Night camp in the bivouac hall (Ressel) 2011
Team: Roland Kring, Tobi Ziegler
In the Ressel I had my first cave dive and a large part of my Cave 1 training with Ralph Willhelm (PATD). In the Ressel, together with Robin, I had explored month after month, meter after meter of the cave and gradually got into cave diving, learned and made unforgettable dives. Now, more than 1 year after Robin's retirement I am standing here again, at the Ressel with Tobi Ziegler, my new dive partner!
I have known Tobi for many years and have done some TGs in local and Austrian lakes and some cave dives. Now it was time to get to know each other even better and closer in cave diving and to prepare together for the upcoming projects of Cavebase in 2011.
We went together for a practice dive to the Lot in France. Once again we stayed with Lilo and Paul at the Domaine de Gayfie (http://www.gayfie.fr/) near Cajarc. Lilo and Paul have become good friends over the many years that I/we have been going to France and I am always happy to see them again. Everything humanly possible is done here to have everything as smooth and comfortable as possible. I can also remember an action with Paul in his workshop as we tinkered for several hours on my scooter (then still Gavin) to make it work again. Or a clutch failure on the bus, watching the World Cup soccer game, etc. The good times I always spent in France would not have been so easy and smooth without the two.
Since Tobi and I had only the one practice dive planned and otherwise in the time of the turn of the year no project was pending, we went alone. The first day in France we used to prepare the equipment and to examine some caves (such as the dry cave on the property of the Domaine, very nice!), out of the water.
In the luggage we had each a Trimix Stage with 17/60 80cft, a 35/35 80cft starting from 36m, a 50/25 80cft starting from 21m for the front deco at the entrance of the Ressel and a 50/25 40cft for the deco at the end of the Ressel, as well as a 6m Dekostage 40cft also for the rear deco and a 6m Stage 80cft for the front deco. Still with us were 2x 42 AH Scooter (Suex) and a Magnum dry tube for the Biwack material with sleeping bag, Isomatte, food, drinking, first aid material, repair and patch material for the suit, oxygen monitoring for the Biwack hall, LED lamps for several days, Füsslinge of wet suits for the dry area etc.. Here again many thanks to Fred for the sketch and provide/finish the support discs of the dry tubes
In my opinion, the TG is not particularly demanding in principle, the penetration is about 2.5 km, the max depth about 80m. The difficulty here was, as so often, in the detail. I was already a couple of times in the Biwackhalle, but I have never spent the night here. This TG, however, was many times more difficult than the TGs before to the hall.
It began already in the river, the Cele, with the fact that the current was immensely high and we had to struggle extremely to even come to the entrance area. Since we wanted to save ourselves a setup TG, we had everything on the man, which of course did not make the story easier :-) So we were packed with 6 stages, a Heitzank, 2 Magnum Scooters and a Magnum dry tube, big reel and such odds and ends.
From Ralph W. and Stefan G. we knew that the visibility in the cave was around 10-12m. Unfortunately, the visibility was just at the beginning rather much worse I think. Here you can see again, how fast something like that changes although it had not rained and it was otherwise dry (no snow or the like). He also said that a very slight flow was felt in the cave. We were first glad when we were in the cave, however, was here nix with easy, there was a strong current present, even in the cave. In the cave at about 6.5m depth we put down our 80cft oxygen days and clicked them into the line. It should be mentioned that there is a new, relatively thick line from the surface down to 800m penetration. The line is very well laid and with the yellow color well visible. It was noticed positively that not only new line was laid up to 800m, but also all old lines were brought out of the cave (up to 800m). In addition, permanent arrows have been placed on the line. Really good work as we think. This was done by a diving team with Maxim from ISE (http://is-expl.com/).
Finally arrived on 21m (45 min to get here!, who knows the route, knows how fast that normally goes) we had to wipe the sweat from our foreheads :-). The 21m stage for the deco put down, briefly checked and we changed to the 17/60 trimix. At the bottom of the shaft at about 42m depth, unfortunately there is no other suitable place, we put down the 36m stage with the 35/35 and hung the heating tank to it. From the bottom of the shaft we were only using 3 stages (the 17/60 we were breathing out of, the 50/25 stages and the oxygen stages), 2 scooters and the Magnum dry tube. Now, as expected, it was going quite well, although the flow was still quite noticeable. Which when stopping to set a coockie or do anything else, was pretty sucky.
The ride was pretty uneventful up to the back shaft at the deepest point at about 80m depth and around 1500m penetration, but nice. From here on the line chaos gets worse and more obscure. From here on a lot of corridors go off, partly unlined, partly with torn x-various lines and partly just short indentations that look like corridors. Here we had to mend quite often, search for continuation, wind up torn lines on a stone secure, lay new line, etc, etc. One can get quite lost here with the branches. A well-known English diving colleague had said years ago, when we had met at the cave, he drives without line, mends nothing and lays no new one. But since we are cowards, we found it more reassuring to have a continuous line :-)
Arrived at 21m depth, of course with the appropriate deepstops, we changed from the trimix to the 50/25 stages and hung them on the line. At about 15m on a platform in a high fissure hall you think the cave would continue straight ahead, big passage leading to Lac Isler --> wrong! So at about 12m depth arrived, deco already completed up to here, I had not really known my way around and went into the wrong passage (direction Blocksee). Always with view on the Fini of the 50er Stage, since we were already quite long on the gas because of patch, line put, Deko, etc.. Here we almost broke off the TG and turned around because of the 50 gas. We knew however that the line is now continuous and was marked with arrows or Coockis of us and the way back to the Trimixstage was not far.
Surprising was that my Coockies I had set with Robin at that time, all were still there and the line in which I had clamped them also still i.O. was. So sooo many were probably not back there at the time :-)
Because of the Coockis of that time I found the way again and we finally arrived at the 6m stop. Worth mentioning is possibly still that before my main lamp had failed. Since I had somehow eh no great confidence in the large 30AH battery more (gell Tim), I had pulled an additional 13.5 AH tank on the belt next to the large tank. So change the tank and continue. Here I became aware of how important it is to have a dive buddy who keeps his nerves, although the visibility is partly shitty, many lines hang around, the way is a maze, technical defects plague (lamp failure) and the gas (50%) is running low. At this point a big praise to Tobi, not everyone does that and I have seen here already many "throw up" in such situations!
In the 6m Deko we had then both switched off the light to save battery and switched to the backup lamps. As soon as the deco was around at 6m, I thought to myself, "now simma glei there". Which was normal, there are from here still about 650m distance in the 0-5m range. Of course not in this case :-) From the 6m point there are still 3 crossings where you can easily miss and then finally comes, if you have driven correctly to a place where you inevitably have to get out of the water and the entire equipment must be carried around. Normal here is a water level of about 15-25cm. So normally fins off, leave everything except the 6m stage here and carefully put one foot in front of the other. But now the water level was at 50-60cm in a kind of channel of about 50cm width. The "channel" had a current that it would have almost always torn away our feet. Tobi said: "do ziagts aba scho sauba ha?" In this part the CO2 level is so high that every movement is hammer-like exhausting. I did it like I always do, fins off, stand up, dry tube, scooter and 6m stage and struggle through. Due to the immense current, I tipped slightly sideways, slipped and tore my foot on a sharp stone. Great, I thought, while the cold water ran into my suit :-)
Tobi tried it with very flat lie down and pull, push and push and and and. Anyway, it seemed like hours, we needed a good 45min here. We were through the place and after a few minutes break could bring the pulse back under 180 and descend. Normally the scooter is unhooked before the ascent point and only the 6m stage is taken. Because of the current I was worried that we would not make it on foot behind the spot and decided to take a scooter with us. So we descended again and continued with only one scooter, one stage and the dry tube. Now it is only about 70-80m in the 4m range to the Biwackhalle.
With frozen foot :-) we are then finally, meanwhile it was believed 22:00 rum, arrived at the Biwackhalle. Here, too, the CO2 level was as high as I had never experienced before. So a mountaineer must breathe in 7.000m height! So we took off the equipment very carefully, secured it with a rope, dragged out the dry tubes, which was really cool, and got out of the suit. All super careful not to damage anything, cuffs or the like. Get feet out of the dry tube and put them on.
You have to work so slowly here that it's almost annoying. But otherwise it was really not possible, you sweat like an animal, your heart races, although you do almost nothing. Why it was so intense here this time I don't know, but I had never experienced it like this before.
Then first explored the dry cave and found that some very clever has removed the deposited lime from me. At the emergence point were also lime traces to see. If that was an emergency (for which the lime was intended) it is i.O., but I would have expected that one leaves a message (Wetnotes or similar) or an InfoMail on the relevant known lists, or wherever writes. We had no problem in this regard, our devices were all tight, worked perfectly and we did not need the lime, but it sucks even here to be "stolen".
After that we wanted to make a light with the help of a lighter and a candle. However, there was nothing to be done, absolutely no chance to light the lighter, zero. Even the next day it did not work.
Anyway, first eat something. Even the chewing was so exhausting, that one really had no Bock :-) Looking for a place to camp! The big stone I already knew was logically still there, but I had found two more berths where we had more space and spread out our sleeping mats, sleeping bag on it and good. I had additionally still a very strong first aid blanket, or how they are called, with it. I had put it under the sleeping pad. In the cave everything is extremely damp, slimy and dirty. We had talked a bissl and then lay down to sleep. It is very noisy because of the water that falls into the dry hall as if through a waterfall. Every time you turn over in the night it sucks, you breathe so hard that you wake up all the time. At 4:30 am we both had to for little king tigers. Alone opening from the sleeping bag zipper was so exhausting that we needed half an hour, after we lay again, to bring the pulse to a normal level. For all other things that normally belong in the toilet, we had dog poop bags use and took them out again in the dry tube. Iiiiiiigitttt !!!
The next morning I first mended my footling from the dry suit. The had 3 holes! Here I had some with me and could get that well under control. The shoe was tight until the emergence in the Cele!
Stuff comfortably and leisurely packed, very slowly and carefully dressed, dry tubes ready and brought into the water.
Mutually helped into the equipment and dived off. For this part we had needed so 2 hours. Since the line was now continuous, with arrows and cookies signposted by us, the return trip was super easy. We took all the arrows and cookies back with us. It was also only very minimal flow to feel, no comparison to dive in. The dry spot which you have to transfer, we had very easy swimming with the regulator in the mouth in 5 min. passed, also no comparison to the previous day, and off we went. On the trigger pressed to the 36m Stages. Deco uneventful and easy as always. It became violent only again with the equipment from the water and high to the road. For whatever reason, we were both totally flat and did not know how we would now bring all the jostling up to the car. Surely the night in the Biwackhalle had contributed her part to it. Hour after hour passed and somehow we managed it then just the same.
Also the next day, after a quiet night in the house with Lilo and Paul, we decided not to dive anymore due to physical fitness and went home. So an actually not insanely difficult TG can not be so easy :-) Tobi, thank you very much for the nice TG.
I am looking forward to the planned projects in 2011, the year can come and we are ready!
In this sense,
Your Cavebase
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