Flanked by the Slieve Aughty mountains to the east and the Burren hills to the west, the mostly flat and uninspiring Gort lowlands would hardly seem to represent cave diving heaven. But no karst landscape could be more misleading. Massive water-filled conduits often 20m in diameter were discovered here by the Dark Shamrock expeditions organised by Martyn Farr, Pat Cronin, Nick Geh, Dig Hastilow, Steve Marsh, and others in the early 1990s. They are part of a drainage system that transports water from the Slieve Aughty mountains to Galway bay, resurging in the vicinity of Kinvara. Successive Dark Shamrock expeditions explored over 2km of underwater cave passages between Gort and Moy. This was believed to be only a small fraction of what remained to be discovered...and that was all I needed to know! Open Circuit in Polldeelin Searching through the pages of Caves of County Clare and South Galway I came across a description of the Coole river rising or Polldeelin. Initially explored by Dig Hastilow and Martyn Farr for 200m at an average depth of 30m towards Polltoophill sink in Castletown 1.1km away, it seemed a straightforward warm-up project that I could complete in a couple of months. I couldn't have been more wrong. Starting in early 2008, in the face of winter floods and spring storms, the project was quickly dubbed the 'Riders on the Storm' traverse. Hampered by frequently broken lines and strong currents, the exploration continued beyond the previous limit in appalling to nil visibility — a cave diver's purgatory is possibly a more apt description. When I had route-finding problems around 500m from the entrance Jim Warny helped to find the way on, and we reached the deepest part of the cave at -45m. From here I continued the project solo, but after reaching 840m from the base during a 3.5 hour dive with eight cylinders I felt that I was balancing on the edge of my diving skills.
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