Projects > Gourneyrou 2005 (June)
Setup
Latest update: March 6, 2004
First part (by Mara)
The lower half of the cable car.
Logistics is one of the main issues when it comes to setting up an exploration project in Gourneyrou. Actually it is even more challenging than the operations at Gourneyras, the cave located only few hundreds meters away, as it requires not only one cable car but two of them and at the bottom of the valley, in front of the cave entrance, there is no nice and comfortable place to put the equipment but only a few slippery boulders in front of the small pool which is actually a few meters lower, depending on the water level. As the push dive required long deco in cold water, using the habitat was necessary and the whole team had to work out how to lower the habitat from the road to the middle station and from there to the cave entrance.
It is amazing how fast these operations could be carried out with good teamwork and sound rope technique. The more times we did it, the faster it became. Once the habitat was lowered into the small pool area it was finally time to set it up properly inside the cave. Basically the habitat is a plastic box within a metal cage, with an inflation device on top of this. Air is used to inflate the habitat and the buoyancy of the whole structure is adjusted via the inflation device.
Three divers went in the water to place it at 6 meters and to place necessary stages; the main issue was preventing the habitat from flipping over and have all the air escape out; this would result in a heavy structure falling on the bottom, while the ideal situation is moving the whole thing neutrally buoyant up to the selected location. For sure this required some attention and keeping control of this is not always really a one finger operation.
The first 30 m of the cave are narrow and and in a triangular shape. Support divers had to squeeze past the habitat in order to see if Reinhard and Michael had come back.
After finding a suitable spot only 20 meters from the entrance, we inflated the habitat with an air tank which was already bolt snapped to the metal cage (in the EKPP we only use air to inflate car tires and the habitat) and the habitat was pinned to the ceiling of the cave, in a stable position just above the line. As the top of the habitat was not in flat contact with the cave ceiling, support divers could see each other through the small space between the top surface of the habitat and the ceiling of the cave.
After placing scooters, stages and the heating tube at 21 meters our support dives were finished. Job done.
Second part (by Gertjan)
After about 25 meters, the cave becomes bigger as the two support divers approach the big chamber at 40 metes. Note the flat wall on the right side.
After Ralph and Fenu met Reinhard and Michael on their deco, they were told when Reinhard and Michael would enter the habitat. Since it was Mara and my shift to do support, we had the pleasure to perform this task. When approaching Reinhard and Michael on their 9 m stop, they already ascended to the habitat. After Reinhard arranged his oxygen and break gas bottles, he went out of the RB first, followed by Michael a few moments later. Mara took care of the two RBs while I tried to ascend with my head into the habitat, to inform if they had any special wishes for their stay. They wanted food, and fast! They also told me one check would be enough, and their stay in the habitat would take approximately 2 hours.
Together with Mara we swam the RBs to the entrance, so Ralph could take the frames apart to carry them up. Arno was already pronounced "chef de cuisine", so he started to prepare food right away. The first course would be pasta, followed by their favorite barbecued lamb-chops. The two hours went by very fast, and before realizing it, Mara and I had to go and help Reinhard and Michael out of the habitat.
This to me seems to be the most critical part of the push dive, and as a support diver one needs to be "on top" of the push divers to be prepared to share gas in case of an emergency. After all, the push divers only carry an oxygen and a break gas stage, no doubles or whatsoever. The ascent went smooth, and so Mara and me were facing our last "in water" task for this weekend: removal of the habitat.
Final part (by Mara)
Brus and Ralph hauling the habitat out of the cave while the others were pulling the rope. The habitat barely fits in the entrance area.
After everything else had been removed from the cave and the small pool area it was then time to remove the habitat. Gertjan and I were already in the water so we had the pleasure to go for it with Brus telling us "Have fun guys..." just before we started the dive. Before starting to deflate the habitat we clipped to the structure the weights used by Micha and Reinhard in the last part of the ascent. Deflating the habitat is not always an easy operation as the structure is not perfectly flat all the time when the corner with the deflation device is lower than the others and the air is not coming out easily.
It is then necessary to use some strength to move the habitat in a position so that it is possible to deflate it. In a perfect world this would then result in pulling a neutrally buoyant structure out of the cave but we are not living in a perfect world. The effort necessary to move the structure was really comparable to lowering and hauling the equipment from the road to the pool and back. Push and pull in the narrow section of the cave with the metal cage getting stuck into the rocks, untangling the weights from the line various times, checking the buddy and being careful about not staying below the structure, required definitely some teamwork and was also great fun.
... which can also be seen here.
The main issue was working in a limited space and having no room to stay on the sides but only in front or behind the habitat was quite challenging. For sure this kind of task does not match very well with precision and finesse in the water but we tried to be as efficient as possible also avoiding unnecessary damage to the cave. After surfacing with the habitat we helped the other guys hauling it to the lower station of the cable car; they were pulling it out with a rope while we were pushing it out of the pool.
Of course all these operations are possible in such a limited time frame only with a team approach and with great team spirit; this is the only way such projects are possible and the reason we love them so much!