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Gordon, these things are really not what they appear to be at all. To draw the parallel with your Lear Jet example, that problem started before takeoff, the crash was five hours later. In these cave deaths, the same applies. Think about this - how much time does it take to run out of gas at 70 feet with 104's and stages? By way of comparison, it would take me 4-5 hours to just use the 104's up. That is unless I had already used that gas up before I got to the problem area. How confused would you be about a line arrow facing into a howling current? Not very, unless you were already scared and already having other problems, like low gas. How much problem is a silt out in Madison? Not much of one since the clay gets stirred in the "Potters Delight" tunnel every time and goes with you ( and the flow) out of the cave, while a normal silt out will pass you by if you sit for a moment. This is not a big deal since the water is heading towards the entrance. How tough is a broken line in a spring - no big deal, unless this is the "last straw". All of this IS a big deal at 70 feet on air in a cave when things start to go bad and pile up on you. The uncertainty sets in, and you start checking and double checking. When Bill Gavin and Parker got caught behind the cave-in at Indian, Gavin scootered back to the Upstream / Downstream junction just to check the arrows and see if he made some mistake. I can not imagine not knowing where I was in Indian for sure, it is so obvious, but then I was not silted out behind the restiction , running out of trimix and breathing nitrox at 120 feet , either. If Bill Gavin can get confused, anyone will get confused. On one of my early cave dives prior to getting certified, Lamar English and I did the upstream "Cortyard" at Madison. I was the rookie on my fifth or sixth cave dive, and Lamar was on his 10th year of cave diving. We had tried to add line to the upsream but it got real small and I tapped my light on the wall to straighen out the bulb and broke it, so we bailed. We had double scootered but had taken only one stage, so we were out there with little gas. When we got back to the "delight", it was hosed, and we crawled out of the place, using a lot of gas and time. We lost one of the scooters, never found our jump reel, but got back to the half hitch in the blizzard. At that time, the restriction was full of rocks. Bobby McGuirre removed them on a dive a couple of weeks later, and I got blamed for that. If we had had a further problem then, I would not have figured it out, but it would have been death due to stupid dive plan, diving beyond my experience level, not knowing the risks,etc., but it would have looked no different than these guys. In addition, it is absolutely amazing how air turns into LSD at any depth when there are problems to deal with. A certain amount of auto pilot experience and familiarity with the cave will help, but when you have strung it out, and the shit hits the fan, nothing makes any sense. Mike Bruic could probably get out of there blindfolded, but anyone not familiar at this point in a CF might as well be there for the first time. If I had not been with Lamar, but with somebody of my same inexperince level, it would have been over. In Leon Sinks, we have learned to plan differently, and to depot slow areas , like restrictions , with extra gas. At Indian, we put it near the entrance. In Cheryl, we put it at the "shortcut", and then go the long way , avoiding the restricted areas. In syphons , we put it closer together, and in deep cave we have it within alsmost swimming distance of the deco bottles and then more spaced out towards the back. For cave where going is slow no matter what, like Sally Ward, the bottles may be only a very few hundred feet from each other, a necessity if you have trouble negotiating a restriction. One restriction in the upstream takes nearly a full 80 just ot go through one way. In reality , the answer lies in the Basics. The basics are what keep you alive when things do not go well, and one of the basics is the fact that these accidents happen before the divers ever get into the water, and that is the single most avoidable part. There is no single "cause" of this accident, it is the reality of how bad it can go in cave diving. Sure, you could say give them more trick training, give them more time , give them more diving with pros, give them all of the slickest gear, give them the right gas, but then you have to give them the right plan. You are not going to get them to respect the risk , you are more likely going to get them to take more. Part of the reason they take more, and this applies to diving ocean and wreck as well, is the premium placed on being a tough guy by the locals, whether they be the central Florida cave diving blowhards, or the NE wreck diving hot shots. When I dive those caves, and it is usually only late at night when nobody is around , I don't go anyplace in them - I just do the real easy parts that are the most visual. When WKPP does long dives, it is as a team with a complete plan and all the toys and tricks, not by the seat of the pants. This is s different thing. To sit around the "campfire" and name off bullshit destinations in local caves or wrecks is begging to get people killed. I can tell all of you from seing most of these places that the best stuff is generally at the entrance of a cave. Long distnace visits need to be weighed as to how valuable they are on the "willing to die for" scale. Really , the only thing these guys did wrong was think that cave diving is safe or easy. It is neither. What we do in WKPP, and this will work for the regular "community" if they can get over thier big shot-ism, is that we take our guys diving step by step. When I dive with a guy who has never seen where we are going, I tell him eveything about the dive, what to expect, what the problems are, what the solutions are, what the tricks of referencing are, and then I ask him what he would like to see in that dive which would make him more comfortable. The rest of the community can easily do this on their own scale. Hell half of these guys in cave and wreck diving are "in the business", so they need to get off of their asses and help that business by making it more fun for the players. The bike shop guys in Ft Lauderdale run rides and do them with you , whether you are buying a bike or not. It works in that and it works for the WKPP. It should be working in the rest of diving as well. gordeonjr wrote: > > To the list, > > Dell, thanks for the additional post. Unfortunately this new data just > adds to my confusion. I'm asking these following questions because I > don't understand, -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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