Diving in the Opal mines of Dubnik
Posted By David Cani & Petr Vaverka on 30 August 2006
The main corridors are lined with a many different reels and crosses witch are marked with arrows. For movement in cathedrals around “Fedo” and in lineless spaces we are using our own reels and jump ropes…
“The visibility is still very good, because of the gentle movement of the other divers.
We are leaving the shaft through the horizontal corridor (-100feet) in the direction of the vertical passage which is at the end of one of the circles created by the flooded tunnels.”
There were a lot of wood boards on the ground a front of us and between them you can still see the foot prints of horses.
Les then eighty years ago horses were working here and pulling heavy loads of earth through the dark intricate labyrinth.
We decided to ascend through the vertical tunnel where the visibility was about 20cm (not even one a foot).The ascent went well in a rattle of bubbles from the open circuits of other divers and it was very enjoyable.
“I’m so excided and I cannot wait for tomorrow’s dive which starts in the same vertical tunnel but the descent headfirst…”
At the end of this first dive we took a look (during the decompression at -6m) on the left side of the main crossroad and we enjoyed the colorful scenes in that intricate corridor system…
Carrying all of our stuff back outside was not been a big deal, after that great and enjoyable diving experience.
It was neither a long nor difficult way out of the darkness and it was not getting in the way of our excitement.
For the rest of day we were just exploring the mine’s dry site – looking for some opals in many extracted earth piles and talking about today’s dive a planning the dive for tomorrow.
Currently “Opalove bane s.r.o.” is taking care of the protected “Dubnik mine”, which is 6 ha (14,8 acres) of property including the underground spaces, corridors, shafts, tunnels and technical monuments.
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