By Woody Jasper
The first time I met Wes, he and Terri had moved from Jacksonville and he was working at the Branford Dive Shop. I was looking for a new place to do a solo dive and he hand-drew me a map and provided directions to Lower Orange Grove in the Peacock System. Later, when I was thanking him for the very interesting dive, we set up our first dive together. It turned out to be into a small flat tunnel ending with a series of low, very silty dome rooms about bedroom size by five feet in height with two foot high silt mounds in the middle. After Wes found a tie off for the end of our exploration line, we spent the next 10 to 12 minutes of our exit in a total silt out, easily managing a couple of line traps. Turns out we had both enjoyed it thoroughly and two kindred spirits had found each other.
A couple of years and many dives later Wes had a sneak dive he wanted to do. The entrance was a vertical solution tube in a field surrounded by trees but it was less than 100 yards from a lady’s house. After dark the two of us were at the hole with single tanks and one set of mail order vertical climbing gear that I had never used. Wes and Lamar had kluged it together using pictures from magazines and catalogues as a guide. With rope tied around the tree, Wes rigged me up for the 20-foot rappel into clear water below. As my head descended below where Wes was standing I asked, “So how do you put on the stuff to climb out?” “Don’t worry, I will show you how that works when we come out,” Wes said. We found a nice room that didn’t go anywhere. Climbing lessons happened while hanging/floating on the end of the rope. There was so much slack in the climbing harness that each full sit-stand-sit cycle only moved the ascenders about four inches up the rope. It was an intense learning experience for us both.
Several years and lots of dives later we were going for the upper end of Hart Springs exploration on a five-man solo single stage scooter dive. This plan was for everyone to start the dive together but to potentially operate independently. The flaw in the plan was not each having independent (redundant) air supplies. My Teckna clutch started slipping so I couldn’t run settings higher than “3” causing me to scooter through low overhead areas where others were swimming to catch up. After several hard bumps on the ceiling and a long way past the stage bottle drop point, I got a hell of an air leak from my back- mount doubles manifold. Wes just caught my light signal as he was turning the next corner 25 feet ahead. I stopped trying to turn off the valve as he swam up. After he spent 15 to 20 seconds looking over my head at my manifold he backed up and invented a new hand signal, which was both hands turned up. I replied with a question mark sign with my index finger and he repeated his gesture, my manifold still roaring out my only air supply. He replied by shooting me the ‘Bird’, making a slashing hand move across his throat and began to pull out his second regulator for me. As we turned around to exit he noticed a big air dome that was being created by the air that had been lost. We could get our heads out of the water into it and he explained that the regulator yoke had been dislodged on the right valve and that the handle was gone, broken off on a previous bump. We waited for the remaining 60 seconds it took for the last of the air to vent off, told a Gary Hart joke and headed back to the stage bottles. After that dive I could say, “That man saved my life.”
First north Florida then the southeastern US became our playground. With the core group consisting of Lamar Hires, Mark Long and Tom Morris we had one hell of a good time. Almost every dive was proceeded by having to knot new exploration line and look at the expanding maps or view and consider the photographic products from the previous dive. Wes began using digital video underwater from its early inception with two little Sony Hi8’s. This eventually took him and us worldwide for fun and profit and for the opportunity to meet some of the world’s coolest characters. Wes was a master of seeing the video potential of a site or story and was able to capture the essence of the opportunity. However much he enjoyed and profited from video, his true love and passion was in still photography. He didn’t care if “stills” made him any money; they represented the highest in creativity and flexibility and allowed Wes to share his world with all of his many friends in it. Wes brought this same passion along with his boundless energy to his family with Terri, Nathan and Tess who were the most important things in his life. All this fun and our families growing and flourishing; twenty wonderful years ticked by.
Wes was easily lured into motorcycling. It provided the elements of shared camaraderie, photo ops, adventure, exploration and competitiveness that were the same driving elements from cave diving.
We worked together to buy his BMW 1200GS on EBay. Several days later we spent the day loading my bike on his big trailer and finally leaving for Little Rock at 10 PM to pick up his new bike. We arrived at the dealership late morning of the next day, spent five hours doing paperwork, buying more accessories (the boy liked his toys), loading up and leaving Little Rock for the Smoky Mountains about 5 PM. Wes had done most of the driving and none of the sleeping and about midnight began to see things on the road that weren’t there. I finished this push through the “Tail of The Dragon” with the stretch van, 16’ trailer and bikes until 3:30 AM to arrive at our destination. Forty-four hour nonstop road trip, you gotta love it. His first three days on the twisty paved and unpaved mountain roads saw his speed increasing by the day until a sporting pace was achieved that characterized our riding style over the next five years.
The last time I saw Wes, I dropped by late in the afternoon on my bike to find him sorting through 30-year-old slides of the caves and people that he loved. He showed me his latest video editing equipment and then he, Terri and I watched a movie until 11 PM. As I geared up to ride home he decided to join me and we toured the back roads until nearly 1 AM. I turned onto my road toward home as he headed to his with both of us waiving goodbye, a final wave that neither of us could see in the night but both of us knew was there.
Photo of Woody Jasper by Wes Skiles