Last weekend at Peacock

[SparticleBrane]

I spent 2.5 days at Peacock this past weekend with two of my dive buddies, and we got in 5 cave dives. 2 Saturday, 2 Sunday, and 1 on Monday before heading home. I took a bunch of photos -- here are a few in the cavern zone. My dive buddies also put together a few videos; I'll see if I can link that somehow.

Peacock 1 was completely covered in duckweed.



Enjoy the photos!

[Nailer99]

Cool pics! Living so far from any caves, and lacking enough funds to travel there regularly(Spent all my discretionary income on training and gear!), I don't usually have any interest in cave diving. Kind of weird to me, how many cave certified divers live in the Seattle area, frankly- no offense, I just think it's strange. All that said, I'm quite certain that if I lived anywhere in the SE US, I'd probably be a hard-core cave diver, with the line arrow tattoo, and so on. But pictures like these sort of excite me- I can see the appeal, for sure. I love the last shot, in particular- looks kind of like the "green postage stamp" from inside a wreck.

[LCF]

Oh, that picture of the diver in the entry is GORGEOUS! I have such a bad case of cavesickness right now, Sparty, it's unkind of you to add to it.

[SparticleBrane]

Cool pics! Living so far from any caves, and lacking enough funds to travel there regularly(Spent all my discretionary income on training and gear!), I don't usually have any interest in cave diving. Kind of weird to me, how many cave certified divers live in the Seattle area, frankly- no offense, I just think it's strange. All that said, I'm quite certain that if I lived anywhere in the SE US, I'd probably be a hard-core cave diver, with the line arrow tattoo, and so on. But pictures like these sort of excite me- I can see the appeal, for sure. I love the last shot, in particular- looks kind of like the "green postage stamp" from inside a wreck.

Thanks for the kind words...

Depending on which direction you are going, that is the last light you see (if you look behind you) going into the cave, and the first light you see on the way out. It's a beautiful sight to see...

[SparticleBrane]

Oh, that picture of the diver in the entry is GORGEOUS! I have such a bad case of cavesickness right now, Sparty, it's unkind of you to add to it.

Thanks Lynne!
I took 3-4 pictures of each dive buddy in that position, with the cavern entrance behind him (after our last dive we hung out in the cavern zone for ~20 minutes while I swam around and took photos).

Those photos with the divers were actually the first time I'd really tried to make my camera do something besides just point and click (and basic framing). Unfortunately I had two issues:

1: The cavern area past where the light was streaming in can be somewhat dark, so the shutter has to stay open longer (a bit of a problem when the photographer and the diver in question are moving, ever so slightly).
2: The areas lit up by the light rays are VERY bright, to the point that almost everything else is blacked out if the camera exposes for the lit sections.


Thus I chose to have the shutter stay open for longer, blowing out the light coming in from the surface. Oh well...I still like the shot.

[do it easy]

Great pictures. It must of been a marathon weekend of fun! Eat, sleep, dive, fill!

In that second picture, the light beams seem to be shooting at two different angles. It would suggest that the sun is extremely close! Is it an optical delusion??

[cmalinowski]

I spent 2.5 days at Peacock this past weekend with two of my dive buddies, and we got in 5 cave dives. 2 Saturday, 2 Sunday, and 1 on Monday before heading home.
...
Peacock 1 was completely covered in duckweed.

Good stuff. I love Peacock. It's a great c1 cave for me. Which tunnels?

We accidentally ventured to the well last time we were there. While a short trip, it was kinda fun... although a little on the narrow side

Chris

[SparticleBrane]

Great pictures. It must of been a marathon weekend of fun! Eat, sleep, dive, fill!

Yeah, petty much...the "sleep" part is usually "collapse into bed".

In that second picture, the light beams seem to be shooting at two different angles. It would suggest that the sun is extremely close! Is it an optical delusion??

Not really sure how that happened.

Good stuff. I love Peacock. It's a great c1 cave for me. Which tunnels?

We accidentally ventured to the well last time we were there. While a short trip, it was kinda fun... although a little on the narrow side

All 3 of us are NAUI Cave 1, so we can do full 1/3rd's with two navigational decisions, but staying within no-deco limits. Thus Peacock is a fantastic system for us -- we can dive practically all day long, we can go off the mainline, and we won't hit deco since it is so shallow. I really do love Peacock -- all our dives were at least 80 minutes long except for the one with the light failure; even that was an hour. Had we been at Ginnie or Little River we would have had a bunch of 30-35min dives.

On a trip over Thanksgiving we (intentionally ) went into the Well. Pretty neat.



Our dives went like this:
1: Peanut Line -- end of the Peanut Line
2: Orange Grove -- on the mainline heading towards Challenge Sink but called early due to light failure.
3: Peanut Line -- plan was to go to Waterhole, but we took the wrong jump on some miscommunication (Waterhole is the 2nd jump but the 1st marked jump...we took the 2nd marked jump...whoops) and ended up back on the mainline. I called that one. Still had a good dive though.
4: Orange Grove -- again, heading towards Challenge. Reached Challenge before thirds, popped up for a moment to chat, then headed back due to the park closing at 5pm -- needed to get out of the water.
5: Peanut Line -- successful trip to Waterhole.


I suppose I should also note that by doing the dives we did, we are slowly setting up how long it would take us to do the Peanut route for the Grand Traverse.

[Dive-aholic]

Wish I had known you were there. I was at Peacock Saturday morning/early afternoon for a workshop. It would have been great to meet you. I headed over to Telford for a dive in the afternoon. Now that is a beautiful system!

It took me about 100 minutes to to the traverse via the Peanut Line at a nice, easy pace.

[SparticleBrane]

Wish I had known you were there. I was at Peacock Saturday morning/early afternoon for a workshop. It would have been great to meet you. I headed over to Telford for a dive in the afternoon. Now that is a beautiful system!

It took me about 100 minutes to to the traverse via the Peanut Line at a nice, easy pace.

If I remember correctly, we did Peanut 1 to the end of the Peanut line in ~40 minutes, and Orange Grove to Challenge in ~40 minutes, both at a nice slow pace. Looking at the map, the portions inbetween certainly don't look like a very long distance.

[Rainer]

Nice photos!

[Jason B.]

If I remember correctly, we did Peanut 1 to the end of the Peanut line in ~40 minutes, and Orange Grove to Challenge in ~40 minutes, both at a nice slow pace. Looking at the map, the portions inbetween certainly don't look like a very long distance.

That works out to about 45 ft per minute. Not a bad pace to me - you must have not been leading.

Nice pictures as always Charles.

[SparticleBrane]

That works out to about 45 ft per minute. Not a bad pace to me - you must have not been leading.

Nice pictures as always Charles.

If I remember correctly, I led on the dive to the end of the Peanut line, and O'Connor led on the dive to Challenge. I was making extra sure on this trip to try and keep it slow.

I can't remember if I mentioned it or not -- on the dive to Challenge, we got to Challenge at 4:15pm after a 40-minute penetration, and decided not to go any further (obviously) since we were figuring for a 40-minute exit back to Orange Grove. Oglesby was in the lead on the way back...we made it in 28 minutes. Definitely didn't want to be in the water past the appointed time.

[Dive-aholic]

If I remember correctly, we did Peanut 1 to the end of the Peanut line in ~40 minutes, and Orange Grove to Challenge in ~40 minutes, both at a nice slow pace. Looking at the map, the portions inbetween certainly don't look like a very long distance.

I think it's 1800' from OG to Challenge. It's just over 1700' to the end of the Peanut Line. Challenge to the end of the Peanut Line is about 700' or so. So you're about on track with me. I usually swim a 50fpm pace.