My First Time Diving P8, June 2014

So having had some instruction in the dark art of cave diving, the weekend after the training camp I decided it was time to go and dive something local. So at the Orpheus BBQ plans were hatched to go and do P8.

An amazingly strong team turned up to carry down it for me, so many I didn't have enough tacklebags to split my gear up for everyone to carry! This, however, turned out to be a blessing.

I'd only done P8 once before, about a year a go, and it was the first ever cave I got to the sump and thought "Why does it have to stop here? Why can't I carry on?"

Well now I could, so I would.

We set of down the cave and all was good, though most people had never carried dive gear before and the people with cylinders were struggling quite a bit! 

It was also decided that this was going to be one of the newer members of the club, Jack's, first attempt at rigging a cave! Here he is at the first pitch head getting supervision from Rich. He did a cracking job. 

So we carried on down the pitches and through the cave. Life was good.

I took this photo heading down the second pitch. Here life started to not be so good. As I said I'd only done P8 once before, and I took a wrong turn and started heading down a horrible system of tight, muddy tubes. 

Here's Jack in one of the larger sections.

But soon enough, we were at the sumps. After I mentioned at the CDG camp the week before that I wanted to dive P8, and at the OCC BBQ the night before, people started to tell me stories of what an appalling hard dive it was, particular thanks must go to Tony Seddon and Simon Brooks on that part, so with a lot of trepidation I geared up and set off into the sumps.   

Sump one started off as a zero vis nightmare, with line traps and silty squeezes to pass through. Thats my glove on the line, about 6 inches in front of the camera.

But soon. the vis cleared up! Almost 2 metres! It turned into quite a nice dive really. The picture directly above is a bit of floating wood that was in there and captivated me for a minute of so.

Soon enough, sump 1 was passed! All I had to do was carry on into the cave until the start of sump 4, my planned turn around point. 

I had been warned about a point in sump 3 where it often silted to the roof and it needed to be dug away to get through. In what I thought was zero vis, I arrived at the silt bank and started to dig. I soon learnt what real zero vis was, it was pitch black! I couldn't see a thing. I started to squeeze. I had a camera on my hand throughout this dive and had it running, my favourite part of the video was this squeeze.

As I squeezed a little bit of silt got stuck in the exhaust of my regulator and stuck the valve open. As I breathed in water, on the video, through the water and the regulator, you can audibly hear me say "Fuck".

I quickly started to purge the regulator by pressing the side of my head into the silt bank so I could breathe and carried on through the squeeze, I couldn't swap regulators as I couldn't get my hands to my mouth.

I soon passed the squeeze, swapped regulators and shook it to remove the silt from the exhaust. All good again. I carried on up a lovely cobble bank in great vis, as you can see above, to surface at the end of sump 4 in a huge rift.

 I walked along this looking at all the years of exploratory gear left here before turning and heading for home. 

I surfaced from the water to the team waiting for me, which was really really nice. The photo above was what I saw as my head broke the surface of the sump pool.

So we headed off out the cave, using the correct route this time, relatively uneventfully, and headed to the wanted for a well deserved pint or five.

I promptly fell asleep, stood up, outside, holding a pint. 

It was a good day.