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SEARCHING THE SINKS, FL By Brian Williams Ah, another couple of days of ridge-walking…Florida style. Get in the truck and drive till you see a suspicious clump of trees off in the distance, jump out, run over and check it out, run back to the warm truck, continue driving, GPS sinkhole for future reference if anything is found. Note: Do not take any actual caving gear with you or you will never find anything good! Last Sunday (12-13-03), Cindy Butler and I decided to go diving somewhere but we thought we’d check out a few leads we had on the map first. Mostly we were looking at sinks as possible dive leads but we won’t turn down a dry cave when we find it. The best find of the day turned up north of Branford from an old lead on my trusty Florida Atlas. I think this lead was given to me by Sleeze-Weasel or Eric, I don’t remember which one. We started out near High Springs and near 75. We had gone to visit a landowner to get some information regarding another piece of property we wanted to get on to dive. After a short visit, we drove down the road to an old cemetery and found a newly formed sinkhole in an area we had been in many times. No dry cave gear with us so we opted to add this lead to the list for another day as it was going to require (gasp) getting dirty to get in to. After a few more stops popping in and out of sinks and we headed up toward Branford to get a dive in at Ruth Springs. I remembered that I had a lead up there somewhere I wanted to check out. We headed north out of Branford about 5 miles and then east down a county rd. If anyone knows the name of this cave, please email me. We went about 2 miles down this road looking across planted pines, fields and sand, terrain that seemed cave-less. We rounded a bend and saw a big sink on the left in a field. Just a few hundred feet further was a huge ravine in the woods ending at a sink next to the road. Of course, still no cave gear, but we did have a couple of headlamps that I always keep in the van. The sink was a beautiful feature with exposed karst covered with moss and a few openings. Cindy made friends with a green snake that was out getting a little sun despite the cold weather. We found two good openings and both had water in the bottom of undetermined depth. This is good, we have dive gear! We popped down the first entrance drop to check out the water. It was clear and about 4 ft deep but went back toward the road and under the rocks. The next opening had water too that seemed deeper but there were some bats in residence and the water here was bit on the stinky side. Deciding to save these leads once again for another day, we headed for a nice afternoon dive at Ruth Springs. Wednesday found us in another area to check out one of the sinks we have had our eye on for a while. We were planning an exploratory dive in this small sink with hopes of finding a connection to one of our other projects. Cindy volunteered to make the first dive and see if she could make it to another sink we were looking at that we thought may connect. This particular sink is right near the edge of the road so we did not want to give away our good location to anyone that happened to be passing by and curious. We found a good spot to get Cindy geared up and put her in the back of the van for quick off-loading. This way we could drive up and drop her off at the sink without parking on the side of the road. I pulled up and dropped her off, then took her tanks down to her, after which I parked the van in a secure location and headed back to wait. The plan was for her to be gone 40 minutes max and then come back and report. Well Cindy has a way of staying gone longer than she is supposed to so after we tied off the line and she submerged, I settled down for a long wait. After 5 minutes her bubbles were gone from the sink so I knew she had found cave. After 25 minutes she was back up to report. The cave does go but there is lots of old tires, tree limbs and all manner of nasty mung hanging from everything. She checked out two leads but decided to turn the dive after a large tree limb fell from the ceiling onto her head. ( Yea, that’s a good time to turn the dive.) There is one more lead to explore down there so she cut the line and tied off for when we come back. The rest of day we spent checking out several more sinks and driving many more miles. We covered a lot of ground and it turned out to be a beautiful day despite the cold windy morning. It’s winter time out there folks so lets get out there and hit the ridges and find some new caves.
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