17/01/2009
Hidden Canyon in Dahab
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Dahab is famous among technical divers for Blue Hole and of course the Arch. But still there’re several dive sites which are not explored. One of such places is Hidden Canyon which is a system of canyons located in Abu Talha and Abu Helal area. In January 2009 Andrey Chistyakov and his Diving Team initiated a project aiming to map Hidden Canyon’s area.
Hidden Canyon is a system of canyons and is also known as “Small Canyon” regarding the small crack in its’ southern part which was discovered many years ago first at depth of 30 meters. Anyway further it becomes deeper and bigger and goes to the north turning from the small crack to the about 1 kilometer long canyon formation.
Several teams were exploring the area like Tom Steiner (TDI IT) who found TJ Canyon, Paskal Bernabe and Sebastian Kister found cavern in northern part of the TJ Canyon. Anrey Chistiakov started the exploration of the canyons in 2005. With his student Olga Generozova they found a deep cavern in southern part of the Hidden Canyon. In September 2008 Andrey Chistiakov and Dmitriy Podolskiy who already took part in projects of Andrey and completed several deep trimix programs with Andrey, explored the northern part of the canyon system with scooters. They found out that TJ canyon and northern cracks are the parts of a single canyon system - the Hidden Canyon. During a series of deep dives Andrey Chistiakov and Anna Kozlova later approved that idea. All dives were conducted with DPVs (SS and Salvo) that enabled explorations of the remote areas. |
In January 2009 we started our survey project with Andrey to make maps of Hidden Canyon’s area. During the dive on 04.01.09 to the northern part of the system Andrey Chistiakov found another crack starting from 90 meters located 60 degrees off the main system. During the dive on 10.01.09 Andrey Chistiakov, Alina Krasnoryadtseva and Alexander Svetovidov explored the crack that turned to be a deep canyon starting from 90meters followed by a cave. The maximum planned depth for the dive was 100 meters and we aimed to explore the crack so we made no penetrations to the cave. All of the divers used DPVs. Alexander Svetovidov attended the project on Megalodon Rebreather. Dive took 180 minutes with maximum depth 100 meters with Tx 13,5/55 as bottom mix and EAN 32, EAN 50 and oxygen as decompression mixes.
Next dive was planned so that to make marks and azimuth measurements for navigation and mapping, to install the survey line in the cave and to make a draft map of the new canyon. The maximum planned depth was 125 meters with Tx 10/65 as bottom mix, Tx 18/35 as travel mix and EAN32, EAN50 and oxygen for decompression. As a support diver was invited Advanced Nitrox Diver TDI – Anastasia Lyndina, the student of Alexey Grishin (TDI/SDI Instructor and a member of the surveying project team).
All the aims were achieved in Andrey Chistiakov’s and Alina Krasnoryadtseva’s 246 minutes dive, 127 meters deep on 12.01.09. Andrey Chistiakov installed the navigation markers to shorten the way to the new canyon and a survey line in the cave. The cave starts from 115 meters and goes a bit up till 95 meters. As far as long penetrations were not planned it’s hard to estimate cave’s length and depth because we couldn’t see the bottom even from 125 meters. The canyon goes deeper and longer as well. But the exploration of the canyon and the cave are the targets of the next dives.
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Now there’s a new dive site for deep trimix dives in Dahab. Andrey Chistiakov is continuing the surveying project of Hidden Canyon and new canyon.
Project’s Team
Andrey Chistiakov (TDI IT, TDI Full Cave Instructor, NACD Full Cave Instructor),
Alexey Grishin (TDI Instructor),
Evgenya Peskova (TDI Instructor),
Krasnoryadtseva Alina (TDI Adv Tx diver, TDI divemaster)
We invite:
Tom Steiner
Sebastian Kister
And all students and friends of Andrey Chistiakov are welcome.
You can read the article in Russian Here
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Year 2009 News & Events
20/11/2009
First Rebreather Cave Course ever in the Red Sea !
11/04/2009
TDI/SDI Instructor Courses schedule 2009
15/03/2009
CCR Courses at PURE
17/01/2009
Hidden Canyon in Dahab
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