The Payoff

"Wow."

Nohoch Nah Chich.

This was it. The cave that made me think of cave diving in the first place. There's no way I'd have had my graduation dives be anywhere else. To say that I had unrealistic fantasyland expectations for this place would be an understatement. I'm pretty sure I was bouncing up and down in my seat as we were driving there.

On top of this, Nat brought along an impressive camera rig and promised a few photo ops. I was already chomping at the bit but this just thrilled me to bits. I had not at all anticipated having a chance to get photos in a cave this early on in my cave diving career, much less with equipment as nice as this.

We kept the dives simple. We did the mainline upstream both times - the first time going past Heaven's Gate and through Disneyland before turning on time, rather than gas. The mainline is so insanely gorgeous, I can't really do it any justice trying to put it into words. It's jaw-dropping to the point that I had to consciously remember to maintain line discipline. It's also really shallow, you can easily go an hour in before turning if you were to follow the gas limits. We basically repeated the same dive the second time and turned at Heaven's Gate to start taking photos. They turned out OK :)

-> 56min and 74 min, 24ft, 76F

 - U