Jackson Blue silt out

[Mark Michaud SELAUSAR]

With the drought JB has gone from a fire hydrant to almost no flow. Back in 1999 - 2000 the flow was really strong. A boil was always visible from the surface. There was no grass anywhere near the entrance. It has changed drastically with the drought. I wonder how long it will take for the aquifer to be back to the way it was.

 

[TSandM]

The best discussion has already been linked.

I think people who teach cave diving are amazing . . . think of all the messes cave students could get themselves into, and how it would feel to be the instructor, responsible for getting them OUT of them. I kicked off a fin and boot 1000+ feet back in Twin Cave; my instructor had to try to retrieve my gear in zero viz, since I had lost my balance and plunged my hands into the clay. His other option was to try to limp a team of three out of the cave with one diver with no fin . . . as it was, we racked up a bunch of real deco we weren't supposed to have.

This instructor was perhaps not as familiar with the system as he should have been, and by reports, watched his students vanish through a restriction he couldn't pass. He went for help, and help was there and saved the day. If I had to bet, I'd bet this guy lay in bed that night and shook, and wondered if he even wanted to teach cave diving any more. And I wouldn't be surprised if he never teaches a class in a cave he doesn't know inside and out, ever again.

 

[Dive Bug Bit Me]

As TS&M said the best most relevant discussion has been had by persons with more experience and knowledge. Yet we seem to be trying to apportion fault to just one cause. Rarely is it so. As a summary of what I have read, there were a number of factors.

- Instructor probably didn't realize that they were headed to a part of the cave with that amount of danger.
- instructor probably wasn't familiar with the area.
- students wriggled through a hole where the instructor couldn't follow and didn't consider whether their skills were up to the environment they placed themselves in.
- certainly sounds like the students didn't realize they were creating a silt bomb until too late.
- either the instructor didn't try stop the students crawling through the hole, or their light and tactile awareness was terrible.
- students didn't consider thumbing the dive until it was too late.
- students then lost each other in the ensuing fracas.
- some question the decision by the instructor to go get help.

Overall a lot of little factors that required superman to save the day.

 

[karstdvr]

A few weeks ago you couldn't see daylight ten feet from the entrance. Viz was allegedly 2-3ft to at least 1,000 ft back.

Just because a system is typically high flow, doesn't mean it's always high flow.

JB is a very active cave. I've seen a collapse occur that will blow out the whole cave