Hello darkness, my new friend - A week in Mexico

[rjack321]

Nice posts @elgoog

one thing caught my eye...

- Crawl into a hole and swim away from light and breathable air while relying on a glorified piece of twine to get back out

Did/do you feel like you have the bandwidth to "find your way out" if the line were to suddenly not be there? I don't mean a lost line drill. More like: go down the big passage on the left 15mins, past the monster beehive hook right then a left into the scrunchy area, past the keyhole to the halocliney bit... That kind of visualization and mental map.

 

[elgoog]

Nice posts @elgoog
Did/do you feel like you have the bandwidth to "find your way out" if the line were to suddenly not be there? I don't mean a lost line drill. More like: go down the big passage on the left 15mins, past the monster beehive hook right then a left into the scrunchy area, past the keyhole to the halocliney bit... That kind of visualization and mental map.

Not on this first trip but on the second one I was starting to - I recognized familiar landmarks and was almost anticipating them. Copious notes and Nat's insistence on time/gas/cave feature snapshots FTW.
I totally see the benefit of doing this from the cave diving perspective but I do this while diving at home too. I've found I enjoy the dives more when I'm familiar with the place and have seen it before as it gives me more peace of mind. I mean, it's super cool to see something for the first time but the 'n' times after that are just as fun for me

 

[rjack321]

Not on this first trip but on the second one I was starting to - I recognized familiar landmarks and was almost anticipating them. Copious notes and Nat's insistence on time/gas/cave feature snapshots FTW.
I totally see the benefit of doing this from the cave diving perspective but I do this while diving at home too. I've found I enjoy the dives more when I'm familiar with the place and have seen it before as it gives me more peace of mind. I mean, it's super cool to see something for the first time but the 'n' times after that are just as fun for me

Cool

The reason I ask is that this was hammered into me in GUE C1. But I also didn't really gork it in a practical sense. At least at first I was trying to do this in my head: Which pretty much overwhelmed me. With almost 100 C1 dives and another couple hundred plus some original explorations since I've been out of C2 over a decade ago, my definition of "learning the cave" and a mental map has changed. Mostly my benchmarks have stretched out a bit, at the same time I reference the line a lot less too. (I know exactly where it is, I just don't 'follow it' continuously in my head)

 

[elgoog]

Cool

The reason I ask is that this was hammered into me in GUE C1. But I also didn't really gork it in a practical sense. At least at first I was trying to do this in my head: Which pretty much overwhelmed me. With almost 100 C1 dives and another couple hundred plus some original explorations since I've been out of C2 over a decade ago, my definition of "learning the cave" and a mental map has changed. Mostly my benchmarks have stretched out a bit, at the same time I reference the line a lot less too. (I know exactly where it is, I just don't 'follow it' continuously in my head)

That video is super cool!

I'm not trying to learn everything in the cave but mostly uniqueness (if that's the right word??) - right now, that's basically all the markers on the line and interesting features like you mentioned earlier (rock that looks like Godzilla's head, huge knot in the line that looks like it was repaired, major depth change, etc). This is working for me now due to dives being simple but I'm sure it'll evolve as my diving progresses.

Might be a while before I don't feel the need to constantly reference the line

 

[rjack321]

That video is super cool!

I'm not trying to learn everything in the cave but mostly uniqueness (if that's the right word??) - right now, that's basically all the markers on the line and interesting features like you mentioned earlier (rock that looks like Godzilla's head, huge knot in the line that looks like it was repaired, major depth change, etc). This is working for me now due to dives being simple but I'm sure it'll evolve as my diving progresses.

Might be a while before I don't feel the need to constantly reference the line

Yea I did the same as you for quite a few dives (100+). At least for me I backed off of "everything" because I realized I didn't need a mental map which included (analogy here) every seam in the sidewalk. I could go a block or two between street signs (or more depending on cave complexity) and only reference turns or changes.

Was glad to see you do this in BM, its underappreciated lately.

 

[1atm]

Thanks for the detailed writeup @elgoog! Made me want to jump onto a plane to Mexico

Re the mental map of the cave: I found that the watching out for characteristic cave features can be a tricky thing (like the Godzilla head you mentioned), because the cave usually looks very different going out vs going in. So like you mentioned, I try to keep it to less but very distinguishable features. This could be significant depth change, jumps, markers on the line (esp change of direction of course), very characteristic side passage shapes (which would have the same shape going both ways), etc.

At some point I thought that learning a mnenonic system like the major system would be very useful to tie together that mental map of run time, depth, gas, heading, at key landmarks etc. But so far I haven't really gotten round to being "fluent in it", and on a long dive I'll have to pick which numbers to make sure I remember. Wondering if any of you use such a system, or feel it would be worthwhile to invest in practicing it?

 

[Tribal]

Not on this first trip but on the second one I was starting to - I recognized familiar landmarks and was almost anticipating them. Copious notes and Nat's insistence on time/gas/cave feature snapshots FTW.
I totally see the benefit of doing this from the cave diving perspective but I do this while diving at home too. I've found I enjoy the dives more when I'm familiar with the place and have seen it before as it gives me more peace of mind. I mean, it's super cool to see something for the first time but the 'n' times after that are just as fun for me

The first time I came out of a cave, 3 weeks ago , my instructor did ask a lot of hard questions. how many minutes before the reel was deployed, at what time did we do the last valve, gas en DC check, how was your gas when we passed that mark, when did we reach our TP, ... I sadly enough had to tell him on almost all questions I had no idea, it was my first time in a cave. I was looking everywhere but didn’t see anything. I could barely answer what the colour of the line was.
At the end of the week it did go a lot smoother, you take mental snapshots and you have a good idea where you are at any point of the dive.

 

[Dan G]

Thanks for the write-up. I am headed down that way in a couple of weeks for 5 days of coursework. I'll start with IANTD "Essentials" which is like Intro to Tech and then "Cavern." I'll see how far I get in those 5 days.