Lot & Dordogne December 2006
Team: Roland & Robin
We wanted to finish the cave diving year 2006 in a good way and visited the Lot again.
We planned to do the circuit in the deep part of Ressel again, as this is a very nice dive and we wanted to tackle the end of Sump1 on one of the next trips. Besides, this is a good opportunity to get to know the cave even better before going further into it. It has happened to some divers that they entered further into the cave at the fourth T instead of leaving it towards the cave exit.
Since no one could give us any information about the visibility and conditions at the cave, we decided to do a short check TG and at the same time put down some of the required stages for the dive.
Roland was back on the RB 80 and Robin OC with the D18 with a Trimix 15/55. We again used Stages exclusively as our primary gas source and scooted on the 35/35 into the cave, which had acceptable visibility conditions around 10-12m. We clipped 2 x 80 cf Trimixstages 15/55 and an 80 cf 50/25 to the line just before the shaft at 360 m and looked briefly into the shaft.
After about 30 min we resurfaced and took one backupscooter each as well as 2 more 80 cf trimixstages for Robin and two oxygenstages (80 cf) and after a short briefing we scooted back into the Ressel.
Roland was thus with a total of 4 Stages and Robin with 7 Stages on the way, so that the load during the dive is divided to some extent, Roland took a Trimixstage for Robin.
We clipped the oxygen stage this time about 70 m in the cave at a suitable place on 6 m into the line, since it was nevertheless clearly colder in the Cele with 8°C than with pleasant 13°C in the cave.
As usual, we switched to the trimix just before the shaft and scooted down the shaft without going off the trigger, of course.
We made brisk progress, recognizing all the prominent points here and there and there... and finally reached the next junction. To make the orientation at this T (it's actually a Y) unambiguous, we placed a permanent linearow in the direction of the shallow passage, as this is the shortest and less deep way to the exit.
The various clothespins are not goal-directed here. We then scooted the shallow route in the 50m area back to the T at 830m removed our cookie and scooted back to the shaft and after a few short deep stops initiated the deco and switched to the 35/35 in the shaft at 36m and briefly discussed the deco in the wetnotes.
We finished the dive after 235 min and reached a maximum depth of 68m.
In this sense,
Your Cavebase
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