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Doye de Gabet (April 2003)

Latest update: March 18, 2004

By Harmen Thys Nieuwenhuis

The weekend after Easter I visited the hotel Deschamps, a training center for cave diving just next to one of France’s largest casinos. With Hervé I made a nice dive in the Doye de Gabet and went looking around for caves in the neighborhood the next day.

We warmed up in the morning with a nice run through Divonne les Bains. Hervé taught me how to synchronize my breathing to an odd number of steps. This way you don’t always start your breathing while pounding on your body with the same leg.

Then we drove to Doye the Gabet which is situated near Morbier in France, close to Switzerland. The entrance to the cave lies circa thirty meters lower than where the car can reach. A steep path with lots of loose rock leads down to the stream. We started with the doubles, one carrying and the other guy standing-by in case of a slip. Next came the stages. The rest of the gear traveled in a backpack. The light was already diminishing – early in the day as we were in between the mountains of Risoux – and I wondered how to getting the gear back up after the dive would be like.

The plan was to swim through the fifty-meter part, drop down to over seventy, and have a look at the rock rubble, which seems to be the end, at least according to the map. I wanted to bring my reel not to miss out on a chance to see more, because you never know what you might see on a helium-high brain. Shortly after dropping the twenty-one-meter bottle however the line ended. Hervé applauded as I pulled out my reel for else we wouldn’t have had much of a dive. The cave has beautiful high ceilings in places. The passage narrowed and we had to fly over some enormous pieces of rock. There are patches of light and dark velvety rock. Occasional little pieces of old line were strewn onto the floor, but the current must have taken out most. I wondered how line was laid here in the past, as there were several pieces of metal sticking out of the bottom.

I laid the line nice and tight, but very slowly, as the reel could hardly spin around. Eddy drilled it out the week after and now it runs smoothly again. Hervé made sure we saved some gas for tying off the line, which indeed is not so easy with gloves or even three-finger mitts as he was trying out. It will be something to practice further.

Decompression schedule
Depth (m)	Time (min)	Gas
39	1
36	1
33	1
30	2
27	2
24	2
21	5	Trimix 50/25
18	4
15	4
12	4
9	3
6	10	100% O2
6-0	30	Very slow ascent to the surface

It is always nice to jot down what can be worked on. Not only did the reel need drilling, I also need to replace the knife with one that doesn’t need some bungee cord to stay in place as it takes time to put it back that way. One of the stages needs a slightly longer cord at the bottom. I need to be able to clip them on and off a bit quicker even when carrying four and learn not to simply fall back onto using an extender. Most importantly I’m going to buy a new suit and hood. With the old crushed hood, only Weezle Extreme Plus and one layer of underwear, the flu the week before, the hard work and long drive, and the wet arms after pulling hard on the reel I got pretty cold in the seven-degree water. That’s not too good when doing deco.

Hervé developed a good method of carrying up stages: rest the tanks on the ground, take a step up the mountains, then straighten your legs while keeping the back and arms straight and swing the tanks in front to rest them on the ground again. So why not bring some scooters next time? We slept very well that night.

On the Sunday Hervé took me out in his racing car to check out some caves in the Jura. The car looked small next to some of the huge twelve-cylindered vehicles parked next to it at the hotel Deschamps, but it proved to be powerful enough to fly through the French mountains.

First we went back to the Gabet. Due to the five hours of light rain the day before the water level had risen ten centimeters. Visibility was hardly affected luckily.

Then we drove to the Caruva. It takes 20 minutes to drive from Gabet to Caruva area. We had quite a walk trying to find it. It’s a beautiful small pond where water emerges out of the mountain. We hiked straight up the steep hill from the source, back towards the car. In St Laurent the sandwiches are good. The start of the river Ain near Champagnole is very accessible. High above the water you can see all the holes in the wall where the water used to come through in days long past when the flow was bigger. People from Bretagne were visiting the spring and we concluded it must draw quite some tourists from own country.

The road down towards the Source de Lison twirls down the mountain and boasts a grand view. Near the entrance to the cave there even is a sign that explains in three languages that one can dive there. This cave is very easy to get to as well.

The route then took us up from the gorges onto a flat and green land. One hundred meters out of Lods another cave starts just under a bridge. Here one may need to wade through the water for a short while to get through a shallow rocky part of the river before being able to dive down into the water and access the Gouron.

The Source de la Loue is situated a few minutes further on, just past Mouthier, and then to the right. A sign told us the flow can differ in size by a factor of one hundred from one time to the other. A hydropower station is situated at the source. If access is granted it should physically not be too bad a cave entrance to reach. Quite a bit of fun is awaiting us!

Wido thanks for filling! Hervé thanks for the fun and the nice stay at your hotel.