Projects > Source de Vis 2006 (August)
Scout Trip
Latest update: October 9, 2006
Like a few years before, this year I had the pleasure to stay again together with nearly the whole EKPP Team for one week in France to do some cave exploration in the Doux de Coly. That was what every team member was looking forward too! But due to bad visibility, the Doux de Coly wasn't diveable on an exploration level.
The Vis river.
So we switched to "Plan B". It was planned to go to the Source de Vis if the Coly sucked. Plan B was already mentioned and discussed a few weeks before the project started, so it was nothing new for the team and everyone was prepared! But before the whole team left, we decided to send out a scout/recon team to figure out if the Source de Vis was diveable or not. This decision was made to avoid and prevent the whole team from driving 600 km through France for nothing!
The scout/recon team consisted of three guys: JP, Wido and myself. Our job was to figure out the following points:
- Visibility in the pool of the cave and down to 9 meters with lights (for this task we brought our dry suits, masks and lights with us);
- The flow of the cave. This can be seen easily from the outside;
- Make some video and pic's to show that during an another briefing to the team;
- If there are another divers. Because we wanted to avoid any disturbances;
We left from La Grande Prade at six o'clock in the morning.
After four and a half hour of driving we arrived at the parking area of the cave. We took our equipment (drysuits, video and so on…) and went on. It took us with hardly any equipment 15 minutes to get to the cave entrance. Then we climbed through the dry part to finally reach the cave pool. For me it was the second time there, so I knew it already from my previous trip. But Wido and JP were really impressed.
The clear water of the Vis river.
Then we started doing our scout tasks. The visibility was great, flow wasn't high, there were no other divers around and we shot our video and pic's. So there were perfect conditions for trying a push dive at this cave.
Back at La Grande Prade we reported what we had found out. After this, the decision was made to go to the Vis and do a push dive there.
For me all in all it was a great day with two really cool Dutch guys. I enjoyed it very much to stay together with them the whole day, pure fun!
Viktor