Mr Chattertons Self Reliance Article...

[ElGaucho]

In other words, going back to the basics of team diving philosophy, don´t try to solve a lack of skills with equipment / or by justifying stupidity. You can plan ANY dive with sufficient spare gas, in particular in a team of more than two. The minute you start adding capable team mates to the equation, your redundancy starts to skyrocket. Everyone is free to dive in whichever way they choose. Just don´t justify a selfish and wrong mindset. Chatterton dove the dives he dove the way he did, because there WAS NO BETTER WAY at that point (at least it wasn´t as discussed as it is today with the internet). Today there is. It is called team diving, team mentality and anyone doing any kind of team cave diving understands it. The Doria divers who started diving a few years after Gimble were diving CRAPPY configurations. They all started diving BETTER configurations between the mid and the late 90s. There are much better ways to do things. It pisses me off to see how many people just defend the "concept" of BAD DIVING habits. If you have no mid water skills, you shouldn´t be doing dives to the Doria, or in a cave, or in any reef for that matter. That´s the kind of stupidty team diving attempts to control.

This and the other thread prove just HOW WRONG tech diving still is. I am happy I can find people like Bob, Peter and Lynn I could potentially try to dive with, and feel comfortable doing so. I am sad, so many years later, there is so much people who believe in "dying doing what I love" and crap like that. The self-absorbed american mentality, and fake heroism of perseverance of death as an accomplishment of some kind, it´s just crap they fed you to go fight wars people. It has nothing to do with diving and enjoying A HOBBY. But, to each their own.

This thread is just so late 90s it´s scary.

 

[dlofting]

Dumpster Diver.

The vast majority of Human Beings who climb Everest do so on Gas. The reason for doing so is that you are operating at 1/3 of the available oxygen content as compared to sea level. Above 26 thousand feet you are in The Death Zone. It is a place that the body CANNOT survive for extended periods of time. Your cells are dying. Read a book entitled Death Zone: above 26000 feet.

Many who die on Everest do so due to Oedemic incidents and the fact that the body CANNOT survive at that altitude. Calorific intake is 1/3 of that at sea level. You struggle to eat therefore your body devours is reserve food stores. Yet others die of Hypothermia. Some fall. Some are crushed in Serac collapses on the ice field or are killed in Crevasses.

How can you dive to below 200 fsw and not know that existing medical conditions, accidents, hypothermic incidents etc not be a possible source of Death?

You are in an Extreme environment, just as you are above 26000 feet, you require your equipment to keep you alive and your mental stamina to drive you on, be that to accomplish your goal or accomplish a successful retreat. Hopefully a Buddy can help you but if they are also in the same state then neither of you are having a good day.

There is a point on Everest that Climbers have been left to die. You read about, maybe are sad about it. That is the reality of the endeavour mate. It is a reality of Climbing to the extremes. It is also a reality of EXTREME level dives. You read about it, maybe are sad about it but what do you really LEARN from it?

There is a story of a successful rescue from 27000 feet on Everest. 2 of the rescuers died. Extremely accomplished climbers. They were Climbers with families. Both got killed due to exhaustion and succumbing to the effects of AS (after they gave the dying climber their gas) due to over exertion from trying to save a guy who was clinging to life by the barest thread.

The guy in question lost an arm, all his toes and fingers on his remaining hand and most of his nose and lips to frost bite.

Two families that could have had Husbands and Fathers at home, had they not done what they did and given up their Gas to keep him Oxygenated and slaved away to get him down thus dying of Oedemas, could have lived fuller lives.

Your comparison of the Extreme conditions on the worlds highest peak and ultra hardcore diving are not thought through. Your experience as a Diver dwarfs mine. I admit that, yet don't patronize me about safety margins after I have seen Men and Women Die climbing. My thought processes which I apply to Hardcore Climbing apply to Diving. IF I CAN HELP YOU I WILL AND I WILL MOVE HEAVEN AND EARTH TO BRING YOU HOME TO THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE YOU, I IF I CAN REASONABLY ENSURE MY SAFETY. I ALSO HAVE A WOMAN WHO LOVES ME TOO AND WANT TO GO HOME TO HER AT THE END OF THE DAY. IF NOT, YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN.

I think Dumpster Divers' point was that you can't always plan for the worst case scenario in high altitude mountaineering and still be able to make the climb i.e. it is physically impossible to carry enough gear, gas included, to ensure that you can mitigate every eventuality. Deep diving is different - short of a medical emergency, such as a heart attack or stroke, you can expect to bring everyone back safely and can have the "tools" at hand to make that happen.

 

[danvolker]

How do I reconcile this?

Simple.

If you are running out of gas on a deep dive, you had no business making that dive in the first place.

Think about it... It's a scare tactic for people who are thinking about making deep dives that may not be ready for them

(This isn't a message to new divers... It's about deep advanced diving)

I am going to say this in the kindest and gentlest manner I am capable of.

DIR Divers or GUE Divers do not share gas on a deep dive BECAUSE their buddy failed to bring enough gas for the dive.
This aspect would NEVER be considered.

The reason I bring up DIR and GUE, is because when you talk about buddy diving versus solo diving, the core issues discussed, fall into the DIR versus Personal Preference and Solo discussions...so it would be irresponsible NOT to utilize the best counterpoints to the discussion Chatterton has begun. For all practical purposes, Chatterton's article should have or could have been titled " Why DIR or GUE is Wrong".... Let's call a "spade" a "spade".

The REASON one buddy brings enough gas for himself AND his buddy, to get them both back to the surface SAFELY, at ANY POINT in the dive--is for catastrophic accidents.....This could be a valve getting broken by an impact and too much gas lost prior to shut down--whatever the cause, 20 years of deep diving tells us that accidents CAN occur, and the Team approach to diving the exploration level penetrations, is the best way to mitigate the gas redundancy needs of potential accidents. And again, accidents do not refer to not bringing enough gas for your dive plan.

 

[nakatomi]

The REASON one buddy brings enough gas for himself AND his buddy, to get them both back to the surface SAFELY, at ANY POINT in the dive--is for catastrophic accidents.....This could be a valve getting broken by an impact and too much gas lost prior to shut down--whatever the cause, 20 years of deep diving tells us that accidents CAN occur, and the Team approach to diving the exploration level penetrations, is the best way to mitigate the gas redundancy needs of potential accidents. And again, accidents do not refer to not bringing enough gas for your dive plan.

Dan, that's why I (and many others) do not dive with a manifold - to not ever lose all the gas due to a failure.
If we knock off a valve, 1st stage, reg, etc., we switch to our own reserve and the dive ends.
So the reserve is primarily MINE, not my buddies
If the same thing happens to the buddy, he switches to HIS reserve.
That's the basic, most simple and the quickesst process and that's how it works best.
I would expect everyone to plan accordingly and not take any shortcuts in the process. That means first and foremost, everyone carries a reserve sufficient for his own needs throughout the dive. And of course one will also make sure that the gas planning includes gas matching to make sure the reserve is sufficient for the other team members.
Because, if for some reason this procedure does not work, we will of course air-share as trained and the reserves would again be sufficient to air-share with another team member until the end of the dive.
But then again, I can understand that with sophisticated dives air-sharing is absolutely not the preferred way of solving an OOA situation. And possibly it is not one that will work well under some circumstances and be outright dangerous.

I don't see anything wrong with this approach and I don't see it contradicting basic DIR principles. Well, maybe apart from the question of a manifold maybe...

Oliver

 

[danvolker]

Dan, that's why I (and many others) do not dive with a manifold - to not ever lose all the gas due to a failure.
If we knock off a valve, 1st stage, reg, etc., we switch to our own reserve and the dive ends.
So the reserve is primarily MINE, not my buddies
If the same thing happens to the buddy, he switches to HIS reserve.
That's the basic, most simple and the quickesst process and that's how it works best.
I would expect everyone to plan accordingly and not take any shortcuts in the process. That means first and foremost, everyone carries a reserve sufficient for his own needs throughout the dive. And of course one will also make sure that the gas planning includes gas matching to make sure the reserve is sufficient for the other team members.
Because, if for some reason this procedure does not work, we will of course air-share as trained and the reserves would again be sufficient to air-share with another team member until the end of the dive.
But then again, I can understand that with sophisticated dives air-sharing is absolutely not the preferred way of solving an OOA situation. And possibly it is not one that will work well under some circumstances and be outright dangerous.

I don't see anything wrong with this approach and I don't see it contradicting basic DIR principles. Well, maybe apart from the question of a manifold maybe...

Oliver

Oliver, with any luck, Guy Shockley will see this and answer it from the perspective of a Tech Instructor from GUE....He can provide a much better explanation of all the aspects to our approach.
I will say that in the early days of our deep air diving in the mid 90's, I was using double independant 72's ( jacked). The potential danger of losing a regulator on an independant, thus losing all that gas, is a significant drawback for that approach, particularly if it happens right after you switched from a tank already low....Sure you can breath a little from one, then the other, and go back and forth, but this is also a task loading issue if you get involved in something else that requires much attention. I became much more prepared for the technical environments, when I swiched to the manifolded doubles--about the same time I switched to Trimix.

Valve shut off drills are a 101 component to GUE divers long before they get into tech diving. The idea is to increase the liklihood you can always count on being able to breath all of the volume contained in your back gas( rather than losing half to a failure).

But Guy would explain this approach far better than I am likly to be able to. His job is to explain this stuff... My jobs were always the technical exploration, not the explaining paart

 

[HowardE]

I am going to say this in the kindest and gentlest manner I am capable of.

DIR Divers or GUE Divers do not share gas on a deep dive BECAUSE their buddy failed to bring enough gas for the dive.
This aspect would NEVER be considered.

The reason I bring up DIR and GUE, is because when you talk about buddy diving versus solo diving, the core issues discussed, fall into the DIR versus Personal Preference and Solo discussions...so it would be irresponsible NOT to utilize the best counterpoints to the discussion Chatterton has begun. For all practical purposes, Chatterton's article should have or could have been titled " Why DIR or GUE is Wrong".... Let's call a "spade" a "spade".

The REASON one buddy brings enough gas for himself AND his buddy, to get them both back to the surface SAFELY, at ANY POINT in the dive--is for catastrophic accidents.....This could be a valve getting broken by an impact and too much gas lost prior to shut down--whatever the cause, 20 years of deep diving tells us that accidents CAN occur, and the Team approach to diving the exploration level penetrations, is the best way to mitigate the gas redundancy needs of potential accidents. And again, accidents do not refer to not bringing enough gas for your dive plan.

Dan,

If someone asks you if the sky is blue, do you reply, "Today is Friday?"

This article has nothing to do with GUE, so get off of your high horse if you know how to. You are clearly here to spew your POV, and all I can say is you don't actually read the words.

The article wasn't about being a buddy, or buddy diving, or solo diving... it was about being responsible.

I said, "If you are running out of GAS" I didn't say, "Back Gas" did I... Think about it. Instead of spewing your POV repeatedly, try to understand this simple concept.

It's not about buddy diving or team diving, it's about divers understanding what they're getting into with deep diving. If you can't figure a way out of a mess even if you lose your back gas, you shouldn't be there. If you simply deplete your back gas because you improperly planned, you shouldn't be there. Period end of story.

 

[flots am]

If you are running out of gas on a deep dive, you had no business making that dive in the first place.

That's entirely likely, however there's no reason for misjudgement to be fatal if it's easy to turn it into an annoyance.

flots.

 

[danvolker]

Dan,

If someone asks you if the sky is blue, do you reply, "Today is Friday?"

This article has nothing to do with GUE, so get off of your high horse if you know how to. You are clearly here to spew your POV, and all I can say is you don't actually read the words.

The article wasn't about being a buddy, or buddy diving, or solo diving... it was about being responsible.

I said, "If you are running out of GAS" I didn't say, "Back Gas" did I... Think about it. Instead of spewing your POV repeatedly, try to understand this simple concept.

It's not about buddy diving or team diving, it's about divers understanding what they're getting into with deep diving. If you can't figure a way out of a mess even if you lose your back gas, you shouldn't be there. If you simply deplete your back gas because you improperly planned, you shouldn't be there. Period end of story.

Howard, I am starting to think you did not read Chatterton's article..... From the beginning of the piece, it was an attack on buddy or team diving( implicitly an attack on DIR/GUE)....
Do you not recall this part in the beginning : " Solo diving made far more sense in that we could travel light, have a small footprint, and push as far as we were comfortable, as opposed to as far as someone else was comfortable. For most of these dives a buddy was considered to be a liability, not an asset, simply due to the environment. We focused on being self reliant, and that made Solo diving possible. It made deep diving possible.

More than one of the diving fatalities on the Doria, had a buddy who failed to affect the eventual outcome. So, just having a buddy is not an effective survival tool because the buddy is unreliable. The answer to a serious problem can’t be unreliable.

This past week, I was diving from a private boat off Miami. We were looking at a couple of new sites, and using open circuit Trimix. The other dive team was comprised of a pair of deep divers who had never been diving together as a buddy team. This was not the deepest dive for either diver, but it was still a serious dive for them. They are both experienced, inspired guys, and excited about this particular dive to an unknown site.

http://shadowdiver.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/jc-miami-exploration-feb-6-2013.jpgSo, these guys are getting suited up and talking over their dive plan, and it comes to talking about supplying gas to the other diver, in an emergency? It was like, “This is my long hose, but if you have to take a regulator, blah blah blah”, kind of stuff. This was their training and they were doing what they were trained to do, but I was amazed at how unrealistic this was.."

 

[HowardE]

Howard, I am starting to think you did not read Chatterton's article..... From the beginning of the piece, it was an attack on buddy or team diving( implicitly an attack on DIR/GUE)....
Do you not recall this part in the beginning : " Solo diving made far more sense in that we could travel light, have a small footprint, and push as far as we were comfortable, as opposed to as far as someone else was comfortable. For most of these dives a buddy was considered to be a liability, not an asset, simply due to the environment. We focused on being self reliant, and that made Solo diving possible. It made deep diving possible.

More than one of the diving fatalities on the Doria, had a buddy who failed to affect the eventual outcome. So, just having a buddy is not an effective survival tool because the buddy is unreliable. The answer to a serious problem can’t be unreliable.

This past week, I was diving from a private boat off Miami. We were looking at a couple of new sites, and using open circuit Trimix. The other dive team was comprised of a pair of deep divers who had never been diving together as a buddy team. This was not the deepest dive for either diver, but it was still a serious dive for them. They are both experienced, inspired guys, and excited about this particular dive to an unknown site.

So, these guys are getting suited up and talking over their dive plan, and it comes to talking about supplying gas to the other diver, in an emergency? It was like, “This is my long hose, but if you have to take a regulator, blah blah blah”, kind of stuff. This was their training and they were doing what they were trained to do, but I was amazed at how unrealistic this was.."

Dan,

When John was diving the Doria... there was no GUE. LOL

The guys on the boat last week... not GUE either... I was there - to me... your comments just prove that you read things with a closed mind, and funnel things to see it with your slant. Nowhere was GUE mentioned or even a consideration in the writing of the artile. I guarantee you... John doesn't even think about GUE, doesn't care about it. People can dive however they want. That's our philosophy, as long as they dive safely.

Carry on with your tirade though... We are off to Chicago.

 

[flots am]

However, in diving, it IS generally possible to carry enough gas to get a pair of divers out of trouble. If they plan for it as a team, it is feasible. That is a very big distinction.

Now if you are talking about crazy, solo, penetrations in deep wrecks on air with no guidline.... I totally can understand that that kind of dive is better done solo....

Legends and egos aside, I view these dives with the same level of respect that I typically reserve for internet videos that start out with "Hey! Watch this!" Which is to say "not much"

For other dives, I reserve the right to choose either the buddy or the dive. I'll happily dive with someone who has the buoyancy control of a $2 bathtub toy, but we're going somewhere shallow, quiet and safe. If the dive is anyplace where a mistake ends with "and then he died," I'm only doing it with a buddy I've trained with and trust.

flots.