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Dive Reports Dive Report - Chipola River Caves 6/1/10
Dive Reports Dive Report - Chipola River Caves 6/1/10 | Dive Report - Chipola River Caves 6/1/10 |
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| Written by Administrator | |
| Monday, 17 September 2007 | |
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Chipola River 6/1/10 - After a rise in river level for a few weeks, it came back down and we headed out once again. We headed over to one of our favorite caves on the Chipola. Visibility was close to the best we've seen in there. Flow was also up. We headed back into the cave with some trimix stage cylinders for the deeper sections of this cave. On the way in and out, we checked out the perimeters of the passages looking for other possibilities. There were some that we'll be checking at a later date. Great dive and looking forward to getting back in there again next week! 3/29/10 - We headed out onto the Chipola River once again. Recently, a new primitive boat launch was created that's closer to one of the river caves so we thought we'd give it a shot. After pulling the canoe down and dusting it off, we headed over and loaded up our gear. A short trip down river had us at the spring run in no time. We dropped down and squeezed our way through the entrance into a rather large passage. Visibility was only about 20' in the first couple hundred feet. It then opened up to about 60' after passing one of the Ts in the system. We did a little bit of exploration that didn't pan out into anything and put in some new line to fix a line trap before turning the dive and making our way back out. It was a great dive and we're looking forward to getting back to this cave more often. 3/28/10 - We headed out to one of our favorite caves on the Chipola River. Water levels have been dropping enough that we thought we'd see what conditions were like. On the way up the river to the spring run, we saw an alligator making its way into the water. It was about 7-8' long. Once arriving at the spring basin, we tied off the boat and set up. Flow was pretty decent, but not quite as high as we've seen it before. Visibility looked like it was good in the smaller parts of the cave. Once we got into some larger rooms we could see it wasn't as good as we would have liked it. There was a definite haze in the water, limiting visibility to about 20-30'. We had a good dive anyway, though, and even went off to see some new to us passage! Update - The Chipola River level has been going up and down more than a roller coaster lately keeping the systems along the river in rather poor condition. We finally got some reprieve from the rains and have had a steady drop in the river level. With this we decided to head out and visit one of the systems. We came upon the spring run which was flowing quite strongly and had clear water. This looked like a good sign. Unfortunately, the system itself was not so clear. Even the there was moderate flow and a very significant boil, the water in the cave was very tannic. We conducted a short dive with minimal penetration of about 300-400' into the main passage. Visibility was an average of 5', with an occasional jump to 10' at times. Not the dive we wished for, but a good dive nonetheless. 12/1/09 - We made it back to the Chipola again, and only 3 weeks since our last visit. The river water is definitely quite chilly right now, registering 59 degrees on our dive computers. The nice thing is as we entered the cave of this trip, the 68 degree water temperature felt very warm! We were very happy to see 100 feet of visibility. However, even though expected, the 2-3 foot long catfish were a bit of a surprise, especially the one we found almost 1000' back in the system! We turned the dive on gas and had a nice leisurely ride back out with the flow. It was a very nice dive and we're looking forward to getting back to this cave real soon! 11/11/09 - We've been wanting to head back out on the Chipola for some time now, but just haven't been able to make the time when the weather has been cooperative enough. Well, we had planned a run up the river this time and even with Hurricane Ida making landfall the day before, we didn't get too much rain and the river level only rose about 6 inches. So we decided to head out anyway...and are we glad we did! We visited a favorite cave of ours along the Chipola. The river level was up enough to make it a fairly easy run up river over the fallen trees. We arrived at the spring run and set up for the dive. Down we went to find the best visibility we've seen in this cave. We also encountered the highest flow yet! We pulled our way through the tight spots where the flow was worse and were able to make it back to the larger rooms where we could swim. We were able to check out one of the side passages on this trip and it was well worth it. We're looking forward to getting back here soon! 6/16/09 - We've made it out on the Chipola River a few times this year. Most of the trips have been to one cave in particular. We headed out there again in June to take another look. We had heard visibility had been down recently, and in fact, was down for us the last time we were there. This was not the case for us this time. Visibility was in the 60-80' range throughout the cave. Flow was also not as bad as it had been the last time we were in this cave. And, of course, water temperature was a steady 69 degrees. We had an enjoyable dive with a maximum depth of 120' (we topped off with air for the appropriate oxygen content). We're looking forward to heading back to this cave soon. 12/8/08 - We made it out to another Chipola River cave on the 8th. This was took a little longer to get to from the boat ramp, but was well worth the trip. The entrance is at the end of a short spring run and is a vertical fissure that drops down about 35' before popping into a small sidemount restriction. Just past that restriction is a moderate size room. On the other side of the room is another small sidemount restriction that opens up into the main passage. There are several Ts in this cave. We took the turns we were advised to and made it back to the 5th T before turning the dive. The main passages walls are limestone with a brown film of silt on them. The bottom is a very silty clay that undulates like jello when the movement of water just from swimming through the passage hits it. There is also some strange looking mass that is similar in appearance to wet attic insulation on the floor and even suspended in the water column. The passage is a good size with some fissures every so often that rise up about 20-30' and extend about 20' on either side. Farther back there are also some duck unders that would be difficult to pass through without disturbing the bottom in backmount (not that anyone can get there in backmount). Visibility was a hazy 40' or so and water temperature was 68 degrees. This was definitely a beautiful cave that deserves several more dives. We also made it back on 12/2/08 to the cave we had previously visited on 11/3/08. We did much the same dive as in November. The visibility was down to about 40' this time and pretty hazy. The river level was also up about a foot to a foot and a half. It appears this cave is definitely affected by the river level. We could still see the beauty of the cave though. 11/3/08 - Finally got out to another Chipola River cave. What a beautiful cave!! It was a fairly quick run up the river from the boat launch and the spring run an easy find. The spring is located in a very beautiful area. The entrance to the cave is in the middle of the bottom of the basin. The top of the breakdown is about 18' deep with the line just a few feet away from it in OW. The line does blend in with the brown walls in the cavern (not much of a cavern though). Started following the line right into a vertical fissure where you have to turn sideways to get through and even so, it was a tight squeeze in sidemount. I found myself wondering how anyone has gotten in here in backmount and started looking around for that bigger area. The sand is the only place, but even there it's tight. About 30' through the fissure and you pop out into a larger room to see the light from the 2nd sink opening. After another vertical fissure, the cave opens up to another cavern. The plan was to surface at both of these on the way back but a deco obligation prevented this. After a few more minutes of swimming to include going through a bedding plane the cave drops down a last vertical restriction to the 110' depth range. Up to this point the cave is all white, smooth limestone wall. In the deeper area, the cave opens up and becomes dark and silty. The visibility was still great but the darkness was swallowing up the light. Flow eased up at this point because of the larger rooms so swimming through was easy. There are a lot of breakdown rooms in this section of the cave. The largest room was about 20' from floor to ceiling and 40' wall to wall. There are several Ts in the system, to include a double T. Due to the flow it took 2/3rds of the penetration time to exit with a short deco obligation. This was a great dive and we can't wait to get back there. 6/24/08 - We made it back to the Chipola River for a great day of canoing and diving. We launched the canoe and paddled upriver about 2 or 3 miles to a boat ramp. It was pretty easy to paddle against the current of the river. In fact, we had a kid comment to his buddies that we were moving faster than they were and we were going upriver while they were going downriver! We found a couple of spring runs that didn't turn out to be anything we could dive. We did find a spring we could dive, though. This cave is known as Maddachalk. Visibility was 100'+ with water temperature of 68 degrees. The cave is small, windy, and has a lot of depth variation. Our maximum depth was 39', but the average was 20'. The cave is can be dived backmount (if you're not overly large), but is better suited for sidemount divers. This cave is also a residence to several large catfish. Definitely a cave worth revisiting. We'll post another report soon! 3/1/08 - We haven't been back on the Chipola in sometime. We have been hiking along it's banks looking for springs, and have found a few areas that look promising, but with the drought we were experiencing, even that has been difficult to do. Well, it seems the drought is over...or at least taking a little break. We had lots of rain at the end of February. This caused the Chipola River to rise up to 22' at one point. For reference, 22' is really high for this river. Over the past year, the Chipola has been at about 3'. At 22', the boat ramps were all submerged and Citizen's Lodge in Marianna was almost completely flooded. The water came to within 50' of the building, which is located about 300 yards from the river bank! This isn't necessarily a bad thing except it makes the water a tannic brown and difficult to see anything in what is usually one of the few clear rivers in north Florida. The river is also flowing pretty good, which makes a good motor necessary to head upstream. So either have a motor or plan on getting off at a different boat ramp once on the river. 9/15/07 - This isn't really a dive report since we didn't go diving. This was an excursion to look for potential dive sites in the Chipola, though. We finally got our canoe patched up and ready to float, so we decided to take it over to the Chipola for it's maiden voyage with us. We entered the river at the boat ramp near Florida Caverns State Park and headed upstream. The current wasn't to bad. The air temperature was nice and the river temp didn't feel too bad either. It's definitely warmer than the water coming out of our springs! We started paddling upstream and soon came across a very shallow area of the river that was creating a mini rapids effect. Actually, the water level of the river is pretty low. Based on where it looks like the water line usually is, the water level is probably about 4-5' down. We made it through our rapids, not without incident. This was the first canoe excursion for someone in the boat. However, not everyone in the boat was aware of this. Instead of heading into the rapids head on, an attempt was made to try to steer around the rapids and the canoe ended up taking on water! Fortunately, this was a very shallow part of the river and nothing was lost other than our pride. Good thing no one was around to witness this! After flipping the canoe to empty the water and resituating our belongings (by the way, dry bags really are dry!), we continued our adventure up the river. There are several trees that have fallen down across the river. We were able to maneuver around most of them in the canoe. One even had a recemt cut out from someone's hatchet that allowed us to pass. Finally we were forced to turn around because we couldn't get past another downed tree. Our objective was to find a certain spring we had heard about and check its condition, but we weren't able to get to it. Next time we'll bring a hatchet along. We turned the canoe around and checked a few areas on the way back that looked like they had potential, but couldn't find anything promising. Maybe next time...there's still a lot of river to explore. |
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