No Mount Cave Diving – Castle Rock, Fennimore, WI

[Kirk]

That cave redefines small passage.  It’s no-mount, because there is no physical way to fit in the cave in side-mount, and certainly not with a tank (or tanks) on your back.  Two tanks are used for redundancy, and with the feeling that if a pair of aluminum 80s won’t fit, most likely one’s self won’t fit either.  Pushing them isn’t hard; the bottoms of Luxfer aluminum 80s are actually pretty floaty. (Catalina’s not so much).  The tanks also help keep you out of the flow when you’re working to get unstuck, or trying to reposition your body to fit (the flow in there is howling).  I went there a couple years ago with Stacy (the wife of this movie’s photographer), Tami (the first diver in the film), and a couple of Tami’s friends.  I hear it goes back a little over 500 feet, though is incredibly slow going.  I think Tami is the only one who has made it to the end.  On my dives (crawls), I was getting really stuck in a restriction soon after the restriction that was featured in the film.  Being stuck is certainly not the most enjoyable part of a dive.  Now I know what it means to be stuck between a rock and a hard place.  At an average depth of less than 10 feet, though, one has a lot of air (time) to figure out how to get unstuck and turned around (or depending on one’s outlook, to reflect on your life).  I’m sure the film would have shown the second restriction, if the photographer could physically fit back there.  I don’t think he was able to actually get through the restriction he filmed (he’s just a bigger guy than I am).  There is certainly life in the cave; a resident muskrat comes in to collect cave line for its nest.  Please don’t go in there without cave training, appropriate equipment, substantial cave diving experience, and a high comfort level in submerged caves (being slender and flexible also helps).  This cave most certainly is not a forgiving environment.