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Tod Smith, if he is the person I am thinking of, is based up here in NE and uses the quarry in Rutland VT (aka "Ginnie North" and one of my favor dives spots) for most of his cave instruction. I've run into several divers there, who were trained there in the quarry, all the way from cavern to full cave. I've always wondered how good an idea this is since the quarry, while it allows some reasonably long penetrations (1000' or so depending how much you zig and zag) is a much more orderly and predictable environment than a natural cave - there's no flow, you have to really work at it to create a silt-out and there's always room (lot's of it) above to escape it if you do, and the galleries are arranged in a fairly predictable manner unlike the tortuous passages of a natural cave (the flip side is that some of the chambers are so big that you can loose all reference if you are in the middle). It's great fun scootering because it is so wide open, but doesn't teach you much for that same reason. I don't think anyone who learned there is ready for "real" caves without some serious additional work. It would be very easy for someone who had been certified full cave there to get in way over their head in a natural cave, let alone someone who had only done Intro. BTW, Tod puts his cave students in doubles/wings/backplate from the start. I think most of us agree that's a good idea, but the downside is that you end up with students who have done only the first part of the cirriculum, yet are accustomed to diving in a configuration that allows must longer dives than they are qualified or safe to do, which seems to have been one of the problems in this case. I think we ocassional cave divers from up north have to really watch it, since we often don't get in real caves enough to keep our proficiency up, but when we get down there the warm clear water makes it seem so easy that we forget it. >On March 6, 2000, at approximately 8:44 a.m., two Intro-Cave Divers >entered Little River Springs wearing doubles and using Diver Propulsion >Vehicle's. Neither diver had been in the water since September 1999. >This was the first dive of their trip, and they had not been in Little >River since March of 1999. Michael Hickey (victim), and Phil Iantosca >(survivor), were certified as IANTD Intro-Cave Divers by IANTD Cave >Instructor Todd Smith in November, 1997. The survivor stated that they >had approximately a total of 200 total dives, and 70 of them cave >dives. Both divers last known address is in Massachusetts. -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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