Cave Training and Etiquette Real or Imaginary?

[PfcAJ]

Some of the caves in MX have jumps so close you can bridge the gap with a double-ender. Take your eye off the line for a split second and you can suddenly be going into the cave on a completely different line than the one you think you're going out on ... :shocked2:

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

that same thing happened to me a few weeks ago. It was just a few ft (not 4 inches) but the same idea.

short jumps are a pet peeve of mine.

 

[boulderjohn]

Some of the caves in MX have jumps so close you can bridge the gap with a double-ender. Take your eye off the line for a split second and you can suddenly be going into the cave on a completely different line than the one you think you're going out on ... :shocked2:

It's not just Mexico. I was the second person exiting in a 3 man team in Jackson Blue a couple of months ago, and the lead diver took just such an accidental short jump. It was really easy to do. Fortunately, I saw it and got his attention. If I had been just following his fins....

 

[TSandM]

We do, of course, mark every intersection. But I've heard enough stories about people accidentally getting on the wrong line (or one story about the line the folks came in on having been removed while they were in-system) to be paranoid.

 

[GDI]

Maybe it's because I primarily cave dive in MX, but there seems to me to be a hole in your otherwise excellent list, Rick, and that's a "navigational awareness". It's kind of a synthesis of some of the others, but knowing what kind of passage you have been in, what kind of line you were following, how many intersections you have passed and what kind of intersections they were, what the flow was doing, what the general compass direction of the cave was, whether there was any flow, the compositions of the sediments, the depth of the passages and intersection and whether there was halocline, and if so, at what depth . . . those are all pieces of information that will GET YOU OUT if everything else fails.

My original cave class, although a level I class which also taught line skills and emergency procedures, was heavy, heavy, heavy on these things -- collecting data, correlating and synthesizing it, and being able to use it to form an image of where you had been, and where you needed to go to get out. As a result, I have turned more than one dive on "full brain"; either recognizing I couldn't absorb any more information, or worse, realizing I was no longer confident of the information I'd already collected.

Florida seems a little different, at least at the "tourist" diving level. There, perhaps, depth and time and silt are your biggest enemies (I have profound respect for Florida red clay sediments!). But in MX, what will kill you is getting lost, and it can be frighteningly easy in the spiderwebs of cave and line down there (not to mention the fact that the lines you came in on may not be the lines you go home on, depending on who has been in the system while you were diving.)

I'd rather, and I have dived with someone whose technical skills were not as stellar, if I thought they were aware and processing what was going on around them.

Lynne,

This is all taught (Line, Hand Signal and Light Communications, Line Management) One of the concerns in MX vs FL is the way that they mark and do their intersections and junctions. This is a item that needs to be discussed to have better international line communication standards. We are already working on this and also attempting to have MX feel like they are part of the greater cave family. Polictics are big in Mx as well. There are many NACD and NSS-CDS members in MX and we ( the agencies) want them to know they are part of us. We are working on this. It has cost a few divers their lives over the years.

---------- Post added April 8th, 2015 at 11:09 PM ----------

Some of the caves in MX have jumps so close you can bridge the gap with a double-ender. Take your eye off the line for a split second and you can suddenly be going into the cave on a completely different line than the one you think you're going out on ... :shocked2:

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Exactly a concern we had and still have in some caves in Fl . We have made the corrections where possible. Line committees need to make sure this is stopped.

 

[PfcAJ]

Exactly a concern we had and still have in some caves in Fl . We have made the corrections where possible. Line committees need to make sure this is stopped.

I made one of those stupidly short jumps (like less than a foot) into a T in a remote section of a cave the doesn't even have a line committee. Some folks acted like the sky was falling over it.

 

[karstdvr]

that same thing happened to me a few weeks ago. It was just a few ft (not 4 inches) but the same idea.

short jumps are a pet peeve of mine.

I agree very dangerous. I have seen this type of thing over and over again in river caves, and one was hidden behind a rock with the other part of the line in the silt, so it was easy to blow this jump and end up deeper into the cave. I know you make them into a well marked T which is good, in some cases where it is very small silty passage,with poor river cave viz, cutting back to a jump IMHO has been the better solution.

 

[GDI]

I agree very dangerous. I have seen this type of thing over and over again in river caves, and one was hidden behind a rock with the other part of the line in the silt, so it was easy to blow this jump and end up deeper into the cave. I know you make them into a well marked T which is good, in some cases where it is very small silty passage,with poor river cave viz, cutting back to a jump IMHO has been the better solution.

So what are the opinions on a T junction compared to a Jump/Gap application? Obviously Jump/Gaps require a reel to be placed where as a T requires a form of marker (clothespin, cookie or arrow). The double-ender often seen in Mx is not the ideal solution. IMHO I think it has created more problems and suggests more of the much lazier approach taken by cave divers part of this thread is talking about..

 

[Redshift]

I think proper jumps are best. Those where a diver needs to purposely change from one line to the other, following proper protocol, and not do it inadvertently. Of course that this creates a temporary T on the line and people need to also be comfortable with that, but these Ts are already signalled, unlike permanent Ts. In the UK they are common and I had some dives where there were so many lines that I was running out of clothes pegs! And they can create a complicated situation if they are missed and not marked on the way in.

 

[victorzamora]

I think a well-marked T or a well-cut-back jump are pretty equivalent in terms of safety....at least for me. I'd prefer jumps to be greater than a wingspan (about 6ft). I've heard a few divers (even some instructors) talking about just reaching across the gap. However, I'm not sure if a 6+ft jump would be appropriate in all scenarios. I think that a judgement call needs to be made on whether to make something a jump or a T, but I think it should be on a case-by-case basis. Maybe some rules could be created to determine a guideline? Either way, I think it'll take some more experience and more thought from me before I can come up with something feasible to implement.

 

[tbone1004]

Lynne, my apologies, having not dove the Mexican caves, I was unaware that it wasn't uncommon for that many intersections to be that close. I know of a few distinct jumps in Florida that can be done with a double ender, Gold line to Kings Bypass in JB for example, but that is very obvious and only available due to the long run the gold line has so it can sag the 2ft to hit the jump quite easily. We first tried this with a reel and the weight of the reel hung the gold line to the point that a double ender would reach so the next time we just put the double ender in there. This is obviously a unique situation due to that specific passage, likely combined with Edd's preference of running lines on the ceiling, but that is the only one that I know of that is regularly done with a bolt snap, there are likely more.

To GDI's question, I don't like T's, it's personal preference, but I just don't like them. That said, I do very much like the gate clip jumps for very popular/active jumps and wish there were more of them. Thinking both ends of crossover in Peacock, the end of the Peanut line, etc. In the popular caves with proper cookie deployment, this can take quite a bit of clutter and confusion out of some of these intersections. Have the gate clip with extension over on the side passage, first diver goes and retrieves it to clip into the gold line, place cookies on the side passage side to indicate you're in there, and whoever the last diver out is when there are no more cookies goes and replaces the line.


On an unrelated note to the above, because this discussion has gained a lot of interest and sparked many side discussions, I had a quick chat with Kelly Jessop last night and was very disappointed with his response. Per what I assume to be most people on this thread, I received an email from the NSS this week indicating that it was time to vote for the 4 open board positions. Knowing that the CDS board elections were supposed to be right around the corner I hopped on the website and saw that ballots were supposed to be snail mailed on 03/07/15 and Kelly was in charge of the whole thing. Sent him a quick message on Facebook asking if there was a delay in the ballots and if/when I could expect to see mine as I was very interested in who was running for Training Director, Chairman, and one of the Program Directors. His response was that there were only 4 total nominations for the 3 positions, and when asked for platform statements the 1 person who was not an incumbent backed out, so all 3 are automatically re-elected for the next term. This was determined on or around February 21st and the board was informed, but there were no formal announcements via email, Scubaboard, CDF, or even the NSSCDS main page. I understand that the election process is not "officially" over per the initial timeline, but when they decided not to send out ballots, they should have indicated on the website why the ballots were not being sent. This represents two problems to me, one is the lack of communication from the CDS board because they have known about this for well over a month, as well as a lack of interest from this community. Personally DeRoo needs to get off his butt and actually update the damn website, no meeting minutes posted, the last board meeting is "scheduled" for April of 2014, etc etc, lots of things have slipped through the cracks which does not give us warm fuzzy feelings about how the organization is being run, and that is just one of the big issues. I understand they are all volunteers, but if you aren't going to followup and do what you have committed to doing, then step down, no one will fault you for saying that you don't have the time or energy to commit to this so you are going to step down so it doesn't suffer, we will fault you for staying in a position and not doing what you have committed to do.

I understand there is a lot of things spooking people especially with the lawsuits, and with this thread I am not necessarily disappointed that Joe and Jim are back for another term because I think this thread has brought a lot of things to light and this gives them time to try to turn the boat around, but the fact that they ran unopposed is something that has to be changed. I was not eligible to run this year due to having let me membership lapse, and obviously not a CDS instructor, but there are many out there that are qualified and chose not to run. Hopefully we can let this election year go and that the existing board will try to turn the boat around and next year hope that the School Sink bs is done and over with, with a ruling in our favor, and we can move on. This is again not to be a jab at Joe or Jim directly, but at the general apathy this community seems to have for the NSS-CDS, as well as the NACD. We need fresh blood in there to help revive the organizations and get them running smoothly again. If we had people that had ran against the two of them and the vote said lets let them stay around and see if they can turn this ship around I would be OK with that because this thread came at a very inopportune time with both the Chairman and Training Director being up for reelection, but to go unopposed due to lack of interest is really unhealthy for the organization.