January 6, 1999

Matt Matthes and Jason Mallison arrive at the entrance after their dive to map D tunnel. They are preparing to doff their equipment prior to entering the personnel tranfer capsule. In the background, Rich Hudson arrives on the scene as a safety diver [photo ©1999 US Deep Caving Team, Inc.].

Mapping a Cave, while Surveying: the traditional and modern way

A dive report of January 6th 1999 dive by Matt

The outside temperatures are in a range where my hands are getting stiff and are losing feeling, even having gloves on. The equipment preparation is being done inside a large semi trailer and with the heater powered up to keep the temperature bearable. The spring pool is steaming since the discharged water is much warmer then the outside air temperature.

Jason and I are setting out again to map a part of the Wakulla spring cave system. This time we will use the Digital Wall Mapper for the bigger portion of our mapping mission dive into 'D' Tunnel until we are reaching the Scooter Break down room. From the Scooter Breakdown Dome on I will use the traditional way of cave survey to collect the data of the newly discovered Chupa Cabras Retreat room where a compass, slate and depth gauge are used to record data that will be transferred and flow eventually into a traditional cave map.

Jason is piloting the mapper again while I am scouting in front of him to light up the passage and illuminate the benchmark buoys. Our leisurely mapping cruise is uneventful, slowly we were navigating through the smaller passages of the end of 'D' tunnel. The first part of the modern mapping portion of this dive took us around 53 minutes (including time spent in the basin related to inertial alignment of the guidance system) before Jason dropped the Mapper and we swam back to the end of the old existing guide line when I got my Survey slate out and started the traditional way of cave survey. While recording the depth, azimuth (compass heading in degrees) and distance in-between survey stations while counting knots that are on the guide line every 3 meters (10 ft) and recording it onto my survey slate I was slowly progressing through the restriction that has to be passed before entering the big room.

During the survey I did see quite a lot of fossils, mostly clams and sea urchins with very thick shells. I could see as well some very old stalactites laying on top of the talus cone in 60 meters (200 ft) of water. The ceiling of the room is at 50 meters (160 ft) while the maximum depth in the room is 78 meters (256 ft).

While surveying the big room on the traditional way I realized how slow the old way of surveying is while were just flying through the cave passages with the modern Digital Wall Mapper that takes all the measurements on the fly (and produces a much more detailed and accurate map).

On the way out Jason picked up the Mapper where we left it and off we went again flying through the tunnel, entering the huge 'A' tunnel which has much better visibility today with around 40 meters (130+ ft).

The transfer into the Personnel Transfer Capsule went without any problems, the support divers taking care of all the equipment that is coming off Jason and me including our Cis Lunar rebreathers.

While decompressing in the chamber after our two hour bottom time we were reading some magazines (mostly National Geographic's and an adventure of Dirk Pitt) in the comfortably heated chamber. After some time into our lengthy decompression we were served a gourmet meal (first class pizza), laying on the sofa (a soft chamber mattress and a couple of blankets), we took a nap once in a while (Jason is snoring) and played some chess (I won the first and Jason the second round).

Our bottom time was two hours today, the inwater time before we entered the bell a little over three hours. Total runtime including in chamber decompression 10 hours and 21 minutes

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