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I'm in the camp that the more time you can spend on tech OC, the better your CCR skills will be. Unfortunately the cost of helium makes it prohibitively expensive to get those OC hours in with trimix. OC dives that involve deco don't necessarily need to be trimix dives.
So don't jump to CCR early. Do a bunch of 90'-120' dives longer on doubles and deco cylinders.
I did T1 in 2022, CCR-F in January this year, and just finished my CCR T1 upgrade a few weeks back. All of those were on Vancouver Island, FWIW.
Personally, I think the path of T1 —> CCR-F —> CCR T1 was very worth it. I got ~60 T1 dives in on open circuit in 18 months, which I hope gave me a very solid foundation in OC tech dives and particularly gas switches. Gas switches are burned in pretty deep to my muscle memory now, which will be great if I have to bail out of a CCR tech dive for real.
I also found the CCR course progression pretty straightforward, and it didn’t take a ton more time than doing CCR-F —> CCR T1. It basically just required a 3-day upgrade on the end, which was largely centered around failures on the CCR.
Personally, I think the path of T1 —> CCR-F —> CCR T1 was very worth it. I got ~60 T1 dives in on open circuit in 18 months, which I hope gave me a very solid foundation in OC tech dives and particularly gas switches. Gas switches are burned in pretty deep to my muscle memory now, which will be great if I have to bail out of a CCR tech dive for real.
I also found the CCR course progression pretty straightforward, and it didn’t take a ton more time than doing CCR-F —> CCR T1. It basically just required a 3-day upgrade on the end, which was largely centered around failures on the CCR.
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