Little River: the last room?

On Sunday Rob and I went to Little River. Rob had some dives in mind that required two stages and a scooter, so I wanted to do some more scootering with more bottles to prepare for that. So after some waffling between Little River and Ginnie, we settled on Little River. The plan was, as usual, to go way the heck up the mainline. And maybe look for some side passages on the way out. Rob is always looking for the deep tunnel, and has never found it.

When we got to Little River on the late side, it was pretty crowded. I would guess there were at least five other teams. They were all in various stages of getting ready to dive though, so we really weren't in each others' way. We humped our bottles and scooters down the stairs and loaded them into the water. We also walked our doubles down and sat them on the wall. I always lay them on the wall a bit off center, so that if they fall, they fall onto the grassy area like 4 inches below, instead of the sidewalk. And that finally caused them to fall (onto the grass). Doh. Rob came down to find me in a strange position, hugging my tanks, trying to hoist them back onto the wall. What can I say, I love my 104s :P

After all that lugging, we finally got into our drysuits and headed back down to the water. It was actually not too bad today, since it was pretty cool. Chilly almost. We got into our rigs, did our gear checks on the wall and then bounded into the water. Well Rob bounded; I waddled. There was one other team in the basin getting ready to go, and they headed in a couple minutes before us. They told us they would be videoing not too far in. I made Rob lead since I was a little frazzled by the two bottles and scooter. Rob installed the reel at his favorite spot on the left side, and we dropped our bottles in the usual spot. Rob was supposed to drop the camelbak with the O2 but he forgot, which I noticed right when we got to the mainline, so he dropped it on our line right before the reel tied into the mainline. And then we were off. We crossed paths with that other team doing video, maybe 300 feet in. On of them moved to the ceiling so that we could scooter under him, so that was no problem. We went right at the T and before you know it, we were on the other side of the loop.

We were pretty much just on the trigger straight until it got low and zig zaggy, and then we alternated between short bursts of scootering and swimming. We got to that room with the hill, where the line goes abruptly up and then down again, and dropped our first bottles and scooters there. That room is silty, but if you clip to the top point of the line, it is high enough off if the bottom that everything can be dropped there. From there, we kicked for a while. We got to the well casing after about 10 minutes. I eventually went off of the second stage, but there was nowhere to drop it. So I swam with it for a while. Rob eventually found a spot for one stage that he took and then another mediocre spot for mine. The bottom in this area was super silty so I checked a couple times to make sure I wasn't leaving a silt trail behind me. The rocks were also covered in a mist of silt so pulling and gliding, which was quite tempting, would also make a silty mess. Eventually we went under a little duck under and came to a room with a hill (a very silty hill) and as we swam up it, I could see a layer in the water, almost like a halocline. The layer looked blue from below and once we crossed it, we were in crystal clear water, in a room with white white walls. It was like Jackson Blue or Mexico. I could also see little bits of white raining down around us, from our bubbles hitting the ceiling. This had the unfortunate effect of stirring up the silt on the bottom. We looked around for a minute, then Rob signaled to continue. The line went downhill on the other side and then disappeared into a narrow flat duck under. Rob went to check it out and all I could see were plumes of silt coming from the hole. He backed out a bit, I think to approach it from a different angle, and I suggested we just hang out in that room a bit longer and then turn -- it was, after all, a pretty cool room! So we did that instead. I think this might be the room that appears on the map as "the last room".  Rob saw that there was a vertical crack above and told me to stay here so he could check it out. Rob disappeared and lots of ceiling bits rained down and hit the bottom and it got quite silty. Rob appeared again and I suggested we head out.

We looked toward the exit of the room and saw that the silt in the room had been pushed out by the flow. So it was a pretty silty exit. I tried to outrun the silt but this turned out to be rather counterproductive so eventually we slowed down and just dealt with it. We picked up our stages and carried them to the well casing room and both switched onto them there. From there we had a pretty uneventful exit. By the time we reached our other stages and scooters the viz had improved. After a couple of minutes of alternating between pushing and riding the scooter, the cave opened up and we were on the trigger to the merry go round. After the two Ts, we passed another team on the mainline, taking pictures I think. They moved aside enough that we could stay on the trigger as we passed. As we approached the chimney, I went off the trigger and started preemptively venting my suit and wing. Somehow in the process of breaking trim to vent one or the other, I looked up and saw a piece of cave rapidly approaching my face. It was too late to avoid it, and I completely face-planted into it, mask first. I was glad it didn't break my mask! It definitely left a mark though, and sort of knocked the wind out of me.

Before you know it, we were back to our reel (and the camelbak, ahhh). We got to our O2 bottles and settled in to our usual deco spot. In a stroke of brilliance, I realized I could clip my scooter off to the line, and not have to manage the beast through deco. After taking my usual notes about the dive in my wetnotes, I tried doing some deco sudoku, which worked alright, but then another team came through to deco, and I figured I should keep better track of where everyone was instead of looking in my wetnotes. Eventually we finished our deco and headed out.

As Rob was trying to stage our bottles on the rocks before we exited the water, a guy (who was not diving) ran over and offered to pull our bottles up onto the concrete. So helpful. Then as we were climbing out of the water, he appeared again to give me a hand out of the water, which I wasn't going to refuse :). Southerners are so friendly.

By the time we left, most of the teams were out of the water, though a few new people had arrived. It was a busy day! It turns out we picked a good day to go though. By later in the week, the river water was in the cave and the water was up to the concrete. And it was pretty low when we were there!