At 451 feet sub-surface, Roaring River Spring still “bottomless”
November 11, 2021
Above, KISS Rebreathers diver Randall Purdy, of Kearney, Nebraska, displays the camera and housing used for shooting photos of the team's underwater explorations. Purdy says he has reached the camera's depth limit of 330 feet in Roaring River Spring and has plans to invest in a new camera capable of operating at a depth of 600 feet. Photo by Sheila Harris.
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Above, left to right, Joe Heinrichs, Mike Young, and Gayle Ornerpause for a park visitor’s photo opp prior to Saturday morning’s dive into Roaring River Spring. Photo by Sheila Harris
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Sheila Harris
KISS Rebreathers divers have made scheduled monthly weekend exploratory dives into Roaring River Spring since May for the purpose of remapping the cave, “we’re living history right now.” “We’ve already made history,” he added. Indeed, they have. When asked how deep the spring is, head diver Mike Young answered, “We don’t know.” With the water flow at seven cubic feet per second over the weekend, the lowest it’s been since the team began diving in May, the divers had an easier time with both visibility and navigation. They were able to attain a depth of 344 feet on Sunday’s exploratory dive, which now makes Roaring River Spring the deepest in Missouri. It also puts it in the running for the deepest spring in the nation, believed to be 436 feet. “There’s still no bottom in sight,” KISS Rebreathers CEO and head diver, Mike Young, said.
When asked how deep he would be able to go, he replied, “If we haven’t reached another restriction before then, I’ll probably stop at 400 feet and let more experienced cave divers take over.”
By the next day, Young had already changed his story. “Well, you know how it is,” he said, with a laugh, “as long as there’s something more to find, I’ll keep going.” Finding “the bottom” of Roaring River Cave is not necessarily a goal in itself, rather, it’s one among others.
Randall Purdy, from Kearney, Nebraska, acts as the team’s chief underwater photographer, and explained that a 20-story building - or erhaps larger - could easily fit into the huge cavern below the recently breached restriction at a depth of 225 feet in the cave. It’s that large cavern that Young and cartographer, Jon Lillestolen, attempted to find the limits of on their Sunday dive.
According to Mike Young, a handheld sonar device, designed to signal when an obstacle is within 100 feet of it, reads “out-of-range” in the lowest cavern, indicating that walls and ceiling and a floor were somewhere beyond the point where they tested.
According to Lillestolen, a lateral swim below the restriction yielded the discovery of a canyon which, after about 100 feet of line - in addition to the 200 feet already laid - became too complicated to navigate.
“There may or may not be a passage (in that canyon),” he said, “but with that much water, there’s a large passage somewhere.”
Lillestolen then descended to a depth (below the surface) of 300 feet, before running out of time for further exploration. Lillestolen and the other divers tasked with cartography use basic compasses and safety lines knotted at 10-foot intervals to establish directions and measurements. These “stick map” measurements, as they call them, are then recorded in small waterproof notebooks, from which details can later be entered into a computer.
“The goal,” Lillestolen said, “is to end up with a 3-D representation of the cave, as well as a publishable map for the park’s use. Maybe, oo, a new visual surface map for visitors to the spring.”
Under the direction of Tim Bass, of NWA Adventure Dive, a video for use in the park’s nature center, as well as a feature-length documentary, are being created.
Aside from the divers’ cave explorations, Bass has plans to include plenty of local history and culture in the documentary, to add to its appeal for the non-divers among us.
With renewed permits from the DNR at the end of the year, the team hopes to continue monthly explorations indefinitely. “There are many of us on the edge of our seats waiting to see what they will discovernext,” Joel Topham said.
The KISS Rebreathers dive team returned to Roaring River State Park over the weekend, and, during a series of three daily dives, firmly established Roaring River Spring’s status as the deepest recorded spring in Missouri. “I made it to a depth of 401 feet on Saturday, then down to 451 feet on Sunday,” head diver Mike Young said.
Mike Young says the underwater terrain has changed at the newly reached depth of 451 feet.
“There’s still no bottom in sight,” he said, “but I’m beginning to see some ‘stepping down’ of rock formations along the sides, and there’s no silt, which leads me to be-lieve I’m getting close to the source of the water.”
The lack of silt, Young says, signifies that water flow is keeping it at bay.
When asked why he didn’t continue his descent just 12 more feet to put Roaring River Spring in the record books as the deepest spring in the nation, Young said it’s be-cause he didn’t want to devi-ate from his preestablished dive plan.
“If I swam down just ten more feet,” he said, “it would require an additional 30 minutes of decompression time before I could resurface. I didn’t want to do that to my teammates.”
For the KISS team, safety is a priority. Each diver has a written dive-plan recorded with surface manager Tony Bryant before entering the water.
“I record the time they go into the water, the length of time they plan to stay and the time come out,” Bryant said. “If they’re late resurfacing, we wonder why.”
According to Young, during Sunday’s dive, he had a little scare near the bottom of the abyss when he felt his safety line go slack.
Cartographer Jon Lillestolen had repositioned the small inner tube through which the safety line passed for the purpose of giving Young a bit more slack in his line. However, Young, for a startled moment, believed that his line had accidentally been cut.
“If that actually been the case, I could have found my way back to the surface,” Young said, “but it would have been a little more diffi-cult.”
Young says he’s confident that Roaring River Spring’s depth will surpass that of Phantom Cave Spring in West Texas, which, at 462 feet, holds the current record as the deepest in the nation.
“There’s plenty more down there in Roaring River Cave still to explore,” Young said. “Lots more than 12 feet.”
In addition to reaching a record depth, divers also ascended to the surface after passing through the 224 foot restriction, where they dis-overed two more airbells.
“They’re larger than the Colossal Dome,” diver Jon Lillestolen said, “but they don’t contain as many attrac-tive rock formations.”
Prior to exiting the cave af-ter their final dive on Sunday, some 20 safety or “bail out” air tanks were brought back to the surface. The tanks were labeled for different depth levels and had been stationed along the course of the divers’ descent into Roaring River Spring over the weekend. According to diver Randall Purdy, each safety tank con-tains a specific mix of gas for its designated depth.
“The tank labeled for a 480-foot depth contains only enough breathable air to last a diver for four minutes,” he explained.
The KISS Rebreathers plan to return November 12 - 14, although, with the typical fall rains, Young doesn’t expect to be able to deep-dive any more this year.
“If we’re able to, we will,” he said. “But, if not, we plan to do more mapping of the cavern above the restriction.”
The KISS team’s chief un-erwater photographer, Randall Purdy, says he probably speaks for most divers when he says that the record-breaking Roaring River dive project represents the dream of a lifetime. Purdy says he plans to invest in a new camera capable of filming at a depth of 600 feet.
“I can’t take my current camera below 330 feet without it imploding,” he said.
A full-length documentary of the dive team’s exploration of Roaring River cave, which will also include history of the area, is being created by Tim Bass of TLBass Telepic-tures of Bentonville. Short video clips of the exploration can be found on the official Roaring River State Park Facebook page.
KISS Rebreathers divers have made scheduled monthly weekend exploratory dives into Roaring River Spring since May for the purpose of remapping the cave, “we’re living history right now.” “We’ve already made history,” he added. Indeed, they have. When asked how deep the spring is, head diver Mike Young answered, “We don’t know.” With the water flow at seven cubic feet per second over the weekend, the lowest it’s been since the team began diving in May, the divers had an easier time with both visibility and navigation. They were able to attain a depth of 344 feet on Sunday’s exploratory dive, which now makes Roaring River Spring the deepest in Missouri. It also puts it in the running for the deepest spring in the nation, believed to be 436 feet. “There’s still no bottom in sight,” KISS Rebreathers CEO and head diver, Mike Young, said.
When asked how deep he would be able to go, he replied, “If we haven’t reached another restriction before then, I’ll probably stop at 400 feet and let more experienced cave divers take over.”
By the next day, Young had already changed his story. “Well, you know how it is,” he said, with a laugh, “as long as there’s something more to find, I’ll keep going.” Finding “the bottom” of Roaring River Cave is not necessarily a goal in itself, rather, it’s one among others.
Randall Purdy, from Kearney, Nebraska, acts as the team’s chief underwater photographer, and explained that a 20-story building - or erhaps larger - could easily fit into the huge cavern below the recently breached restriction at a depth of 225 feet in the cave. It’s that large cavern that Young and cartographer, Jon Lillestolen, attempted to find the limits of on their Sunday dive.
According to Mike Young, a handheld sonar device, designed to signal when an obstacle is within 100 feet of it, reads “out-of-range” in the lowest cavern, indicating that walls and ceiling and a floor were somewhere beyond the point where they tested.
According to Lillestolen, a lateral swim below the restriction yielded the discovery of a canyon which, after about 100 feet of line - in addition to the 200 feet already laid - became too complicated to navigate.
“There may or may not be a passage (in that canyon),” he said, “but with that much water, there’s a large passage somewhere.”
Lillestolen then descended to a depth (below the surface) of 300 feet, before running out of time for further exploration. Lillestolen and the other divers tasked with cartography use basic compasses and safety lines knotted at 10-foot intervals to establish directions and measurements. These “stick map” measurements, as they call them, are then recorded in small waterproof notebooks, from which details can later be entered into a computer.
“The goal,” Lillestolen said, “is to end up with a 3-D representation of the cave, as well as a publishable map for the park’s use. Maybe, oo, a new visual surface map for visitors to the spring.”
Under the direction of Tim Bass, of NWA Adventure Dive, a video for use in the park’s nature center, as well as a feature-length documentary, are being created.
Aside from the divers’ cave explorations, Bass has plans to include plenty of local history and culture in the documentary, to add to its appeal for the non-divers among us.
With renewed permits from the DNR at the end of the year, the team hopes to continue monthly explorations indefinitely. “There are many of us on the edge of our seats waiting to see what they will discovernext,” Joel Topham said.
The KISS Rebreathers dive team returned to Roaring River State Park over the weekend, and, during a series of three daily dives, firmly established Roaring River Spring’s status as the deepest recorded spring in Missouri. “I made it to a depth of 401 feet on Saturday, then down to 451 feet on Sunday,” head diver Mike Young said.
Mike Young says the underwater terrain has changed at the newly reached depth of 451 feet.
“There’s still no bottom in sight,” he said, “but I’m beginning to see some ‘stepping down’ of rock formations along the sides, and there’s no silt, which leads me to be-lieve I’m getting close to the source of the water.”
The lack of silt, Young says, signifies that water flow is keeping it at bay.
When asked why he didn’t continue his descent just 12 more feet to put Roaring River Spring in the record books as the deepest spring in the nation, Young said it’s be-cause he didn’t want to devi-ate from his preestablished dive plan.
“If I swam down just ten more feet,” he said, “it would require an additional 30 minutes of decompression time before I could resurface. I didn’t want to do that to my teammates.”
For the KISS team, safety is a priority. Each diver has a written dive-plan recorded with surface manager Tony Bryant before entering the water.
“I record the time they go into the water, the length of time they plan to stay and the time come out,” Bryant said. “If they’re late resurfacing, we wonder why.”
According to Young, during Sunday’s dive, he had a little scare near the bottom of the abyss when he felt his safety line go slack.
Cartographer Jon Lillestolen had repositioned the small inner tube through which the safety line passed for the purpose of giving Young a bit more slack in his line. However, Young, for a startled moment, believed that his line had accidentally been cut.
“If that actually been the case, I could have found my way back to the surface,” Young said, “but it would have been a little more diffi-cult.”
Young says he’s confident that Roaring River Spring’s depth will surpass that of Phantom Cave Spring in West Texas, which, at 462 feet, holds the current record as the deepest in the nation.
“There’s plenty more down there in Roaring River Cave still to explore,” Young said. “Lots more than 12 feet.”
In addition to reaching a record depth, divers also ascended to the surface after passing through the 224 foot restriction, where they dis-overed two more airbells.
“They’re larger than the Colossal Dome,” diver Jon Lillestolen said, “but they don’t contain as many attrac-tive rock formations.”
Prior to exiting the cave af-ter their final dive on Sunday, some 20 safety or “bail out” air tanks were brought back to the surface. The tanks were labeled for different depth levels and had been stationed along the course of the divers’ descent into Roaring River Spring over the weekend. According to diver Randall Purdy, each safety tank con-tains a specific mix of gas for its designated depth.
“The tank labeled for a 480-foot depth contains only enough breathable air to last a diver for four minutes,” he explained.
The KISS Rebreathers plan to return November 12 - 14, although, with the typical fall rains, Young doesn’t expect to be able to deep-dive any more this year.
“If we’re able to, we will,” he said. “But, if not, we plan to do more mapping of the cavern above the restriction.”
The KISS team’s chief un-erwater photographer, Randall Purdy, says he probably speaks for most divers when he says that the record-breaking Roaring River dive project represents the dream of a lifetime. Purdy says he plans to invest in a new camera capable of filming at a depth of 600 feet.
“I can’t take my current camera below 330 feet without it imploding,” he said.
A full-length documentary of the dive team’s exploration of Roaring River cave, which will also include history of the area, is being created by Tim Bass of TLBass Telepic-tures of Bentonville. Short video clips of the exploration can be found on the official Roaring River State Park Facebook page.