Today we visited the famous Ginnie Springs and got our first taste this trip of "real" Florida cave diving. Which means flow and depth.

Ginnie SpringsGinnie is just a few minutes drive from High Springs. It's privately owned and operated, so we spent an obligatory few minutes signing waivers and paying a fairly pricey entry fee. We then drove to the Turkey Roost parking lot, located by the water in a pretty stand of trees and camping sites only yards from the steps that lead to the water.

Click image to enlarge mapThe cave entrance we were going in, "The Ear", is probably the most widely-used entrance to the Devil's system, despite it's high flow, as it has the benefit of a fairly direct route to the main line. The other doable entrance, "The Eye", is lower flow, but takes a more roundabout route. A third entrance, Little Devil, can only be negotiated by those diving sidemount rigs.

To enter the Ear, you have to dump all your air from your wing to make your way down a vertical shaft about 30' deep. This shaft then becomes a narrower slot that angles down diagonally until you hit the main line; this shaft is where the flow really hits - the only way to get in is to pull yourself hand over hand.

Team 2 do their pre-dive checks in-waterOnce you've tied into the main line at the warning sign, you need to get up and out of the flow - so now you hit your inflator button... and wait... and wait... until eventually you slooowly lift off the floor and make your way to the ceiling. From here on, it's more pull-and-glide, because trying to swim it is a recipe for a bad CO2 headache. 

After a few minutes of this, you reach the famous "Lips", a bedding plane that the current comes howling through. More pull-and-glide for about 60 feet, and you enter a collapse room full of massive pieces of broken stone.

I think Kim enjoyed her dive.Phew! For those of us new to Floridian caves and bound by Cave 1 gas limits (Team 2), this was where we turned around on the first dive. Now for the fun part - letting the flow take us out: 600psi in, 150 psi out. No kidding.

Perhaps the trickiest part of the dive is exiting the ear. Again, you have to dump every last bit of gas from your wing, and wedge yourself in to prevent being spat out of the cave by the flow. Lose control of your buoyancy here and you would be in real danger of being bent.

Jeremy survived with grin intact.

We each got in three dives at Ginnie Springs today, with each subsequent dive taking us further and further in. Hopefully we'll make it back again before the end of the week.

Max depth on this dive: 92'. Average depth: approx. 75'.

Team 1: Jehannine Austin (C2) and Sonia Ziesche (C2)

Team 2: Kim Anderson (C1), Chris Fenton (C1) and Jeremy Hoey (C1)