Projects > Source de Vis 2007 (October)

Newbie report

Latest update: October 31, 2007

By Torsten Schnitter

My second project with the EKPP team took place sooner after the first one than I expected. The project would be Source the Vis again. After my first project at Source the Vis I knew what was coming up: hard work but with a lot of fun and a great team to do the job.
Jörg and I arrived at the camp site on Thursday evening after an eleven hour drive from Germany. The Friday morning welcome by the rest of the team was very friendly with quite some familiar faces. After a short briefing by Reinhard the setup for the day started. We had to carry approximately 800kg of equipment to the cave entrance which is 1,5km away. Due to excellent team spirit this was achieved in only a few hours work. Including an one hour lunch we had everything at the cave in only 6 hours time.
My last task this day was the in-water support during the set-up dives. Four scooters, two heating tubes and several stages had to put in place for tomorrow’s push dive. Jörg and JP did these set-up dives in a recordtime again.
In the evening we had dinner together at the cave. Always a good moment to relax and talk.

On Saturday Wido was surface manager and asked Jörg and myself to make the first check dives. We descended at 12:30 for the first time. Jörg was in front of me so I could watch him going through the restriction. He turned in a 90° angle with the stage at his left side and passed the restriction. Now it was up to me to get through. I turned on my side like I had seen him doing and with some pull and glide technique I slipped through without any problem.
After the restriction we clipped one of our stages to the line. We kept on swimming to the 21m and the 36m deco gas depot and checked everything that was there. Everything looked exactly as it was supposed to be. From the restriction down to 36m the cave looks like a big tunnel of about 15m width that is absolutely impressive. And an even more impressive view followed a little later: beyond this big tunnel the cave becomes a narrow shaft that goes down to 80m depth.
We went a few meters down into the shaft and covered our lights looking for Reinhard and Markus. It was a weird emotion not to see anything. Only the sound of the regulators and our own bubbles could be heard. I enjoyed these few seconds of absolute darkness a lot, also because it was no light failure like it was on my previous cave dives during my cave course.
Because we didn’t see any light from the push divers we turned and had a closer look at the cave. Until 20m depth there are many rugged rock formations. Some narrow crevices seem to lead up to the entrance pool of the cave. We enjoyed the beauty of this cave for about half an hour.

Then it was time to do a second check for Reinhard and Markus. We took our extra stages and went down again.
Before reaching the restriction I had to make a gas switch. A few meters after the restriction the cave opens into an enormous hall. The visibility was incredible and even now I find this part of the cave breath taking. The hall starts around 10m depth and goes all the way down to the bottom of the shaft at 75 meters. It is nearly impossible to see the opposite wall with your 18W HID and without any doubt it must be amazing to see some little tiny divers at the bottom of the shaft. But unfortunately the push divers were still not at the bottom of the shaft. We enjoyed this impressive view for a moment before we decided to go back.
After surfacing we handed the support sets to Wido and Stefan, the next check-up team, and helped them gearing up. While climbing out of the cave pool JP asked how I felt about this dive. With a “little smile” on my face I answered: Phantastic! A little later we were told by Wido and Stefan that the push divers had returned from their dive. During their deco the team started hauling back used equipment to the camp site.

In the evening when everything was done the whole team had dinner in a small, close by restaurant where everyone enjoyed Markus’ debriefing. A perfect team with good equipment and an even better team spirit made this weekend again a great success. I’m proud to be part of this team and want to thank everybody for a very cool weekend. I hope to see you again at one of the next projects.

Torsten