Re: Estimating water quality


"Aidan Karley" <doIlookDAFTenoughTOpost@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote in message
news:VA.00000e28.0d6d8760@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <125fpskbgc37eed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Jo Schaper wrote:
Hmmm. Water can travel under valleys in karst. No problem. Karst doesn't
necessarily cling to the surface drainages. If you've had a bunch of
dung dumped nearby, that might explain the algae nicely.

There's a part of the famous Swildon's Hole in the Mendips of
England that is named "Cowsh Aven".
It's more-or less under a cowshed, but that's not the reason for the
name!

From http://www.oucc.org.uk/dtt/vol03/dtt3_15.htm
Actually, you feel a bit of a prat going through sump 1 wearing diving
gear, and even sumps 2 and 3
are free-diveable. Sump 2 is a short series of pulls on the rope, and
you pop up in a large double
airbell, eerie and still. But there's nothing else to see, and you can't
get out of the water, so,
frankly, you'd have to be pretty mad to want to free-dive sump 2 even if
it is easy.

Sounds like my sort of fun! Totally pointless and moderately
dangerous - what more recommendations
could a man ask for?

Want something totally pointless, and a little more than moderately
dangerous? Try this (from a web site of a good friend of mine - he
photographed my wedding):

http://www.darklightimagery.net/RFC/RumbleRoom2.html

Notice the guy rapelling off the rope near the center of the image.
Imagine rapelling into that abyss in total darkness. This is the largest
known cave chamber in the Eastern U.S. You should browse that web site.
The guy is a photographic genius, avid caver, and amateur astronomer. Your
kind of guy! The guy who took these pictures is shown on that page above.
If you scroll down until you see three pictures together, Chris is the one
wearing the red jumpsuit and handling the camera. He is also a State
Trooper (State Police Officer), and you will "respect his authortay", as
Kartman says on South Park. I won't dare try to compare the danger there
to cave diving, yet it will definitely get your adrenaline pumping.

You'd also have to be quite mad to want to free-dive sump 3. This is
quite deep, and very silted up
at the bottom. Horrible, but with 25 minutes of air I thought I could
probably manage a technically
free-diveable sump. Then you are into Swildon's 4, a truly classic piece
of stream cave, and well
worth a visit in its own right (via the entertaining blue pencil passage
route which avoids all the
sumps). Towards the end of 4 you pass under cowsh aven, strategically
placed under the farm on
Priddy Green, and dribbling ***. This all has to go somewhere of
course, and as you flatten
yourself into sump 4 and watch the myriad creepy crawlies flowing past
your face it seems as if this
is it. Again, sump 4 can be free-dived, and cannot really be bypassed.
But if you plan on doing it,
its best not to know of the existence of Wells disease.


Swildons was the site of some of the first efforts in mechanised
cave diving, using some home-made
contraptions that started their lives as bicycle pumps and football
valves. 1936 IIRC. After a couple of
years with this approach they got hold of Standard Equipment (brass hat,
lead-soled boots etc) from Siebe
Gorman and pushed on to something like sump 6, nearly killing the dozens
of Sherpas on several occasions
through asphyxiation. So they moved on to pushing the resurgence for the
system at Wookey Hole. Some of
the dives were broadcast live on the BBC. Then WW2 kicked off and boring
things like aqualungs and
frogmans suits were invented which made proceedings much less
interesting.

--
Aidan Karley, FGS
Aberdeen, Scotland,
Location: 57°10'11" N, 02°08'43" W (sub-tropical Aberdeen), 0.021233

Though a lot safer, I would guess.

George


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