There are steps carved into the cavernous sinkhole that continue into a long wooden staircase. The Staircase will only support one diver at a time and lead to a platform in the middle of the water. The submerged portion of the sink hole is shaped like an upside down mushroom.
As you look up, sun light beams into the sink through the opening filtered by all of the surrounding vines and foliage.
Once in the water our confidence began to fade. Looking down it was very dark and ominous, the water is freezing and until it has time to warm up in our wetsuits our teeth chatter.
We had picked a good time to dive as a number of divers had just finished their dive. I think there were only two other divers in the water as we prepared to go in. Our friends Penny and Gretchen looked on while we completed our final safety checks and began to dive.
As we descended we stopped at a dive platform, turned on our dive lights and took a second to compose ourselves. It was a cloudy day so there was limited sunlight entering the sink. Large three foot long catfish swam by. Our lights could not reach the bottom but illuminated the fossil filled limestone near us. There is a comforting feeling to focus on the rock closest to you. To concentrate on the detail of what you are looking at.
As we began to descend we followed the limestone down on an angle. We worked ourselves around the center pillar dropping into the darkness. At first we stayed at a constant depth but then as our confidence grew we dropped deeper into the abyss. The deeper we dove, the farther into an overhead environment we went.
The sink is full of a number of very technical caves that have been haphazardly barricaded to keep out divers. There are short non-technical caves created by fallen boulders that they refer to as “swim throughs”. These tunnels may be ten to thirty feet long. They start and end in the main chamber. To be sure we were not accidentally entering a technical cave; we would cover over our lights. If we could see ambient light at the end of the tunnel, it was a swim through; darkness, a cave. Some of these were vary narrow, only a few feet wide. They were exciting and as our courage grew we navigated longer and more narrow “swim throughs”.
Here is some great Youtube footage taken by other divers at Devils Den. It gives you an idea of just how dark and scary the "swim throughs"could be:
After about 45min I was nearing the end of my air. To be cautious, most divers ascend while they still have some air, just in case something happens on the way up.
This was another amazing dive. Despite how awesome it was, we decided to only burn one tank each (normally we dive at least two tanks on a trip). We had a couple of friends who don’t dive waiting to go kayaking with us that afternoon. As it turned out, we all had lunch together in Gainesville FL then headed back to Albany. A combination of the cold water, climbing those stairs treacherous wooden stairs, and the general exhaustion you get from diving had us worn out.
After a three hour drive we still needed to clean and hang all of our equipment, Anne’s favorite part of the whole trip!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for your comments.