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Goul du Pont & Goul de Tannerie (March 2003)
Latest update: March 18, 2004
Goul du Pont, named after the train bridge crossing it. This is the gear for 2 people: Wido and Hervé. First 5 stage cave dive for Wido (deco bottles included).
After reading Hervé's invitation on the EKPP list to explore the side tunnel in the Goul du Pont he had seen on the previous dive with Brus. I responded, not sure he would do the dive with me I wrote him a one liner "is this an open invitation?". A few hours later I got the Response "if you are up to it and have the equipment, sure!". So after a short discussion on the phone we decided to do it the weekend before the Gourneyras, we would do a training/warm-up dive on Saturday in the Goul de Tannerie and on Sunday the dive in Goul du Pont to see where the side tunnel would go or that it was just an alcove.
After an uneventful drive down to Bourg St Andéol I met Hervé who arrived just a few minutes later. Signed into hotel Moderne, talked for a while and went to sleep.
The next day we where at the cave at 8.00, prepared our gear and started the dive taking two stages each. We started the dive nice and relaxed just to get used to each other’s behavior underwater. When down the shaft and continued for a while in the deeper section of the cave. We decided to turn the dive as I had reached half of my second stage. The first stage we had dropped just before reaching the shaft. On our way back, after we picked up our stage that we placed we looked into one of the smaller side tunnels of a while to see how I would like the narrow stuff...
We moved closer to the entrance of the cave and did some practice on OOG situations, the first few went with a little struggle from my side by getting the longhose and the stage regulator entangled, later on I got it right... We practiced traveling by only touch contact with our eyes closed, a little different from what I had learned in my cave class but still fine. We laid knotted line as we would do on tomorrows dive and surveyed it. An other good learning point is that I slowed Hervé too much down than without helping him where really needed. We talked about that when surfacing later. A really cool dive with very good practice on several points in a very cool cave. Total dive time 201min, max depth 63 meters, visibility up to 15 meters.
Quickly dissembled all gear and stored it in Hervé's van. We took my car to start driving to the Gourneyras to check the conditions for next weeks EKKP event. During our 2,5 hour drive we had plenty of time to talk trough the dive and discussed the dive we would do tomorrow. Conditions turned out to look very promising if the weather stays the way it is during the coming week.
Hervé putting his doubles in the water in order to avoid doing ripping his dry suit by entering the water with the doubles on his back.
Upon return in hotel Moderne we started to prepare our gear for tomorrow’s dive. In total we used a D20 and 2 stages - TX12/80 for bottom gas, for deco 1 stage TX35/25, 1 stage TX50/25, and 1 stage of oxygen. And one stage TX21/35 for traveling. Put all stuff in the car ready to rock. Later on we discussed the deco we would do and wrote it down in the wetnotes. Time to go to bed, tomorrow will be a long day.
After a good night of sleep and breakfast of croissants and pain au chocolat we drove down to the cave. Put all the gear into the entrance pool, checked it and got dressed up.
First dive of that day would be a small setup dive. We put oxygen at 6 meters, TX50/25 and TX35/25 at 21 meter on the rope in the shaft with a mountaineering clamp, while breathing our 45 meter stage. We slowly ascended and got ready for today’s real dive. We started our decent for the second time that day into the cave this time carrying two deep stages and breathing our TX21/35 gas.
At 21 meters we picked up the TX35/25 stage and took in down to 36 meters where we dropped it. Continuing our descent to 45 meter where we switched to our first deep stage and dropped the TX21/35. Following the shape of the cave we reached 80 meters where we dropped the first deep stage and continued on the second. Soon we would reach the point where Hervé had seen the side tunnel. Hervé tied-off the main line and started to explore the new tunnel, following him closely. I noticed that this part was much smaller than what we had seen before. I hoped it would get bigger soon. Hervé took a peek around the corner. Looking closely to Hervé I saw him shaking his head and reeling the knotted line back in. At that time I thought that we found what Hervé was afraid off, an other alcove. I looked at my pressure gauge of the deep stage, it was time to call the dive and signaled “thumbs up”. Hervé reeled in the last part of the line, and I assisted him un-tying it of the main line.
We started to headed our way out. After some minutes we reached our staged deep stage. I started to make the stage ready to be used while I noticed that the stage currently used started to breath heavy. Being so busy with myself I totally forgot to face Hervé while making the swap. Something he made clear to me by giving me the ‘looks’, immediately I realized I did the wrong thing and felt stupid. Continuing our slow ascent we reached our first deep stop at 72 meters. Before reaching the 36 meter stop I emptied my deep stage and switched to the longhose, and clipped the deep stage off on my hip together with the other empty stage. Reaching 36 meters in the shaft we switched to the TX35/25 gas. I clipped the two empty stages to the mainline in the shaft due to the fact that I had noticed that I was too buoyant. At 24 meters we switched back to our bottom gas as a cleanup break before going onto the TX50/25 at 21 meters. Upon reaching the top of the shaft at 18 meters, I unclipped the mountaineering clamp from the line and made a nice little bouquet from the empty bottles I gathered. The rest of the deco went quite quickly and uneventfully. Although I realized at some point that I had forgot to install my catheter, no problem but it would have been nice.
After a slow ascent from 6 meters to the surface and 10 minutes of rest in the pool we got out and headed to the car and got changed. Disassembled our gear and loaded the cars, by the time we where finished it was 15.00, time to start driving. I had 1100km to go and Monday was another day in the office. I arrived home around 24.00 took a shower and dreamed about great cave diving.
Looking back at the weekend I had a great time and learned a lot. With 201 minutes of diving on Saturday and an other 207 minutes on Sunday we had close to 7 hours of diving in the last two days.
Hervé thanks for taking me on these great dives and sharing all your experience with me!