Blue Lake – A Sad Day

13.01.12 – A Sad Day

The plan today was for another slightly deeper dive to search a particular area of the lake. I was to head down to around 165m and then scooter along the wall under the overhang to look for signs of water movement or indications of a cave opening.

After 5 mins or so at 165m I ascended to 150m and again searched along the wall. I repeated this every 10m of ascent, searching for not more than 10 minutes until the last search at 110m where I met the first two support divers.

Then the usual routine of exchanging cylinders so I was carrying more suitable gas for the depth and handing over a spare battery canister for the heated vest was completed and I settled in for the remainder of the ascent and decompression.

Overall it was a good dive and I had a great time. There was definite water movement at depth but again no sign of a cave.

Once I hit the surface there was a TV camera crew from a news station waiting to ask questions so I gave an interview whilst sat down still in my dry suit and wearing my rebreather.

It was only once this was finished that my support team hit with with the bad news. Andrey, one of my support divers, had died on his dive.

The support divers had decided that I was not to be told during the dive as they reasoned that I had enough to concentrate on without the added stress of bad news under water.

Andrey was a really super guy and a good diver. His passing was a very sobering and sad experience for everyone.

RIP Andrey

Blue Lake – A Day Off!

The next two days were much more low key as we had a day of shallow diving trying to take some photographs with a day off.

Waiting for a break in the traffic on the way to a phone signal

It gave everyone the time to catch up on the outside world, although a mobile internet connection involved driving quite a few kilometres until we found somewhere a little further from the mountains where we could pick up a signal.

Not all the photographs were underwater. The area of Kabardino-Balkaria in the Caucasus mountains in which we were diving is very beautiful. In the past foreign tourism to this region has been frowned upon due to it’s close proximity with politically unstable areas but in the summer time it can get very busy with tourists from within Russia visiting the mountains and the natural thermal spas.

Even in winter there are tourists turing up to look at the lake

Kit cleaning, more TV crews wanting interviews and gas mixing still kept everyone very busy.

The beautiful Caucasus Mountains

Blue Lake Project – Make mine a double!

Yet another camera crew and interview - I just can't get used this.

With all the kit prepared it was time to head even deeper. In the grand scheme of diving these are nowhere near to the depths some divers have achieved but the difference here is I am planning to do as much bottom time as possible and cover as much ground as I can underwater looking for the water source.

Before I kit up I have a final written check list to go through to make sure everything is ready, including analysing my gasses again just to make sure (thank you ANALOX)

Whilst I am getting in to my dry suit, which also needs the help of a ‘dresser’ (it’s not that I am incapable, but there are wires everywhere inside the dry suit which need to be plugged in to the corresponding wires from the heated undersuit/heated gloves/heated vest) and being filmed at the same time of course, some of the support team are checking the surface supplied O2 and power supply to the habitat.

Now the process needs to come to a halt again as there is another TV station wanting to interview me!

Once that is done I can continue getting in to my dry suit and at last in to my rebreather for a final check and pre-breathe before clambering in to the water. Conscious of the fact that there are a lot of cameras pointing at me and the whole team we decide to take our time and let them get the shots they want.

Once the habitat has been set up with surface supplied O2, a full face mask and comms set and the surface supplied power I can start to descend.

A descent line had been dropped over on the side of the lake so I scootered on the surface and dropped down the line to about 6 metres for some final checks before continuing the descent. A couple of the support divers have already descended a few minutes before me and are waiting at 9 metres or so to then follow me down to 30 metres to make sure that everything is going OK before I leave them and drop in to the darkness.

Once I got to 150 metres I stopped and swam away from the line a short distance to check visibility. I had set a couple of very powerful strobes on to the line so that I would be able to find the line at the end of my planned bottom time and ascend back up the line to make it easy for the support divers to find me. I also had a powerful strobe attached to me for the same reason. However after less than 5 metres of swimming I had still not reached the wall of the lake where it slopes away from vertical and forms an overhead environment and, turning, I could not see the strobes. I swam back to the line on a compass heading and decided that the best way to explore would be to lay a line from the down line.

Once I had attached my line I scootered in the direction of the wall, made another tie-off then turned to scooter along the wall at between 150 – 165 metres looking for any signs of an opening. I laid line whilst scootering to make the best progress but whilst the ‘roof’ went from being a steep over hang to a definite flat roof I could not see any obvious openings and I had run out of time. With no obvious further tie-off points visible I swam back to my first tie-off, making the line up back on to the reel, eventually arriving at the point where I turned and swam mid-water back to the ascent line.

The ascent went without a hitch and I met the first team of support dives at 90 metres to go through the process of swapping out bailout cylinders for more appropriate gasses and taking on a spare canister battery as a back-up for the heating systems until I arrived at 9 metres or so and could plug-in to the surface power.

Once I finally make it to the habitat it is time, with some help from the support team, to clamber inside and settle down.

After a number of test runs the habitat is now quite comfortable although not the most spacious I have used but once inside and organised the support team start to make my life a little more pleasant.

First up is usually some hot tea. Flushing the habitat with clean gas at certain intervals keeps the habitat ‘air’ clean enough to come off the rebreather and have some food or drinks breaks. Hot tea and a rather sickly sweet ‘condensed milk protein in a toothpaste tube’ is the standard menu.

An easier way is to combine drinking or eating with an air-break from the high PO2 decompression. It is sometimes a little simpler process to go from an OC regulator to eating or drinking and back again than from and back to the rebreather, although how warm I feel affects this decision as staying on CCR really does make a thermal difference.

The habitat under construction long before it hit the water

After about 30 – 40 minutes, providing I have not flushed the habitat, the temperature inside will be creeping up towards double figures (compared to the 7 degrees C water) which also helps a lot.

After some time I was handed a note asking me if I would like a glass of wine! Most of the support team had heard the story of the red wine delivered to me whilst decompressing in a habitat in a cave in France (it was France after all).

Just for fun I wrote back that it sounded like an excellent idea.

Some minutes later I was handed a water bottle with what appeared to be a pale gold liquid in it. I guessed someone had found some local ‘home-made’ wine and that was why it was an odd colour. To keep in the spirit (no pun intended) of the occasion I decided to have just the smallest sip. (It should be noted that when I sent a message back saying “Yes. why not” there was, apparently, quite sigh of relief as the surface team realised that everything must be going well and that I was feeling fine).

So I took a tiny sip and then my mouth caught fire. Lost in translation (how I don’t know as all the notes to and from the habitat had been in Russian) was the message that the support team were to deliver cognac, not red wine! To say that I was surprised is an understatement. I did not even know it was brandy until I was told once I hit the surface. At least everyone (especially me) was smiling. Remember kids – don’t try this at home!

All in all it was a long but very enjoyable and very successful dive.

 

Blue Lake Project – Support Team Arrive

The good news today was that the remaining divers who would complete the support team have all arrived on site.

They spent most of the day getting their own equipment assembled which was frustrating for the photographers who wanted to get some shots of the support divers’ training session and we were slowly loosing daylight, but we did get them in the water in time. I used one of the rebreathers kindly lent to me by AP Diving this time, testing it as a back-up rebreather followed by a final (and very successful) check inside the habitat. The training session with the support divers and the scenarios and exercises we practiced were completed and it all went well so it decided it was time for an earlier-than-has-been-the-norm evening meal and no more playing with equipment.

Up until now bedtime was typically beyond midnight in an effort to get everything ready on time. As with almost all expeditions no matter how much time you allocate to a particular task, everything seems to take longer than you hoped but we are close to being back on schedule and everything is ready for the next stage of the project. 

Over the coming days I hope to be able to put together a series of deeper dives and to start looking for signs that will tell us where all this water is coming from and whether there might even be a cave system deep in the lake.

One of the difficulties of course is the visibility in the deeper sections of the lake, where the massively overhanging walls cut out all of what small amount of ambient light there might be so we have marked out sections on the ROV surveys and will explore each section in turn if we have time.

 The depth of the lake and the fact that I will need to return to a line so that the support divers have no difficulties in locating me will all add up to quite long bottom times, which at the depths we are exploring adds up to a significant amount of decompression.

The habitat is one way of making the decompression safer (and of course more comfortable) but safety is our main concern. The habitat allows a diver to get out of the water completely and if necessary even change dry suits and under suits. The diver inside can eat, drink and even talk to the surface (my bad Russian through a communications unit should make them all laugh).

A cold morning for support diver training

Should anything go wrong (and we are of course are planning for it not to) we have a chamber on stand-by and an ambulance with police escort already on site should it be needed.

 

 

Blue Lake Project – First Deep Dive

Getting ready to descend

Time for a deeper dive.

With the power supply now in to the habitat and surface supplied O2 ready I swam down a slope that leads away from the dive centre and then dropped over the edge of a vertical wall and continued descending. After a few minutes heading deeper the wall became noticeably undercut and so now I needed to swim in order to keep the wall as a visual reference..

I put the breaks on at 121m and had a short 12 – 15 minute swim around to get my bearings before it was time to leave and meet the support divers who were due to be waiting for me at the top of the wall.

Once met by the support divers we exchanged some cylinders and I was escorted back to the habitat where mains power was plugged in, my remaining bailout cylinders were removed and I entered the habitat for the last hour or so of decompression.

During the dive one 20Ah battery is used to keep the heated vest warm and then once at 9m or so the mains power can be connected to the full heated suit and heated gloves. After a short time getting nice and cosy I can then shut down the battery to the vest and leave that as a reserve in case the heated undersuit stops working for some reason.

Then it was time to settle into the habitat to get comfortable and finish decompressing. Apart from obvious comfort advantages and increase in warmth (with a diver inside, in one hour the air temperature in the habitat will easily be 4 degrees centigrade above the outside 7 degrees of the water).

Once decompression has been completed the habitat support divers go through the routine of unplugging me form various wires and making sure it is safe to exit. Then it’s time to exit the habitat and slowly head to the surface.

Another successful dive and everyone keen to hear what it is like in the deeper parts of the lake.

Blue Lake Project

Yet more kit arrives from Moscow

A long day preparing a lot of additional equipment and ironing out a few small problems from the previous dive. It was also a chance to check on the progress of the habitat.

We also had the ‘truck’ arrive from Moscow with the rest of the equipment including the surface supplied O2 (and a very long ‘long hose’), the full face masks, underwater communications system and the surface power unit.

The power unit has been specially made by Santi for this project and has been designed to provide power for the heated undersuit, heated vest and heated gloves when I reach the habitat. The unit takes it’s power straight from the mains supply and has two back up batteries in case there is a mains power failure.

Getting this assembled and ready for a test dive took the best part of the day.

I did eventually get in the water for a short dive to make sure the dry suit and heated suit was fully functional

We are actually using ‘Habitat 2′ as the first model suffered from some construction quality problems and we didn’t think it safe enough to use. So, Igor, our very willing underwater engineer, is spending a great number of hours underwater happily getting everything positioned correctly, ready and safe to use.

The evening was spent having briefings from the scientists and them gathering information from the dives I had already done along with some sketches I had made for them of the underwater environment, particularly the rock formations and sedimentary layers.

Then back to the dive centre for long night of gas mixing and kit checking prior to the first of the deeper dives the next day.

Blue Lake Project

Having finally arrived back in the UK I thought I would pick up the story where I left off………