Boesmansgat Beckons
First time at Mount Carmel
So, to Boesmansgat and the part that I’ve played in helping two remarkable people achieve the goals they’d set themselves. Boesmansgat was the ideal site for the extreme depths that Nuno Gomes and Verna van Schaik wanted to dive. Boesmansgat or Bushman’s Hole is on a game farm called Mount Carmel in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. It is approximately 600 kilometres from Johannesburg and our route there took us through towns like Klerksdorp and Potchefstroom. These towns, although pretty big nowadays have their origins in the booming gold mining era in South Africa. To this day the majority of the people in these towns still work for mining companies.
At the outset I should point out that the Nuno and Verna were driven by very different motives. At least initially, Nuno’s motive was to reach the bottom of Boesmansgat. A world record was more or less an after-thought. Exploration of the cave was the main thing. Verna on the other hand, had more personal goals to reach. Not the least of which was to prove to herself and other people in the local cave diving community that she could do it. For her, achieving personal targets was ( and actually still is) the important thing. Unfortunately, in a mainly male dominated sport, she’d been struggling, to put it mildly, to be allowed to do the dives she wanted to do. In the end she decided to build her own team and pursue her own objectives. This approach turned out to be very productive for everyone involved. Not only could she attempt the dives she wanted to, but it also meant that we were all forced to face our limitations and when necessary, overcome them. For example, we had to go out and find our own sponsors, do all our own logistic planning, learn to do our own mixing and perhaps most importantly, learn to trust our own knowledge and not just rely on more experienced people to do stuff for us.
The original team that went with Nuno on my first trip pretty much stayed with him for the next 12 years. They are, in no particular order, Liz Gomes, Craig Kahn, Craig Newham, Ian Riphagen, Theo van Eeden, Lionel Brink and of course me. Gareth Lowndes joined very soon after, so I reckon this is a good time to introduce him as well.
Craig Kahn a patent attorney, with a passion for hot food and the skill to cook it to match. Besides Nuno Gomes, Craig Khan is one of the three best divers I know. Craig Newham, a computer scientist with a legendary love of tea, which is in reality a love of coffee and an intense dislike for hot food, is the other. For the sheer weight of experience and dedication to safety these three people have built up over the years, they are, at least in South Africa and in my opinion, in a league of their own.
Ian Riphagen, one of the most experienced deep divers in the Wits diving club at the time. Ian was quite possible the person who had done the most diving with Nuno at the time. I’m convinced that had he not been shot in an attempted vehicle hijack a few years after this trip, Ian would have been at Nuno’s side in Egypt in 2006. Ian was lucky enough to survive the shocking attack and now lives in the United States.
Dr Gareth Lowndes comes next, a pharmacology PHD who lectures at Wits and in his spare time trots around the world to places like South America. Although Gareth is a relatively new member of the team, he’s none-the-less has been a part of 4 record-breaking expeditions. Gareth developed a unique cooking style on our trips, mostly by trial and error on the rest of us.
Theo van Eeden, a member of the South African Police Water Wing in Cape Town, had more body recoveries under his belt than the rest of us put together and a real flare for developing custom built equipment. For example, the over 100 meter high pressure filling hoses that really made our lives easier on the world record trips. Without Theo’s special talent for custom building equipment we could not have done many of the dives we did. Then there was Lionel Brink, who was so energetic in his diving during the build up year to the world record that he made the rest of us look a little pale in comparison. To his credit, once he had a family and two small children, his attitude to deep cave diving changed. He became a lot more thoughtful about which dives he did and the risks he deemed acceptable. Soon after the birth of his second daughter he stopped cave diving altogether. I think he was one of the best divers on our team.
Someone I cannot leave out is Liz Gomes, Nuno’s wife of many, many years and a lady I can only describe as an incredible diver and a person with almost infinite patience and a real grace about her. Although she eventually moved overseas, without her contributions over the years I have some doubt we would have accomplished quite what we did.
Finally myself, Joseph Emmanuel. I’m a software developer and business analyst by profession and I have an Honours degree in Economics to throw into the mix. I also have a reputation for being the world’s only vegetarian who will eat biltong, game meat and even fish and chicken on occasion (although, I always protest that I’ve never actually claimed to be a vegetarian as such).
Preparing for a trip to Boesmansgat is no trivial thing in itself. Most importantly perhaps is sponsorship. As with any expedition of this kind, it all takes money, in particular the helium This natural gas is only imported into South Africa and as such is a very expensive item to buy. We’ve been lucky enough to get sponsorship for almost all our trips to Boesmansgat. The sponsoring companies have varied over the years, but they include Affrox, Liquid Air and Air Products. These companies contributed literally thousands of litres of helium and oxygen over the years. Without it we’d never have been able to accomplish what we did. In addition to the breathing gas we had to get support for breathing air compressors and even more importantly the disposable filters they use. For this, we owe High Pressure System’s (who supply Bauer compressors in South Africa) Andre Vosloo and his colleagues a great debt. WUC also lent us their compressors and many stage bottles and regulators over the years. I must give credit to Nuno Gomes for doing a huge amount of work to secure these sponsorships. It’s due to his example that we were able to eventually get enough support for Verna to launch her world record attempt in 1994.
To the uninitiated it’s very hard to imagine a place less likely than Boesmansgat to hold one of the biggest (if not the biggest) underground bodies of water in the world. From the national road, the passing traveller has no inkling of the secret treasure of Mount Carmel. As you can appreciate, to the herds of game that range over Mount Carmel and to the good people who own and run the farm (Debbie and Andries Van Zyl), the water is vital.
The surface pool at Boesmansgat - photo. Courtesy Derek Hughes 2004
You have to drive about ten kilometres over rough dirt roads from the main house to find Boesmansgat. Even then it’s not obvious. As you come over a rise in the rough farm terrain you get the impression of a large valley. Next you are faced with a big gorge or hole. Never do you actually see any sign of the vast amount of water that lies below. Very simply put, Boesmansgat is at the place where millions of years ago, three geological fault lines met and created the huge basin that is today Boesmansgat.
One has to park at the top and walk about 100 metres down a difficult and treacherous path of rocks and stones into the valley before you can peer gingerly over a sheer drop into a small, shallow pool of water, with no indication of what lies below.
The first time I stood at the side of the pool, I was struck by the blanket of green algae and fallen leaves that invariably greet us when we first arrive. Picturesque as it may have looked to me, I had little time to admire the scene. The tiny leaves and twigs can and have caused regulators to free flow and even leak underwater from time to time. We had to clean it off before we could safely dive. The permanent inhabitants of the water are very large frogs. These unflappable amphibians seemed to have long ago taken over the pool. Someone once commented about the only way frogs get that big is by eating all the animals that fall in. I never really believed them, until one year we found the remains of a dead goat floating in the pool.
I first went to Boesmasgat in April of 1993, a little surprised to be there, because it was a highly prized site to dive and by invitation only. I had met some un
mentioned requirement that qualified me (I’m still not sure what) but I’m very glad I did. At that point, if memory serves me, I had accumulated 163 dives with an average depth of twenty metres (with about thirty dives below forty metres). This may not sound like a lot, but because of Nuno’s methodical approach to training up his team we were all confident that we had the necessary skills and experience to dive Boesmansgat safely.
A night in an ablution block
I remember my first journey to Boesmansgat It was in a blue VW golf, packed to the roof with dive bags, cylinders and camping equipment. With no other facilities available, we were going to have to camp literally in the hole. The other members of the team’s cars were similarly fully laden. As was invariably the case, the preparations and packing in Johannesburg took us longer than anticipated and we arrived in the small town of Danielskuil after dark. Given that it was really a small town we could not find an open hotel for love or money as they say. After asking around a bit we were directed to the local caravan park, which we found was basically closed for the night. Anyway, we managed to get someone to open a sort of parking area that had the ablution block in it. By then it was getting to midnight and we were in no mood to put up our tents, so everyone except one wise person decided to camp inside the ablution block. Basically we slept in the toilet. Unfortunately for us, they had not been cleaned too often and most of the team ended up being bitten by ticks and fleas that night. Luckily no one got sick, just very uncomfortable. We finally reached Mount Carmel the next day. But ever since that trip we’ve made sure we pack up efficiently enough to be able to drive through to Boesmansgat in one day.
First dive
Finally after months of preparation and anticipation I sat at the edge of Boesmansgat ready to enter a realm that very few divers will ever see. The water was crystal clear, not like the usual opaque brown/green I usually dive in. As gracefully as I could I slipped into the water. I had to be careful not to stir up too much of the silt that lines the shallow entrance pool. Any silt I disturbed here would invariably go straight down the narrow slot entrance into the cave and usually stay in suspension for a day or so.
As my head dipped below the surface I looked around to get my bearings. I was greeted by a lot more movement than I expected. The pool was populated by a large community of frogs. They ranged from tadpole to more than ten centimetres from tip to tail (not
that the big ones actually had a tail, because as everyone knows tadpoles loose their tails as they grow). This first dive was very much an acclimatisation dive and I was lucky enough to have as my buddy Craig Newham, already a veteran of a number of trips to Boesmansgat. As Craig led the way down through the slot, the visibility remained spectacular and we could see as far as our torches could shine. My regulators worked perfectly and my relatively new Poseidon really came into its own below thirty metes. Given that we had done a lot of dives in the thirty to forty metre range this first dive our maximum depth of forty metres. We dropped down through the clear water, careful not to stray from the shot-line which was our safe way out of the cave. The limited amount of natural light that penetrates the dark void we were dropping into slowly became a narrower and narrower beacon above and behind us, the shot line becoming ever more critical for a safe exit. Once we reached our target we stopped and checked each other’s equipment and exchanged signals that all was well. At this point we had a choice; either we hang around and wait for our precious bottom time to go by or we tie our exploration line to the main shot-line and explore a little of the space around us. I signalled to Craig that I wanted to explore a little. He indicated he would stay at the main line as a beacon for me.
Behind the main line I could still see the rock face we had just passed to get here. This gave me a fixed reference point with which to orientate myself. There were a number of mini-caverns that led off the rock chute we’d dropped down to get here. On this occasion I elected to swim to the left of the main line and more or less follow the wall around. With rudimentary torches by today’s standards, I could see only relatively small areas of the wall as I swam passed. Some of it was almost white, but most of it looked a sort of dirty brown. Then I caught a glimpse of something that made my breathing quicken for a moment. I saw what looked like a corner. I thought I may have found a new chamber or passage. For all I knew I had. I had a decision to make. Do I go on around the corner and out of site of Craig and the main line, or do I put my exploration off for another day? I looked at my computers and the contents gauges of my cylinders. I had used almost one third of my air. I’d have to come back again. Turning back towards Craig I looked into a vast space towards the invisible far walls of the cave and I realised that Martyn Farr could not have chosen a more appropriate title for a book about cave diving than “The Darkness Beckons” (Farr,1991). This was truly a memorable first dive at Boesmansgat for me. I knew I’d have to come back.
As I discovered, a trip to Boesmansgat as a support diver means your diving centers around ferrying stage cylinders down the shot-line to designated depths. This normally took us the better part of the first half of a ten-day trip. What we would do to make our dives count for our own experience and enjoyment was build the ‘work’ into our own dive plans. On this trip I worked mainly with Craig and another friend Nelson.
My second dive at Boesmansgat was typical. We had to take two cylinders of oxygen at ten metres for Nuno and Ian to decompress on their 100 metre dive later in the trip. We were both keen to do personal best depths on this trip and that meant we’d need to do some build up dives. This dive we set our maximum depth at 50 metres down to just below the roof level. Once again we dropped through the slot, but this time we stopped just below the tight entrance and clipped off the two cylinders. As usual we opened and test breathed each cylinder before closing them again. We signaled each other and began slowly descending into the darkness below. One thing that struck me on this dive was that although the perception is of diving straight down the line there is in fact a slight angle to the line since the wall is not perfectly vertical. By carefully controlling our buoyancy we stopped at 50 metres and hung close to the wall. The line runs closer to the wall here and once again it feels like it goes straight up and down. It seems to me that perspective could be a funny thing at 50 metres. A brief ten minutes later our time was up, we ascended and did the prescribed decompression stops on our way back to the warm Karoo sunshine.
After about a week of diving and ferrying of cylinders into the cave, Nuno announced that he felt all was ready to do the deep push for this trip. I didn’t know it at the time but even though he and Ian were going to attempt to dive to 100 metres, a significant depth in itself, this dive was really just a build up dive for his real target. The outcome of this dive would help him decide what he could do later in the year. They entered the water early in the morning and after only a few minutes we at the surface could no longer see any bubbles from our vantage point at the surface. Everything went very still. It was explained to me that this was quite normal for deep diving at Boesmandgat Boesman sgat. Due to the geography of the cave, the bubbles from the divers’ exhaled air (which in open water can give surface observers an idea of where the divers are) are trapped in the roof. As a result of this, those of us waiting on the surface have to wait until the first support diver gets back to hear if our friends where alright. As the new guy on the team, my role was really only as a shallow stand-by diver and that meant a wait of over an hour before I got to dive. By the time I got into the water Nuno and Ian were back at something like twenty meters and doing fine. Although relatively shallow, I did not want to build up too much nitrogen, thereby making me useless in the event of an emergency later in the dive. As a consequence I only stayed with them for a short while. I think the dive was almost three hours long. Through out the trip the team had worked well together and now that the most risky dive was over and no-one was exhibiting any sign of decompression illness, we could begin to relax.
My deepest dive yet
The
next day Nuno and Ian were off diving to ensure that they did not develop any decompression illness. It was an opportunity for the rest of us to do some fun diving. My final dive this first trip would be my deepest up till then. I believe it was again with Nelson. After the week or so of continuous diving we were all very well acclimatised to deep diving. By now we were well practiced in the routine of diving through the entrance slot and dropping to what what -ever depth we chose. As per usual we had a discussion the previous night around the camp fire to agree a target depth and a dive objective. The team agreed we could safely dive to 65 meters as long as we kept the dive very simple and minimised the effects of nitrogen narcosis by making sure that whatever we did was done very methodically and in accordance with our plan. The dive began with a drop of about six minutes. That made our descent rate roughly ten meters a minute, relatively slow by some standards. We stopped directly opposite the 65 meter tag on the line. We signalled to each other and I tied onto the line. This time we swam off to the right of the line. Pretty soon we could see a roof above us and I moved up to use it as a reference to follow. I felt a sense of intrigue and curiosity as I probed the darkness with my torch. After only thirty meters (not very far by modern standards, but for me it might as well have been the moon), we turned around and headed back to the line. As we did so we saw Dale and Craig as tiny specs far off and below us. I got a real sense of the size of Boesmansgat which was emphasised later when I found out they were at a depth of about 75 meters. Every time I got to go back to Boesmansgat I felt a real sense of privilege to be diving there. I knew it was a unique place, with many, many unanswered questions. I’d like to say that my first dive in Boesmansgat will always stand out, but actually I can’t. The more I explored of Boesmansgat the more I wanted to go back. I left Boesmansgat with the hope that I’d be invited back on the next trip. Because of the logistics involved in setting up these trips, I expected it to be in about a year’s time As it turned out I went back to Boesmansgat much sooner than I expected.
Into The Deepest And Darkest Page 4
