Jackson Blue Springs, Marianna Florida
by Ron Bear

Red Head Branch. A short, almost cave dive. Weekend report.

Hi all,
Saturday we went to Wakulla and hung out with the WKPP as they prepared the cave for their next big push. They were basically doing house cleaning. They checked the stage bottles that they have cached and removed those that had lost pressure while sitting there. They also repaired the line in a few places. One guy mentioned all the caves that he has been meaning to dive but hasn’t found the time for. Kim immediately opined that there is always the ocean as well. Do you remember the old commercials for E.F Hutton? Everyone froze in position. Simultaneous shocked utterances were spoken like profanity. “Why?” “Ooh Yuck” “That nasty stuff?” and a lady walking behind us that hadn’t even been part of our conversation explained “It’s got salt in it.” This is about the same response that John usually gives her about ocean diving, but I got a good chuckle out of watching her get triple teamed.

Sunday was adventure day. We had heard about this spring up the Red Head Branch. We were told that it was off to one side so be sure and look for the ring of sand. On the way there we stopped and told the river cops what we were up to. They told us that an open water diver told them that the spring went straight down 110 feet and then turned and became a cave. Our trek up the red head branch took us into some really primitive stuff. We saw many cypress trees with knee roots twenty feet wide and I am not exaggerating a lick. As the creek got shallow and nearly unnavigable, there were side streams every where and we were just generally surrounded by cypress swamp. The best way to find a spring is to follow the trail of clear water, but there were little clear water streams entering from every direction. We eventually made it to a point where the stream we were on kept going but it was not moving much and it was dark red with clay. The clear water that we had been following was coming from our left and comprised the vast majority of all the running water in the creek.

Incidentally we had found why it is called Red Head Branch. We were at the head of the branch and the water was very definitely red. As we entered the spring basin area there was an amazing feature that really should have told me something. The spring was completely surrounded by a six-foot tall berm made entirely of sand. What this should have told me was that this spring belched forth a HUGE amount of ejecta. Well none of us really believed that this spring was 110 feet deep. After all it is only about a mile (as the crow flies) from Fossil City, so it is certainly part of the same karst region and should have similar formation. Fossil City is only 73 feet deep so go figure. Therefore I put on my free diving mask and dove down to see if I could tell whether the cave went anywhere. Every ledge and outcropping had silt spilling off of it in thick steep piles. I went down to twenty-five feet where a big dark cave opening leered at me. With the obvious potential for silting out I just didn’t have much appetite to free dive into this particular overhead environment, so I got out and put on my cave gear.

There was a line extending all the way into open water that was obviously not cave line, so I just held my reel and didn’t bother to clip off to that line (good move). We had just barely ducked through the arch of the cave when the passage continued straight down just like the open water diver had told the river cops. The vis was about 40 feet because that is where we lost contact with the sun. The line from outside terminated just above where the flow was coming from and I was glad I hadn’t tied to it. To get in we had to grab the sides of the cave and pull ourselves in against the flow. As soon as I started to pull, I noticed tube worm fossils on both walls just like at Fossil City. The cave opened up and went about ten feet before it narrowed back down worse than the entrance. As I grabbed the lip of this second restriction and started pulling, it looked just like driving at night in a blizzard. All I could see was darkness with white flecks falling in front of my face. The white flecks obscured everything else. This blizzard impression was fleeting at best. As I first saw it I had already given myself a good heave and so I entered it almost at the moment I saw it. The lights went completely out. Complete darkness and my face was being sandblasted by water borne particles. Once I pulled passed the restriction I was able to rest on the bottom but I was still completely blind. I then brought my light head up to my eyes and I could see the (50 watt) glow from about a foot away. Oh man this wasn’t right! The sand was spilling down hill (due to gravity) and being blown uphill by the flow. This sand had reached a equilibrium that involved being perpetually thrown back into suspension. I found that the vis was tolerable (about a foot) at the edges. I then felt the line behind me and verified that Kim was on it. She is rock solid in any lack of vis situation as long as she has the line. I decided that the vis-out might be a local phenomena that would clear up if I could get passed it. As I crawled forward, my light got buried and I was totally blacked out again, but I had a plan. I just kept swerving towards where the maximum flow was right in my face. About ten feet farther along I had a tremendous flow in my face and I could feel an opening in front of me. I tried to pull myself through but I just couldn’t find a wide spot. I couldn’t see, so I am not one hundred percent sure if I gave up too early or if it is just physically impossible. When I decided to give up I followed the reel and found Kim’s hand. I shoved a thumb into it to try and get her to feel the UP thumb. She returned an OK. She later told me that she missed my signal and that I should have shoved a thumb in her face. I swear I had no idea where her face was. I started reeling in the slack that I had carried out when I gave up on the final restriction. When I ran out of slack I was up against part of Kim. I wasn’t sure what part, but I knew which direction was out because of the flow. I started out (unreeling more line) and found Kim’s fin. She was pointing the wrong way and I had inadvertently wrapped a loop around her. Well I untied her and pulled her up slope a few feet. We then exited normally. I have never been so sand logged. I had a couple of pounds of sand between my jacket and farmer john, a couple more between my john and dive skin, and a final couple of pounds under my dive skin next to my skin.

Folks, if you count the driving to Wakulla and the boat ride and everything, I spent over sixteen hours devoted to cave diving this weekend. I logged twenty-two minutes underwater and achieved about forty feet of penetration. Sometimes you win sometimes you lose. Maybe I can win next weekend.

DSAO
Ron

If you would like to contact Ron, email him at ronald.bear@eglin.af.mil