Negotiating Rock Bluff

Dive Rite has a close and special relationship with Rock Bluff that goes back all the way to the 80s. Lamar Hires was the original explorer of the cave. In fact it was the very first cave he explored as a fully certified cave diver.His interest in the cave began even before he was cave certified and him and his friends often poked around the area when boating or water skiing. Finally once certified in 1981 he ventured into the cave and laid line all the way up the North route.

Eventually he shared his findings and Wes Skiles and Woody Jasper joined him and together they turned their attention to exploring the South route. Here there were a number of restrictions that had to be negotiated and these can only be done in sidemount.

The south side consists of one restriction after another. Yet, while there are challenging restrictions throughout the cave, it is the entrance that is the most difficult. The entrance is small, tight and has an incredible amount of flow pumping through it - there are no bouts about it - not everyone gets in! The small size and the high flow make it one of the toughest sidemount entrances in North Florida. The entrance also has a tendency to fill up over time becoming even smaller and tighter. On top of that the cave is only accessible by boat, which means very few people venture inside it.

I was lucky to join Wes Skiles and the Karst Production team for two days of shooting at the site. We were able to film a sequnce at the entrance into the cave as well as some footage of the restrictions. The video illustartes perfectly what the cave is all about. Further Wes took some incredible still images.

Please enjoy the amazing photos and the very cool footage of what is a very rarely dived cave.

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