More Cherry

I found my self on a fine spring day, sun shining down on the musty pine needles carpeting the ground. My buddy's car rolled to a stop in the damp shade and we opened the car door.

MISTAKE.

Not sure how many people have had the pleasure of this sort of area after a bunch of rain in the spring. Well, lets just say I the bug spray was out and on in under a minute. During that minute no less than 20 mosquitoes dinned on my flesh covering exposed skin in a nice dotting of red welts. The price I pay for a cave dive!

So I show my buddy around the property while batting quarter sized mosquitoes out of the way and we geared up on the beach and swam toward the cave. Nice warm water, nice 5 foot vis typical to area. And there is the line, and welcome to Canadian Cave diving Mr Pinault.

I, of course, made him lead since that is just about the only way to keep tabs on the newbie. We start off quite slow as MP readjusts to the new, alien environment. The thick rope line, the dark tannic water, the white-green limestone sharp as razor blades and all the other nuances of this cave.

Being behind him meant I saw a lot of silt and occasionally a flash of black rubber just before I ran into his fins with my face. After 800 feet of this we hit our first T. By this point MP was showing lots of comfort in the cave and looked like he was having a blast. I distinctly recall saying "Go left at all the T's" so absolutely he went right. I decided to hang back, since it gets nasty tight in there and let him figure that out. After a minute or so a wall of silt envelops me. The silt cloud keeps going and going... and going. A couple minutes later MP manages to get himself out of there and we head left.

A nice, lengthy rather basic "gold line" dive for this cave later we turn it somewhere around 2400feet. Coasting out with the flow, now I am in front. We glide out of the cave checking out nooks and crannies. At the exit to the cave I took a little 600-800 foot detour side tunnel. Its nice and low and silty. Very nice tunnel if I say so my self. It comes out underneath a dock down river.. right under the landowners boat.

He was there, on his dock when I surfaced. We chatted for a bit, I retrieved some things he dropped off the dock. We debriefed the dive. Read that as I said "So..." and MP stared at me with a stupid shit eating grin. After battling the mosquitoes again, we loaded up and left my favorite dive site in Ontario.