Cave Dive, Part 2

Part 2 of my friend Les Knotts' cave diving story.  Just so you can picture the person this voice is coming from, here are some photos of the dive. 

This is Les and his beautiful, sweet wife, Monika.  Together the Knotts family
ministers to teens worldwide who have been affected by their parents'
military deployments.  They are affiliated with
Military Community Youth Ministries. 
If you would like to be a part of this vital ministry, please visit


www.mcym.org

Without further ado - here's the man himself:

Shortly we surfaced. It was an expansive cave. An air-filled one, for one by one, following the lead of our guide, we removed our regulators and breathed what seemed to me to be remarkably fresh air, considering the circumstances. We had eight feet of headroom here, but that narrowed toward the edges of the irregularly-shaped room. Protruding from the surface of the cave were the thick, intertwined striations of roots from the trees above, seeking the life-giving, life-threatening waters below ground. In the near distance was a bright electrical floodlight that gave some light to what would otherwise be lit in deep silence only by our lanterns. I could see the cable running to it from the surface, and wondered how often such a thing would have to be replaced, given the constant wetness of the conditions. I rolled onto my back and finned gently over to check the condition of the lamp, which turned out not to be a light at all, but a brightly lit hole to surface. That was our wonderful above-ground sun punching a serpentine aperture through to this depth, right through the rock. It was about 20- inches wide, and had a smattering of greenery lacing the porous sides. Mesmerizing. The cable I had seen was not cable at all, but a thick root that had come down from above, found only air, and was snaking its way back into the cave roof rock near the opening. Again I lingered, looking.



Others explored the length and breadth of the cave. It was quiet—reverently so. Sergio, our guide, admitted that he came here to float in the quiet darkness for long periods of isolated meditation. I could see that. I was ready for a nap, myself.


No nap was immediately forthcoming. After checking our air reserves, we submerged to continue the journey. Predictably, Heavy Breather was at 500 pounds, which is normally when we’d head for the surface. That’s in the red zone of the dial, and we had agreed to use a third of our air on the way in, a third on the way out, and keep a third in reserve. It wasn’t strictly that we had violated that rule, as we had opportunity to return to the surface after the big screen panorama to retrieve new tanks for the cavern portion of the dive. We chose not to, and now we were only five minutes from the opening, so there was not any real risk, as the other divers all had 1000 pounds of pressure each. Plus Sergio had a spare tank on his back with a spare regulator. I indicated my low air, and Sergio paired with me for the swim out.


In three minutes of swimming, it was clear that Sergio could not, indeed, swim this cave network with his eyes closed as he had earlier claimed. He searched calmly, then more vigorously for the familiar underwater markers he had used for ten years of diving in this, his favorite cave site. He did not see them. We were swimming the wrong way. Our guide jerked his head left and right, up and down. He was actively looking, but not finding, that which he sought. Sergio grabbed my harness to keep me close, then we reversed direction.


We emerged once again in the now-familiar cave, no closer to the exit than we were three minutes earlier. He got his bearings, and then he took us beneath the surface in the opposite direction from where we had just come. Sure enough, five minutes later, we were on the surface, glorious sunlight poking through the trees into our faces. Sergio admitted the obvious as we stripped out of our wetsuits: that he had been lost. We knew. He remarked about how calm we had all been, and we just shrugged. Panic never helped in difficult circumstances before, why start now? Later, Arnie asked me how much air I had in my tank when we emerged from the dangerous beauty of the cave. I had not even looked. Obviously, I had enough to get out.





*this tidbit was withheld from the group until we had emerged from the dive.