Cave 1 rule changes

[KMD]

Apparently there are new cave 1 rule changes so that the clause about gaps only being allowed if they cross open water has been dropped and so gaps are simply allowed now (so the hotul gap is just legal now). And restrictions are allowed now, what is not allowed is 'restricted passages'. So if a restriction is less than 50 feet between areas where the divers can turn around it is allowed, but longer restricted passages are out. The latter rule sounded like there might be a little more to the story and that certain passages which fit the letter of the law might still not be considered prudent for a cave 1 diver to dive based on other issues (halocline, etc).

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Question: at the paso de legarto jump in the mainline in grand cenote, the line arrows have one arrow pointing back at your direction, a tie off and the two arrows pointing the 'wrong' way. As you pass that, do you cookie in front of the tie off and behind the two 'wrong' arrows to negate them, or do you cookie in front of the whole mess and negate the whole thing? I was leading in, and I felt that I agreed completely with the first arrow so didn't drop a cookie in front of it. Then there was enough room for the team behind the two arrows pointing the wrong way so I dropped cookies there. As we came back someone had actually jumped onto the paso de legarto line by tying into the first line arrow. That made me reassess my choice of cookie placement, but it still seemed like it worked and was unambiguous. It might have been more unambiguous to drop cookies on the other side of the first line arrow, but it didn't seem 'wrong' to do it the way we did. Thoughts?

50 feet? really? Somehow I doubt that number came up as the definition on restricted passage. If it was me interpreting the rule, I would treat any passage greater than a "doorway" as restricted and not for cave 1 consumption. In practical terms, I would consider anything more than a body length. I.e. if I can't immediatly see that the passageway is opening up again before entering it, then its a restriction.


In regards to the cookie arrows question, Richard and I got dinged on this. Treat the oposing arrows as a set and place your cookie to reinforce your exit based on the set and not the individual arrows.

The idea is that a cookie by itself does not indicate direction. Only by referencing something else can direction be determined. Thus in your example of placing a cookie between the arrows, one might not be able to determine which arrow it is reinforcing/negating.

 

[KMD]

Do I feel the need to add multiple cookies so I personally remember as opposed to relying on a teammate, no. Cookies are in individual reinforcement of the direction. It is not a bad idea at all and I think it is a great chang for newer divers. As the dives get more complext though and you are already relying on the team to perform different roles, confirming the lines and markers of the teammate performing this task is sufficient for me. Plus, each team member having to carry a dozen cookies so they can all mark every single navigation point just bothers me from an efficiency standpoint.

I recently had a conversation with a local diver who has been doing exploration down in Mexico about this and whether they personally cookie every T. For them, they usually didn't because:

A) They were already very familiar with the cave having done the priniciple exploration.
B) They were the only divers in the system due to the remoteness of the system.
C) Practicality due to the number of T's they had to cross.


Later though as they brought in other explorers the decision to leave so many T's started to cause problems as explorers who wern't so familiar with the system did feel the need to cookie navigation decisions.

He tells of one amuzing moment when their team was following behind another team and as they navigated Ts they saw, cookie... cookie... cookie... double ender...double ender.. wrench... backuplight.

 

[rjack321]

He tells of one amuzing moment when their team was following behind another team and as they navigated Ts they saw, cookie... cookie... cookie... double ender...double ender.. wrench... backuplight.

Good one!

 

[lamont]

50 feet? really? Somehow I doubt that number came up as the definition on restricted passage. If it was me interpreting the rule, I would treat any passage greater than a "doorway" as restricted and not for cave 1 consumption. In practical terms, I would consider anything more than a body length. I.e. if I can't immediatly see that the passageway is opening up again before entering it, then its a restriction.

I haven't been through a recent cave 1 and don't know if there's any qualifications about this, but it seemed a little vague to me. I can think of quite a few 'what if's about this -- particularly since it lets you get 50 feet back into somewhere you shouldn't be before you need to back the whole team out of it...

In regards to the cookie arrows question, Richard and I got dinged on this. Treat the oposing arrows as a set and place your cookie to reinforce your exit based on the set and not the individual arrows.

The idea is that a cookie by itself does not indicate direction. Only by referencing something else can direction be determined. Thus in your example of placing a cookie between the arrows, one might not be able to determine which arrow it is reinforcing/negating.

I'll play a little devils advocate here. It was obvious to me. It was obvious even after coming back and having someone jump off to the other line, and I think it would even be pretty obvious in zero viz.

If I'm coming back in zero viz, i feel the double line arrows pointing the wrong way and then I feel past it and there's a set of cookies, one of which is mine. Then there's the tie off, and on the other side of that is the arrow pointing the other way -- but there's a line on it, but I should be able to tell the line is tied into a line arrow, so that's someone doing a jump. I still follow the line arrow home since I didn't negate it (and I remember the whole damn set of arrows anyway, so its not like I'm having to figure this out without any prior information).

Anyway, I think in retrospect I agree its probably better to drop cookies on the whole batch, although RTodd's comments are also appropriate. Its not like that even without dropping cookies I wouldn't have remembered what those arrows looked like when we returned to them.

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Did 3 dives in nohoch today, mainline, charlie's to parkers, and alberto's. I think I've just about run out of cave1 cave to do in mexico AFAIK. There's still temple of doom, and so far I've been unsuccessful at getting someone enthused enough to do the climb out of the water there, and there's angelito/the pit which, honestly, I don't have a whole lot of interest in based on the descriptions. I need to do dos ojos proper, and downstream carwash which will probably get done in the next day or two. We're going to do taj mahal and xtabay again which will about round this trip out. A lot of the dives we might be able to do a little longer if we got good 600 psi penetrations out of them, but getting in 3 60 minute cave 1 dives a day is a little bit tiring and a lot of the dives I wouldn't want to do a lot longer.

Probably the second best dive we did was downstream dos palmas, and we did 600 psi upstream, then did 400 psi downstream. The plan was to swap tanks and do downstream again on a longer penetration, but 400 psi got us a 70 minute dive, and we made it to a hole someone had knocked into the ceiling and run some pipe down to pump water up. After returning from that it would have taken 35 minutes to run back to where we were to get any further and then another 35 + X minutes swimming back from wherever we got X minutes later. And that after 120 minutes of swimming already. I was pretty satisfied after all that and so we bagged the second tank for that day...

All those jump lines, however, are looking awfully appealing at this point...

BTW: Margaritas at The Pub in P.A. absolutely suck. Better off just at dos chiles. There's a great restaurant (that vastly beats anything around the omni in P.A.) which is right past the traffic circle underneath the new overpass across from the P.A. entrance (take the 'exit' to P.A. and then straight to the 'onramp' back onto the highway south and immediately pull over to the right).

 

[rjack321]

I'll play a little devils advocate here. It was obvious to me. It was obvious even after coming back and having someone jump off to the other line, and I think it would even be pretty obvious in zero viz.

If I'm coming back in zero viz, i feel the double line arrows pointing the wrong way and then I feel past it and there's a set of cookies, one of which is mine. Then there's the tie off, and on the other side of that is the arrow pointing the other way -- but there's a line on it, but I should be able to tell the line is tied into a line arrow, so that's someone doing a jump. I still follow the line arrow home since I didn't negate it (and I remember the whole damn set of arrows anyway, so its not like I'm having to figure this out without any prior information).

Anyway, I think in retrospect I agree its probably better to drop cookies on the whole batch, although RTodd's comments are also appropriate. Its not like that even without dropping cookies I wouldn't have remembered what those arrows looked like when we returned to them.

For logical consistency with how Ts and jumps are marked with cookies, its best to just think of cookies in the affirmative. I.e. they mark your primary way home where you know you have a line to OW. The arrows pointing into the cave still exist and aren't "negated".

Probably the second best dive we did was downstream dos palmas, and we did 600 psi upstream, then did 400 psi downstream. The plan was to swap tanks and do downstream again on a longer penetration, but 400 psi got us a 70 minute dive, and we made it to a hole someone had knocked into the ceiling and run some pipe down to pump water up. After returning from that it would have taken 35 minutes to run back to where we were to get any further and then another 35 + X minutes swimming back from wherever we got X minutes later. And that after 120 minutes of swimming already. I was pretty satisfied after all that and so we bagged the second tank for that day...

All those jump lines, however, are looking awfully appealing at this point...

BTW: Margaritas at The Pub in P.A. absolutely suck. Better off just at dos chiles. There's a great restaurant (that vastly beats anything around the omni in P.A.) which is right past the traffic circle underneath the new overpass across from the P.A. entrance (take the 'exit' to P.A. and then straight to the 'onramp' back onto the highway south and immediately pull over to the right).

Sounds like its time for Cave2!

 

[RTodd]

Temple of Doom is a good dive. Make someone do it with you. I have run the full circuit on 1/3rds but that is with access to full backgas. You should be able to see a lot of the cave.

Have you done jailhouse yet? It starts with a T and I think you need to do a few others, but it is pretty big cave if that sort of navigation is cave 1 allowed. Tortuga if it is still open is great as well.

There is no good food in P.A. A couple of the smaller hotels south of there have nice restaurants though. Ask the guys at Zero G for recomendations.

Knock out Cave 2 and I will go "suffer" through some swim dives with you guys.

 

[rjack321]

Another vote for Temple of Doom.

If the cavern line is at 12 o'clock.
We went in on the line which is about 2 o'clock for a 400 psi penentration to the 2nd T. Then recalculated UW, and moved the reel onto the Madonna Passage which is about 11 o'clock for a 2nd 300-400psi penetration and ended up at the 2nd T again. From that spot off in the distance by the jump on my sketch you can see an enormous fang hanging down. Cool dive.

Then did the cavern line as a 3rd dive all on 1 set of doubles I think. We may have dove non-Cave1 limits on the cavern line.

I don't think I put the ladder in the right place on the sketch, it should be around 4 o'clock. Overall a great bunch of dives.

 

[RTodd]

The jump on the left side is the circuit I was talking about. It is at the fang basically. If you stayed left at both T's on the Madonna and followed the line to the end, you would end up back at the jump you see there. I don't think there are any Ts in between but there may be. I don't think I have ever done canyons but we may have gone the "long way" on a dive years ago. Either way a fun dive and the potential of a car break in is a bigger issue than the ladder.

 

[rjack321]

I have been itching to get back and do the Hall of Giants. So that loop through the "Old Florida Section" is do-able on 1/3rds of just backgas? (no stage)

 

[RTodd]

I think it is pretty close without a stage. I have never done that dive with a stage. If you set it up and did two dives so you knew the circuit it is a really easy circuit. Doing the whole loop on just thirds without a stage is probably pushing it a bit.

Lamont, Another dive you didn't mention which is main line only and good if you have never done it. Downstream Chac Mol (sp?) Biggest stallagtite you have ever seen in the room that goes deep.