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Cave Diving Trip to the Lot, April 2006: Ressel, Landenouse, St George and Trou Madame April 30, 2006

Posted by Andy Carroll in : CaveDiving , trackback

Dive report covering dives in Ressel, Landenouse, Trou Madame, and Fontaine de St George.

At last! After a boring winter with only a few quarry dives we were heading to France to partake of some of the excellent cave diving available in the Lot region. I had travelled down on the Wednesday night to stay at Bob Cooper’s place and managed to arrive just in time to see Rick Huggins and John Kendall at Bob’s local Indian Restaurant to catch up and have a small beer after the three and a half hour drive. We then packed the van ready for the trip. Due to the amount of kit we were taking this time Bob and I had rented a van which was subsequently loaded with two sets of twin 18’s, two sets of twin 12’s, eight AL80’s two 7 Ltr’s and a AL40, two Long body Gavin Scooters and two shorts, as well as all the other dive kit and clothes etc. For a moment we thought we might not fit it all in, but we managed eventually, although the van looked a little low. Rick and John managed to use every inch of space in Ricks Astra van.

Day Two: Ressel and Landenouse

Ressel

The Emergence du Ressel is probably one of the most well known caves in France, and has plenty to offer for every level of diver. The cave is situated in a river and to enter the cave you must park at the side of the road, and carry your gear down a steep little path to the river bank. The entrance of the cave is around 30 or 40 yards upriver. For this dive Bob and I had planned to basically have a short check out dive to see what the viz was like for the more adventurous dive we had planned later in the trip, so we settled for a stage of 32% with double 12’s of 32% as reserve. There are a number of possible dives in Ressel and we were spending this dive on what we call the shallow section, which goes to around 350 mtrs into the cave reaching a depth of 22 mtrs or so before reaching a shaft which goes to 45 mtrs. There is also a small circuit which is a nice dive, ideal for a checkout dive and settling in to cave diving again. The plan was to take the shallow section circuit and have a look at the shaft to check the visibility. When I swam the circuit in November it took us around 45 mins to do the circuit and I used about 170 bar of an Al80 stage bottle. With the scooters we went all round the circuit and had a look at the shaft and were back at the entrance in around 36 minutes with about 100 bar of the stage bottle left ! It was nice to get back into reasonable temperature water and even nicer to be back in a cave again. I just think caves offer so much more than wreck dives, in terms of interest, challenges and pleasure. Rick and John were diving to sixths and basically getting used to the freedom of not having a GUE instructor watching their every move. Needless to say we all had a great time. The scenery is fantastic and the caves are great.

Landenouse

I had never dived Landenouse as we just didn’t have the time in November and Rick and John were keen to dive it as it had been a bit of a nemesis to them on Cave 1, so we headed off to Landenouse. Its not too far away from Ressel, in the next valley, and the entrance is right next to the road in a concrete pit about 4 or 5 mtrs square. The water levels rise and fall depending on rainfall, and we had been told it was very high at the moment. It wasn’t. Bob and the others chose to climb down the ladder but I decided that the climb was too hard and went for the stride entry, figuring that the height was not really much more than some boats I have seen. I just ensured my wing was empty and kept a close hold of my regs and mask, and once in the water, inflated the BC. I think I chose the easier option! For this dive we used the rest of our AL80 stage and then 60Bar of back gas, which for this dive gave us plenty of time. We chose to dive the stage to half plus 10 bar, at which we drop the stage and carry on the dive on backgas, until we reach the turn pressure. The vis was about 8 to 10 mtrs and Landenouse is a really nice cave. It has some really nice features and has an average depth of around 20 mtrs, with a few different changes in direction. Apparently it goes for quite a way and is worth scootering, providing you can get them in the cave what with the ladder and stuff. Everything went fine and we turned it on 37 minutes, probably around 4 or 5 hundred mtrs penetration. Overall dive time was 70-odd minutes and I was happy that I was still warm after the two dives in these conditions. It gave a good indication of how we would do with longer dives.

Day Three: Trou Madame

Trou madame is probably the prettiest cave I have ever dived in, and you can hever really long dives there due to its shallow depth, but you need to work hard to get your gear to the entrance. Basically the entrance to the cave is a small hole about 4ft high through which you need to crawl on your hands and knees until the water becomes deep enough to kneel. It is best done when the water levels are high, and you need to be careful to to put holes in your drysuit. If that sounds difficult then picture the trip to the entrance with the gear. The car is parked perhaps 100 yards away on a dirt track. The journey to the cave involves walking down a small pebbled track until you get to a small stream. Cross the stream and climb a steep bank until the stream widens into a steep rockfall which you need to climb for around 40 yards which is relatively steep and very slippery. We chose to dive this with the short body scooters as well as a single stage and the twin 12’s. This meant taking this gear trip about 5 times before being able to start the dive. Needless to say we decided to have lunch before heading into the cave.

We decided to take the short body scooters and a stage bottle, and use a further 60 bar of backgas.The dive itself involved scootering for 25 minutes before dropping the scooter. We would drop the stage at half plus 10 bar, and then use the 60 bar of backgas on further penetration. Bob had dived this before with twin 18’s and a stage bottle with a dive time of around 3 hours. On this dive we managed to get further into what we think was sump 8, around 1 km or so into the cave. The whole dive took just over 2 hours, with us turning at 67 mins (must admit there is something a little weird turning a dive after an hour knowing you have to travel back for that time before getting to daylight again) showing just how efficient dives are when using a scooter. Trou madame is gorgeous. Parts of it are quite wide and there is room to scooter side by side and some parts are very small and only single file. In some parts of the cave it is only 1.6 mtrs deep and you can see the reflection on the ripples caused by the bubbles as you travel along. There are a number of twists and turns, ups and downs. The number of ascents and and descents means it is a bit slower with the scooters as there is time lost in dumping gas and sorting bouyancy.

Day Four - Ressel

This was the major dive for us on this trip, and was an extension of our last dive where we scootered to the top of the shaft, and then swam for a while on double 12’s to about 600 mtrs around 45 mtrs deep. This dive we planned to use double 18’s as a reserve, and scooter with the long bodys for a penetration time of 40 minutes, into the deep section, using two bottom gas stages of 18/45 and two deco gasses of 50% and 100%. Scootering is about 3 to 5 times faster than swimming and should the scooter fail we would need to swim a long way home. We therefore decided to tow a second scooter each, a short body with a burn time of around 45 minutes. This would be used in the event of a scooter failure to ensre that our exit would not be delayed significantly as this would not only impact our gas reserves but also deco time required. In effect four scooters needed to break for us to need to swim out, and of course, this was extremely unlikely being Gavins ;o).

Rick and John were to drop our 100% bottles at 6 mtrs on one of their dives and we were to breathe our 50% bottle on the way in and then drop it at the top of the shaft at 21mtrs, swithing to one of the 18/45 trimix bottles. We would then drop down the shaft and scooter along, dropping the first stage at half plus 20bar, and then calling the dive when we reached 40mins, or reached a depth of 66 mtrs (the MOD of our gas), or the second stage reached half plus 20 bar, whichever happened soonest. Rick and John would time their dive to meet us while we were on deco and see what help we needed. After many trips up and down the steep path and a trip back to the chalet to pick up my drysuit which I had forgotten (oops) we eventually got into the water, the whole cave to ourselves.

We chose to get to the shaft via the shallow section which, whilst wider, took longer than we thought due to the changes in depth and resulted in us reaching the shaft in 16 mins. We dropped the 50% bottle and switched to the trimix stage, moving the second trimix stage from the hip to the chest, and then descended down the shaft to the deeper section. The viz wasn’t great at about 3 to 5 mtrs which meant we needed to keep low and close to the line but it wasn’t long before we reached the 600 mtr marker and so now were were on undiscovered territory (for us anyway). We knew we were looking for a right hand Tee which would lead to the shallower part of the cave, and we saw a green-blue wirey type line at around 750 mtrs, which we decided to follow, Bob placing a clothes peg to mark the exit. The reason we were looking for this tee is that the cave splits into a loop later on, one way going to 80mtrs-ish and the other a little shallower. We wanted to take the shallower route because of the gas we were using. Following this blue line led to another T which basically led to a dead end, and we turned round returning to the main line, and by this time we were getting near to the turn time of 40 mins, so called the dive. The Tee we wanted must be further up the line and we would need to explore next time. Due to the detour we reached the dropped stages within only a few minutes and picked them up, switching to them, and then headed back up the main line. Although the viz wasn’t great you could still see that this is a very pretty cave and has a mixture of solid limestone rocks and scalloped browny-orange formations. We arrived back at the shaft after only 45 mins or so, meaning we had only been about 25 to 30 minutes at 51 mtrs, and I started the deep stops at around 39 mtrs, choosing 1 minute stops instead of the 2 mins I would have done had we done 60 minutes. I also decided to cut the deco down to around 40 mins due to the shorter bottom time and at the top of the shaft we picked up the 50%, moving one of the trimix stages to the hip and then progressing out of the cave doing deco as we went. Basically this involves ascending slowly when we reach a slope and travelling when the going was level, so some of the deco is a bit up and down and some stops at certain depths are longer than others, but overall the exit suits the deco plan. We had a lot of gear to manage at this point, with two trimix stages, which are buoyant, and a 50% bottle, and towing a scooter whilst managing another. When you are moving all of this is fine, but stopping and starting, adjusting buoyancy and stuff is a bit of a pain. By the time we reached the 6 mtr stop both Bob and I were fed up of this and luckily Rick and John were on hand to take all this gear off us before switching to 100%. I just clipped all of my stuff to the line before ending up with just the single stage of 100% and the long body scooter, which I used to rest my arms on as we chilled out for the final 20 minutes of the deco. We finished the dive after just over 2 hours and then had the enjoyment of carrying all that gear up the steep path again! All in all it was disappointing in that the lines were against us but a great learning dive as we have highlighted a number of ways to improve things next time, in terms of setting up and support. Bob and I have decided that we want to keep progressing to the end of what is called sump 1, about 1.8 km back, where the cave goes back to the surface. Needless to say this will take a few more trips and a bit more planning.

Day Five

Fontaine de St George

St George is located in the Southern part of the region and on the way we had a great chance to visit the extremely beautiful town of Rocamadour, which is a small town built into a rock face. St George is a really nice cave and for me typifies the cave diving experience in France. It has a beautiful entry pool, which has that really blue colour and it is set in incredible surroundings, away from the road and in a quiet leafy lane. There is a really old farmhouse and some other buildings nearby which just add to the atmosphere. This was the last dive of the trip and we were to do a little bit of a rerun of yesterdays dive, except this was a shallower dive. The cave goes down to a depth of 30 mtrs or so and then immediately goes back to a depth of around 10-15 mtrs. We planned on again using the double 18’s as reserve and dived with two stages of 32%, again riding a long body scooter and towing a short body scooter. Rick and John were going to time their dives so on the first dive they could video us travelling with the scooters and on their second dive they might meet us on the way out and take some gear from us.

The entry went well and we were soon travelling along, a little slower than previously as we wanted to enjoy the cave. We saw the video lights of John and Rick travelling back and just headed for the lights, hoping John would get a decent shot, and then progressed further into the cave. We were told that the cave gets a little squirrely in places and it wasn’t long before we reached a restriction. Bob tried to get in but then decided that we should drop the first stage as that would make it easier getting through and also more sensible than dropping it a couple of minutes later and then going through the whole thing again on the way out. It was a bit of a wriggle but we managed it, my only concern being that we might get keyholed, as the argon bottle got in the way a bit, and I thought that this may be a problem on the way back. We then scootered further for a while eventually turning the dive at 40 minutes, as that is the turning point for the burntime on the scooters. Heading back home we arrived at the restriction again and it was time to see if the argon was going to be a problem. Bob got through quite easily and then it was my turn. I got a little stuck on the way through as my tow cord caught around the boulder on the floor and it was a bit of a struggle but I managed to get through and then picked up my stage bottle. The rest of the exit was fine and St George reminds me a lot of Ginnie Springs in Florida, with white walls and parts of the floor with a white sandy bottom. We eventually reached the pool and daylight after around 80 something minutes, and John and Rick were there to take the stages and scooters from us as we had decided to spend 5 minutes on 100% just to round off the trip.

Conclusion

A really great trip to france and one we are planning to run next year too. We learnt a lot about what will be needed to extend some of the dive sites we have been exploring and just generally had a great time. With beautiful scenery, sunshine every day, and some really great diving, who wouldn’t want to travel to France and do some cave diving?

Comments»

1. fiona - May 2, 2006

lovely photos Andy and a top report

2. Scuba Geek » Cave Diving in the Lot Video - July 1, 2006

[…] You may have already seen my post regarding the recent trip Bob Cooper, Rick Huggins, John Kendall, and I made to France, where we dived the Emergence Du Ressel, Landenouse, Fontaine de St George, and Trou Madame. John made a short video of the highlights, and here it is for you to enjoy. Its about 14 minutes long, so make sure you have a fresh cup of tea before pressing the play button. […]

3. spidge.com - June 5, 2007