High Springs Intro Training Questions

[Adaptive Joe]

Hey all,

I’ve read through decades worth of threads here asking “what agency is best”, “what instructors are best”, and I understand the answers aren’t that clear cut.

But I’m going to ask some questions again for a more general introduction to cave diving in Florida, and with a selfish desire to get your tailored instructor recommendations.

I’ve been diving ~10 years, through the PADI/SSI professional/recreational pipeline (lotta C-cards, lotta focus on gear sales, for not a lot of training), contracted with a working dive team (maritime archaeology—ton of diving, ton of experience, many bad habits), and lately spending a lot of low-stakes time solo diving to have free-form fun and work on fundamentals.

I’ve dreamt of exploring caves for years, and I’m in a position now (time, money and proximity to High Springs), to get started.

I’ve spoken with a handful of instructors over the last five years, to get a better feel for the initial glide path, but I still have some observations and questions to work through.

1. The various agencies have different standards, but ultimately it’s the instructor*, not the agency, that teaches you. GUE produces a lot of high-budget media and marketing, has a good network, good training documents, and I see a lot about how they produce good divers too (albeit, similarly high budget). For some reason, my kool-aid detectors go off re GUE, though this could just be my bitter grapes about the generally inflated cost of their training and the fundamentals prerequisite. Would you say that GUE training (ie a GUE instructor) provides a legitimately better cave/tech diving practice? Or is there some amount of kool-aid in that cup?
2. Are there any external benefits of diving with a given agency? Such as professional/expeditionary opportunities?
3. I’ve interviewed instructors, and while this is often the top comment, I’ve also trained with someone I thought was legit after an interview, and then had mediocre experiences. With that said, who have you* completed training with for entry level tech/cave in the High Springs area that really knocked your socks off?
4. The general attitude I’ve seen in the cave community is that diving alone is stupid. I get it, and I understand the risk aversion, along with the safety considerations for someone who’d have to try and make a recovery if a fatal error were made. Is there any* level of risk mitigation that could be employed to make solo cave diving palatable, or is the answer “yes, a buddy”?

To close this out, the expenses involved here are enormous. I’m sorry to ask some redundant questions, but I wanted to ask them myself to have the best chance of getting relevant information in order to make these decisions re intro cave training. I’d appreciate any and all insight on one or more of the questions above or something that I’ve not considered that I should. There are always some things I don’t know that I don’t know.

Thanks for your help, everyone.

Joe

 

[J-Vo]

Lots of way more experienced people than me commenting here, but if you want to stick with side mount, I expect Joe Seda already has a curriculum for side mount fundamentals given his affiliation with sidemounting.com. I haven't taken any classes with him, but we have spoken on several occasions and he seems like a good guy.

You should expect to spend $300-$400 a day for any technical instruction and I always book a couple more than the minimum for each class.

Your $4k budget is the tip of the tech/cave iceberg.

 

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

@Superlyte27 I have seen crappy cave divers produced by EVERY agency. I guess you have never experienced the cave divers you are touting to completely ignore the facts that (A) Exiting teams have the right of way and (B) Swimming divers have the right of way over DPV divers.

 

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

Joe Seda enjoys a great reputation as a sidemount cave diver instructor around this area.

So does Timmy Young

 

[The Chairman]

I have seen crappy cave divers produced by EVERY agency.

Yah, me too. Jerks will be jerks.

 

[Superlyte27]

@Superlyte27 I have seen crappy cave divers produced by EVERY agency. I guess you have never experienced the cave divers you are touting to completely ignore the facts that (A) Exiting teams have the right of way and (B) Swimming divers have the right of way over DPV divers.

Nope. I haven’t. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, just means I haven’t seen it.

If everyone taught Intro to Cave like you do Jim, GUE wouldn’t have gotten such a foothold in the market. Incidentally, I still teach cave diving the way you taught me to teach it.

 

[rddvet]

You asked for opinions, I'll give you mine.
Take fundies. If you are near cave country, it is easy to get into a class and I don't remember it being an expensive course.
Go into it with an open mind and see what you think.
After that, you should be able to make a better informed decision about continuing with that agency or moving to a different one.
There isn't a negative, you will acquire solid skills that will help you with whatever path and training agency you choose.

What Tracy said is absolutely correct. Taking fundies will make you a better diver and will teach you whether you want to continue along that path. Keep in mind just because you have GUE training doesn't mean you have to follow every tenet to a T. I was cave diving 10+ years before getting any GUE trainning or diving with GUE divers. Even with that experience I gained knowledge from fundies. I was scheduled for Cave 1 in a few weeks, but work ruined that for me. I do plan next year to take the course if work life will allow. I've taken tech 1 but need to finish up the last couple of dives because I'm not an OW tech guy and tech 1 was hard as hell for me. The real pro to GUE is if you don't live around here and haven't seen instructors in cave country teaching you can't guarantee the quality of instruction. For example, one of the most well respected old school cave explorers whos been teaching longer than many cave divers have been alive imo and that of many others should no longer be teaching. "They" produce students with tons of missing skills. But due to their name, they still get a ton of students regularly. Then there's who I call the "Kave Kardashians" which is a generalization about several instructors who love to post their classes on social media and seem awesome. But when you are around those people at cave sites you realize alot of their classes are just "buddy dives" with skills thrown in. For an outsider of this community your instructor choice could be a crap shoot. Add to that some of the best cave instructors are nowhere online to be found and get all of their students via word of mouth. Unless someone tells you about them, you'd never hear of them.

What GUE gives you is standardization in instruction at a very high level. You can be much more comfortbale randomly selecting a GUE instructor and getting a standardized class than most other agencies. Some people will argue that all agencies have standards. The difference is the standards for GUE are a higher bar and their instructors must get continued evaluation. Most other agencies once you're an instructor and you pay your dues, nobody's gonig to question you unless you do something bad.

I'm not saying by any means that GUE is the only way. I'm very glad that I've been certified and re-certified by multiple agencies and instructors and that I learned bm, sm, and ccr throughout my path. But when I look back on the past 12-13 years of cave diving I wish I'd started with Fundies. I would have been a much better student to both my instructors and myself.

There are several instructors I know of that will give you instruction that rivals GUE's. But that is far from the norm and can be hard to find.

Spend the money taking fundies, figure out how good a diver you really are and if you meld with GUE, and then go from there. Remember lots of people hate GUE just to hate GUE. They will often give you bs reasons but usually it comes down to some personal issues (often petty jealousy or anger over the prices of courses). If you go down the GUE path, remember you can do whatever the hell you want. If GUE banned me from diving sm, ccr without tech 2, or solo cave diving and sent the scuba police to get me I never would have taken a GUE class. That's just bs people write on the internet (obviously instructors are held to different standards).

There is also talk about GUE divers being jerks. I can't speak for Europe because when I was in France the GUE divers were great, but those that live there have had some bad experiences still. I think GUE in the US has been turning a new leaf for years and is a pretty inclusive community. What does ruffle people's feathers is sometimes GUE divers don't want to dive with non-GUE divers. Its not due to being anti-social jerks. Its about risk mitigation. I can guarantee you many of the safety protocols GUE uses are not taught by other instructors (I know first hand.). Then there's other things. Such as this past week my wife went to dinner with a friend and some GUE divers she'd never met since the conference was in town. One of the guys joked with her about not being a GUE cave diver and she gave him s--t back and our buddy pointed out she'd outdive anyone at the table and it was just fun screwing around. If there was a group of non-GUE cave divers at the next table it probably would have been viewed negatively. But it was all just in fun.

 

[Lorenzoid]

If you have been diving sidemount for ages and like it, maybe that is a legitimate reason not to explore the GUE route. Had you not said you are sidemount, I would have advocated giving GUE Fundies a try. The cost of Fundies is actually very reasonable for the training you get, and you can rent any gear or buy it second-hand if you have a fear of committing to backmount. That said, GUE's Cave 1 and Cave 2 are more expensive.

You could give Fundies a try, and then make a decision on your ultimate path after that. I took Fundies, then a couple of years later when I became interested in the cave route I first trained with an instructor through another agency, then went back to take the cave courses through GUE. Fundies does not commit you to the GUE path, and regardless of what path you take after Fundies, you will likely not feel you wasted your money. If you take Fundies and feel you wasted your money, please post a class report here, because we don't see a lot of that perspective.

 

[Manatee Diver]

Why no entry-level sidemount diving?

GUE views sidemount as an advanced technique only to be used to access sections of the cave that are inaccessible by divers using doubles.

If you want the Fundies experience in sidemount there are instructors that can put you through something similar.

 

[Superlyte27]

GUE views sidemount as an advanced technique only to be used to access sections of the cave that are inaccessible by divers using doubles.

If you want the Fundies experience in sidemount there are instructors that can put you through something similar.

GUE was so late to the game with regard to Sidemount and CCR that I don’t give them a single consideration for either of those topics now.

To me, it’s kinda like PADI saying for a decade that Nitrox was going to kill everyone, then realizing how much money they were losing and then hoping to erase that decade from anyone’s memory. I remember GUE claiming how dangerous CCR and SM was. Look at ‘em go now.

 

[KevinNM]

I think GUE has a lot of advantages. I’ve never run into a bad GUE instructor, so if you are not plugged into the community enough to avoid the not inconsiderable number of bad instructors it is safer. Mer is great, but I’ve done some training with other GUE instructors and none were bad. Jon at Cave Country Dive Shop is a non-GUE instructor who I’ve trained with and recommend.

For sidemount you might work with Edd at Cave Adevtures (not in high springs). He’s kind of drunk the kool-aid of always sidemount everywhere all the time forever. But he’s good.