Today Andreas and I headed off to Ichetucknee Springs State Park to dive Jug Hole. Since this cave has a few restrictions, we had to dive side mount. Andreas brought his camera along and got a few good photos, which I’ll try to post up here later. We were hoping to explore a few going leads that we had heard about, but found that the 50w HID battery packs were simply too large to manage going through tight restrictions and will have to save those leads for another day :(. Once beyond the lead, we had plenty of time to see the entire cave and poke around everywhere we could find on the way back, but Jug simply doesn’t have many side passages, or really even any potential leads at all. It is however, a beautiful cave with some very pretty clay banks, as well as black and white layered walls.
Sidemount
Convict Springs
After boating up river looking for potential leads, Jeff and I ran across the Suwannee River Rendezvous Resort & Campground, where there was a spring run. We didn’t make the connection that this was Convict Springs, so we went to the office and asked the manager if we could dive here, only realizing what cave it was when we saw the map on the wall. This is a nice place to camp, it has hot showers and a place to eat all on site. Upstream from here is a great canoe spot as well!
We got in the water at about 10pm, and had to be out by 11pm. Because of this, we limited dive time to 45 minutes. Convict is a beautiful system, with rocks that look like egg shells, formed around something (possibly clay) that has been washed away. There’s also a tree root growing dead center of one of the cave’s large rooms. The system is incredibly fragile, and very silty. If you’ve not been in many silt outs, wait to go here until you gain experience in them.
