The final weekend in March 2014 was one that is already proving to be one of the most important in my caving career.
It all started the night before in South Wales Caving Clubs long common room. I'd only been caving 8 months but was racking up some harder trips and had done a fair bit in Wales recently, just the weekend before I'd been at SWCC with members of The Cave Offenders Register, details of that trip shall not be getting published...
This trip I was down with Orpheus Caving Club, Friday night we're discussing planned trips. The trips that were decided on were trips I'd done the weekend before. So OCCs chairman decided to try and find me a bit more of an interesting trip.
There was only one offer, from a gent called Gareth Davies. He wanted a hand carrying some diving gear to Pwll Dwfn?
Pwll Dwfn is situated on the hills above Dan-Yr-Ogof showcaves. So with two compliments of dive gear we headed off up. Here's Malcolm carrying way too much gear.
Its a vertical pothole with approximately 150m of descent. At the bottom is a dive that is being actively dug to try and discover new cave passage. It was the biggest SRT trip I'd done at the time, and I had to do it dragging dive gear. But much more impressive was the engineering that had gone into the dig at the end.
This is the compressor on the surface. It runs an airline through the entirety of the cave to the bitter end to power a few different tools. The long piece of metal and bucket is a homemade cooler to stop the pipe blowing off the end.
So off we went down. I wasn't too bad at SRT at this point. But I was flumoxed by the cylinder between my legs!
Just above the final pitch, I came across the bucket with a firehose attached!
"What the hell is that for Gareth?"
"It collects the water from the waterfall, and we put the hoses in front of our mask in the sump to increase visibility!"
What a genius idea!
Down at the sump, we drilled some bolts in. I can't remember why, but this was the best photo I'd taken in a cave at this time.
The dive base is an impressive place. It's a platform made out of 8 tonnes of silt they've removed from the sump using an airlift (a massive, homemade, underwater vacuum cleaner) and held together with mesh and scaffolding.
It's also a pretty hectic place.
Pwll Dwfn always has issues with the compressed air line for the tools. My first visit was no exception. This is the air reservoir located just above the sump.
The goal of these dives was to drill holes in the roof of the tight section of the sump to insert explosives and make it bigger. How many divers do you know who's equipment includes a drill?
So off they went to dive, I explored some of the avens which rise nearly to the surface again just to the side of the sump pool. I actually managed to squeeze a bit further than anyone had been before. But the top of the avens is a slightly larger than body size tube situated over 100m up a rift...it's not hard to go further, just scary.
By the time I'd returned from playing up the avens, diving had finished, all that was left to do was haul the cylinders back out the cave, and head back to SWCC.
On the walk out, Gareth asked me if I fancied carrying to the end of Dan-Yr-Ogof the next day, I also let slip I'd done a bit of diving, to which he replied "You should try cave diving, want to have a go?"
I stupidly replied yes to both...
