all along the main passage. 2/21/10 - Other than flow, conditions have been pretty good at Jackson blue recently. On the 20th, we did a couple of Intro/Basic level dives during our first North Florida Come Dive with Us event. Made it back to the 2nd breakdown both times easily finding areas to get out of the flow throughout most of the cave. Of course, there are some areas where that's just not possible and a little pulling is required. We were the first ones in that morning and visibility was in the 100' range. It wasn't so during our second dive. After several teams went in, including scooter teams, it dropped down to about 60'. The 21st resulted in a 2+ hour dive scootering to the Middle Grounds area and then swimming back there trying to make sense of the maze. The flow was sufficient enough to make it difficult for the scooter to make it through some areas. Visibility was in the 80-100' range for most of the cave. 1/31/10 - After the recent rains, enough to cause the Chipola River to crest above flood level, the flow in Jackson Blue has increased quite a bit. There is a very noticeable boil on the surface of the basin and getting from the first room into the second room requires a bit of pulling if you don't have a scooter. The recent rain has also decreased the visibility down to the 60-80 foot range with the water being a little bit hazy. More rain due over the next few days, so we don't expect conditions to improve much. 1/1/10 - We headed out for a New Year's Eve dive to start before midnight and end after the new year rang in, welcoming the new year under water where we love to be! Visibility was great, about as good as it gets for Jackson Blue, even after seeing several divers in there throughout the day. The flow is definitely on the way up over the past few weeks. We didn't head back too far because we needed to make sure we were back at the cavern for the planned "fire" works. Shortly before midnight, the safe, non-toxic liquid from 20 chemical light sticks that had been broken open and dumped into a zip lock bag before the dive was released to create a starry night effect throughout the cavern. Eight divers in the cavern with our lights out enjoyed the light show. We even got it on video and will be posting the video within the next couple of days once we get it edited. It was a great way to bring in the new year! 12/24/09 - We've been back to JB a few times since our last report, including another trip to the end of the gold line. That dive was about a week earlier and visibility was only about 40' that day. This dive conditions were much better. Visibility was at least 80' and it looks like the flow is up a bit, but we also had quite a bit of rain during the day prior to our dive. We were in testing some scooters we had taken apart to replace o-rings and do general maintenance on. We weren't sure whether we were going to be scootering or doing a swim stage dive since we hadn't yet put the scooters in the water since putting them back together. The o-ring replacement was successful and we enjoyed a nice dive. We turned the dive at about 2700' because we were a little cold. Scooter diving definitely requires a little heavier undergarments! We came out to a steady rain. It was a good dive! 11/25/09 - The past couple of dives we've done in Jackson Blue have brought us to an area off the map. Unfortunately, it's not rarely visited, or at least not rarely visited by divers who like to leave their marks all over the bottom of the cave. There are far too many hand and fin marks, as well as signs of dangling gear. Our purpose in this area has been to survey it with the intent of adding it to the map. There are actually a few areas we're planning on doing this in. Flow is still down. It actually seems to still be dropping. Visibility is still pretty good, though. If the flow keeps dropping, we may end up doing a two stage swim dive to the EOL after all! 11/12/09 - It's been great to get back into Jackson Blue on a regular basis. Each dive brings new passages that we haven't seen before, and this one was no different. The great thing about this dive was a majority of the new passage isn't even on the map and we didn't know it was there. We jumped off the main line to a passage on the map, only to find another passage off of that. A short jump to another line brought us to unmapped territory. We ended up seeing about 500' of new passage on this dive. Some of it was a little low and silty, but pretty wide passage. Lots of twists and turns and into a fissure crack. It was a great dive. Flow is still down and the water temperature is now warmer than the air temperature. We can't wait to get back in there again! 11/1/09 - Now that the summer months are past and we have the park all to ourselves, we're heading back to Jackson Blue for more diving beyond training dives. Today, we headed back to the Trash Room to check out some side passages in that area. Current is definitely on the low side right now. About the only place it can be felt is just after the 2nd breakdown, and only mildly there. Visibility was the usual pristine clear water throughout most of the cave. Percolation stirred up some ceiling silt in the rarely traveled side passages and the flow started carrying it out causing a slight drop on the way out, but nothing terrible. In one passage, we were heading up in, there was silt falling down in clouds from the ceiling. It was pretty obvious no one had been there in several months. It's great to be back in Jackson Blue! 10/10/09 - We were back in Jackson Blue this weekend for a cavern course. There's a noticeable increase in the flow since the last time we were there. It's no longer possible to hover motionless in the middle of the cavern or in the mouth of the spring. The surface boil is a little bigger. And some of the other divers out this weekend were lamenting over not being able to penetrate back to areas they had been in previous weeks. It was a short-lived drop in flow, but the increase means the aquifer is doing better. So, even though increase flow means more difficulty in diving Jackson Blue, it's a good thing to see! 9/15/09 - Swimming season is over! This means we're back to diving Jackson Blue on a more regular basis and not just for training dives. We headed back for our first non-training dive in Jackson Blue since around May. The plan was to stay within the first 800' and hit a few of the side passages along the way. We put in a couple of jump spools on the way in with the intention to use them on the way out and continued back to the second breakdown. Flow in the system is the lowest we've seen in a couple of years. We had no problem getting back to the second breakdown. On the way back, we headed off into a few side passages. We spent over an hour enjoying the passages with a minimal 5 minute decompression obligation. It was a great way to get back into Jackson Blue after a few months! 7/26/09 - We have done dozens of dives in Jackson Blue since last updating this section. Flow has kept climbing and swimming the cave has only been an option for us during cavern and cave courses. Otherwise, we're on the scooters! Visibility has fluctuated from 60-100' depending on how much rain there has been in the area. And water temperature has remained a steady 69 degrees. Things were different our last time there, though. We were in there with a cavern class, so we didn't get very far into the system, but for the first time in months hanging out in the middle of the passage in the cavern without finning was possible! The flow still picks up where the passage gets smaller going from the deco room to the breakdown room of the cavern and again at the bottom of the chimney. But it's nowhere near where it's been over the past several months. Now may be the time to start swimming JB again! 12/2/08 - Did a dive in Jackson Blue recently. We scootered back to stage rock, dropped our stage bottles and scooters and headed over to Crinoid Glory. Flow has been dropping over the past few months. It was an easy scooter back, taking us less than 25 minutes on Makos. There was no perceptible flow in Crinoid Glory. Visibility was the usual 80-100'. Water temperature was the typical 69 degrees. We ended up doing about an hour and a half run time with a 30 minute deco (we pad our deco a little). 9/2/08 We're back in Florida and diving again. We've been in Jackson Blue a few times since being back but are just now getting around to posting an update. Flow is still down at this time. We've done a few swim dives around the 1st T/2nd T circuit and haven't had any real issues in making our way through the flow. We've been getting back to the 2nd T (1300') in about 28 minutes. Visibility has been the usual 80-100'. Water temperature has been the typical 69 degrees. It's good to be back in Florida and diving our caves again. We'll be heading back to the back end of Jackson Blue on the scooters again soon and will post more updates. 5/27/08 - The flow at Jackson Blue spring has eased off a little bit. It's still pretty strong in some areas of the cave, but it is definitely easier to swim for those of you without scooters. On this day, we decided to head back to the Crinoid Glory area of JB. For those of you that have never heard of this area, it starts about 2600' back off the main line. We had come back to this area on a previous dive to check out Avalanche Alley. This time we decided to check out Crinoid because of everything we have heard about it. We scootered back to the traffic light on stages, dropped them there, then scootered back to the jump and clipped the scooters off. We then swam about 15 minutes in before turning around before we even hit 1/4s. This passage is worth seeing. It is definitely one of the most beautiful passages in Jackson Blue, and one of the biggest. Unfortunately, we didn't bring a camera on this dive, but I'm not sure a camera would do it justice anyway. 4/12/08 - Well, as mentioned last time, we are now the proud owners of a couple of scooters. So JB has turned into a scooter dive for us. On this day, the plan was to test out the scooters and see what kind of burn time we could get on the batteries. Flow is still up, probably about what it's been over the past month or so. Flow increases where the passage narrows - the bottom of the chute, between the 2nd breakdown and the 1st T, and after the Rabbit Hole. But on a pitch of 7, it's still pretty manageable. Made it to the 4th T/the traffic light in 25 minutes with a few stops to make leash and speed adjustments. The exit was even faster with a return to the cavern at 17 minutes on speed 5. Played around the cavern for a bit before making an exit about an hour after beginning the dive. Visibility has improved quite a bit, staying up around the 80' range throughout the dive. There was a drop in visibility on the way out from the area of the 3rd T to King's Bypass area, but there was a team of 5 other scooter divers that had just passed through there... I'm not saying they created the silt, but I did slow down every few minutes, and especially after going through smaller or siltier passages to look back and visibility was not changed. Anyway, it doesn't look like any of them hit the silt. My guess is it was scooter back draft. It was a good dive and after a few adjustments to the scooter to make it sit better in the water, we should have plenty of great scooter dives in JB! 3/15/08 - Flow is up at Jackson Blue. We did a few dives on this day, starting with an open water portion of a cavern course dive in the pond just on the other side of the fence. Even there the flow is ripping through. It wasn't easy swimming against it towards the spring head. When we got into the cavern a little pulling had to be done just to get back past the first room. There are areas in the first room where you can hide from the flow, but to get through to the second room of the cavern definitely takes some pulling. Stay low and to the left. There are plenty of rocks to grab onto that won't sustain damage from this. Once you pass through this and are over the sand, you will be out of the flow enough to be able to swim the rest of the way. It's best to stay just under the main line all the way back to the end of the cavern zone. If you're more than cavern trained, pop up over the rock just under the air pocket and quickly over it back down to hide from the flow. You'll encounter a little more flow at the bottom of the chute, but there are some rocks there you can do a couple of pulls on and be out of the flow again. If you're thinking flow might be better around the left side of the cavern, it's not. We went over there to check it out and the water moves pretty strongly over there, too. Flow through the next few hundred feet wasn't too bad. We were able to find several areas where flow was almost non-existent by reading the cave. However, just after the 2nd breakdown, there is no where to hide! The breakdowns do a lot to slow down that flow. After the breakdowns, we couldn't find anywhere to hide from the flow. And finning wasn't doing us any good. We finned our butts off and were still being pushed back! We were able to find a few hand holds to pull us along and some areas where the flow was a little less. We made it back to the first T and went to the left thinking flow would be better there. It wasn't. Since we were looking for places to pull ourselves along without damaging the cave (we really don't like to have to pull), we did notice a lot more about the floor in this area. There are lots of fossils embedded in the floor, including a sea urchin shell that was almost perfectly intact. We ended up turning the dive around 1000' in because the flow was just too much. A 34 minute penetration took us 19 minutes on egress and no finning! I'm glad we just bought scooters. 3/3/08 - Visibility at Jackson Blue has been fluctuating over the past week since the blow out. We went back in on the 25th to find the visibility had opened up to about 15' or so. Not great, but that's twice the visibility that we had less than 18 hours earlier, so it looked promising. We didn't get to dive again until Saturday, 3/1, but we had heard varying reports of visibility over the week. Some said the visibility was up to 50-60' one night. Others were saying it was 20' the following day. It could be the visibility was changing or it could be the perspective of the individual divers and what they use to gauge visibility. Well, on the 1st we had about 20' of visibility in the cave. It definitely wasn't clearing up as quickly as we thought it would. And to add to this, the flow is up. JB hasn't had any real flow for almost 2 years and so it took some getting used to. While we were pretty good at reading the flow in the cave a couple of years ago, we had to learn it all over again. Visibility on the 2nd wasn't much different than the day before. This definitely wasn't looking good. We began to wonder how long it was going to take for the system to clear up At this rate it could be months! Happily enough on the 3rd, we had visibility in the 50-60' range! Yes, visibility is a subjective measurement, but we can objectively say that visibility was 2-3 times better on the 3rd than it was on the 2nd. That was a great improvement. Flow is still up, but we've remembered the finer points of diving JB in flow. Pulling & gliding is not necessary and there are spots in the cave where you can hang perfectly still in the passage without finning or holding on to anything. You just need to know where to find those spots. Of course, today, 3/4/08, it's raining again. Hopefully it won't put JB a step back in its visibility. 2/24/08 - Well, here's a twist. Jackson Blue experienced a rare occurrence on the 24th. It was blown out! Yes, blown out!!! We headed over to the sheriff's office this morning to sign in and get the key only to be told everyone that had already been in this morning came back returning keys and asking for refunds. We couldn't believe it. We were urged to not go diving, but the temptation was too great. We signed out the key and headed over to the park. Once there we were amazed. There was less than a foot of visibility in the basin. We couldn't even see the second step of the ladder, never mind the cavern entrance. And the fish were so angry they were jumping out of the water to get out of the murk! We decided to go check some things out before diving. We got back in the van and drove over to the dam and the water was roaring through it. The stream was the highest we've seen it. We headed over to the Chipola River and saw it was pretty high, but still had some room to go before entirely submersing the boat ramp at Caverns Rd. Then we went home to get a camera. We weren't about to do this without getting it on video! By the time we got back to the park the visibility had cleared to almost three feet in the basin. We were optimistic. We suited up and got in the water. With the water level to the top of the bank, it was quite easy to get our bottles in the water. We geared up, tied our primary reel to one of the railing posts on land and began our dive. We descended through the murk to the bottom where we had about one foot of visibility. We did some wraps and tucks, dropped our deco bottles and headed farther into the cavern. Visibility opened up to about 3' past the first room. We headed back to the sign then dropped down to the main line and tied in our reel. From there we okayed the line back to the drop down. Once we hit 90 feet, visibility opened up to about eight feet! We continued through the passage until we finally turned the dive right before the first T, just over 900 feet in. We turned the dive there and felt a little bit more flow than normal and were quickly pushed out. We grabbed our reel and deco bottles and made a slow ascent through the murk. What an experience! Check out the video we took of this dive at the bottom of our Cave diving videos page. 1/6/08 - It's been a while since we've posted a dive report on Jackson Blue, but it definitely hasn't been a while since we've been diving there! We head to Jackson Blue every few days and conditions are almost always the same. The dives are different every time, though. We're constantly finding passages we haven't seen before and exploring those passages as well as ones we've already been through. It's a different dive every time! Well, we went back to Arizona over the holidays, so that kept us out of Jackson Blue for about 3 weeks. While that wasn't any fun, our return dive in JB was! It's always nice to take a break from something you do on a regular basis because when you return you sometimes see it from a different perspective. And that was the case with this dive. We really looked at the cave and took in the shape of the walls and passages. We looked at the way the walls slope down from the ceiling to the floor. We looked at how the rocks on the floor raise up and come close to the ceiling in some places. And this was all just in the cavern zone! We went and checked out some passages we had on our list of things to do in JB, but we'd have to say the best part of the dive happened right in the cavern zone. It's nice to step back every now and then. 8/31/07 - We did a couple of cavern dives with a diver trained to that level. We spent over an hour on a couple of dives running line around the JB cavern and exploring the different areas in there. JB cavern is pretty big. It's one of the biggest caverns we've been in. And it has a lot to explore. We checked out some different areas and even learned a few things about the cavern that we hadn't realized before. We also found a small bedding plane/side mount passage we hadn't seen before either. It's always good to step back every now and then and do a cavern dive to learn about the area that we, as full cave divers, usually just pass by so we can see the cave. We had a couple of good dives and look forward to doing more of these in the future. 8/25/07 - Don't worry, we won't be posting a report for every dive we do at JB, just the occasional report. The constants - temperature 69 degrees, visibility unlimited. Flow seems to be even lower than when we were here in May. It took us less time to get to the 1st T than usual. We took the passage to the left and made our way back to the 2nd T. This was our first time back this far. We've been exploring a lot of the side passages in the 1st 1000' of the cave, but we've decided to move on beyond that. JB goes through a transformation at this point. The walls become dark and the system becomes very silty. There's lots of dark fine silt on the bottom. The passages also get smaller than what we see in the first 1000'. It was a much different experience than what we're used to in JB, but one we're looking forward to repeating. We turned the dive at the 2nd T and made our way back. When we got to the split in the line, we went to the left for a little change of scenery (not the way we came, but we've done the circuit). We checked out some potential jumps for future dives and slowly made our way back to our deco bottles. It was a great dive and we're looking forward to more dives in this area of JB. |
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