Pushing the Limits

[boulderjohn]

This thread may not be well placed. Moderators should feel free to move it.

The diving death of Shane Thompson was covered in this thread in 2016. Recently, someone named Ballen made a video describing that fatality, but that video was wildly inaccurate. Another video was then made in which people interviewed Shane's buddy on that dive, Mike Young, and Mike corrected the inaccuracies. I could have posted that video at the end of the old thread, but I think it is too important to stick it at the end of a 5-year old thread where people will probably not watch it. So here it is:


I am quite sure Mike's version is accurate. I was on the dive team there, and I was standing to his right when he told the story right after the dive. What he says in this video matches my recollection of that telling, except for a part he did not know then and was only discovered after Shane's GoPro was reviewed.

I think it is important for a couple of reasons, one of which is obvious--correcting misinformation.

More importantly, I have been haunted since that day by my desire to write an article on what I believe was the most valuable lesson to be learned from that accident. I have tried to write it, but cannot make it work. Shane was an extremely experienced and skilled diver. As Mike said in the video, they were the only two divers on the team who were able to go where they were. His abilities were far beyond mine, likely far beyond what mine will ever be.

But he was diving beyond his ability.

All divers, from the newly certified OW diver to the most certified cave diver, continue to grow as divers by pushing our limits a little at a time. We have to do this, or we will be forever beginners. But we can't go too far, because diving beyond our limits can be fatal. So here is the question--how can we tell if we are safely pushing our limits and when we are exceeding them unsafely?

 

[AfterDark]

I don't push my limits anymore but there was a time I could tell I was "in over my head" when I felt desperately like I wanted to be somewhere else or when I found myself asking for divine intervention.

Some get a warm feeling in their wet suit bottom a clear signal one may have gone too far.

 

[boulderjohn]

My question was not intended to be as much how do you know during a dive that you have exceeded your limits but more along the lines of how do you know before a dive that you would be exceeding your limits if you were to go ahead and do it.

 

[BRT]

My question was not intended to be as much how do you know during a dive that you have exceeded your limits but more along the lines of how do you know before a dive that you would be exceeding your limits if you were to go ahead and do it.

Problem is that you can plan your dive all you want, but things sometimes go south. These are known as "learning experiences".

 

[Marie13]

My question was not intended to be as much how do you know during a dive that you have exceeded your limits but more along the lines of how do you know before a dive that you would be exceeding your limits if you were to go ahead and do it.

I don’t exceed my training. I’m at 1/6 for cave dives since I’m at intro level. The 1/6 has gotten sort of boring already. But I won’t be exceeding that until I’ve got full.

I’m cautious by nature, plus having gotten into diving at a later age, that has further reduced the possibility of any rash actions.

 

[boulderjohn]

What follows is somewhat speculative.

Their dive was the first dive of the morning, with the rest of us out of the cave because it was mostly vertical, and we did not want to be raining rocks down on them. The last dive of the day before was made by me, diving solo, and it was part of the overall plan. The entrance to the cave, the top 15 feet or so (depth 85-100 feet), was extremely narrow, and it was easy to dislodge rocks as you entered. It also had a lot of silt. I had been working in the section to expand that opening. We decided that I would go in alone because what I was planning to do was too dangerous for another diver. I was going to move as many rocks away from that entrance as I could in my designated time limit and then dig deep into the silt, throwing armloads of it up and into the flow of the current, giving the area the entire evening to recover. In doing so, I greatly enlarged that opening. This was not too dangerous because I was never far enough away from the entrance to become lost in the silt. All I had to do was go upward a few feet when I was done to get out.

Before doing it, I discussed it with Mike, and he thought it was a good idea. Most tellingly, he emphasized that it was better if I did it solo. Having another person there would just make things worse. He said that when he was doing exploration in difficult, silty conditions, he always prefered to be solo. He felt a buddy was more likely to be a liability than a help. The next day he went to the depths of the cave with Shane.

As the video shows, he told Shane to stop at a certain point, and that is the point that Shane exceeded his limitations by going on. My speculation is that Mike knew that Shane was exceeding those limitations, and by telling him to stop there, he was subtly (not blatantly) telling him, "Going further is, in my opinion, beyond your limitations."

So, perhaps one way of knowing you are going to far is recognizing when more experienced people give you subtle hints that they think you are going beyond your limitations but don't want to be impolite enough to spell it out clearly.

 

[PfcAJ]

My question was not intended to be as much how do you know during a dive that you have exceeded your limits but more along the lines of how do you know before a dive that you would be exceeding your limits if you were to go ahead and do it.

Real hard to do unless you’re super honest with yourself and/or you have surrounded yourself with level headed guys who can keep you in check.

Big jumps in depth, distance, and duration require careful evaluation.

 

[Marie13]

Problem is that you can plan your dive all you want, but things sometimes go south. These are known as "learning experiences".

I think BoulderJohn is referring to things like going waaaayyy beyond your training.

You’re newly Trimix certified to 200ft and decide to do a 300ft dive type of thing.

 

[kelemvor]

All divers, from the newly certified OW diver to the most certified cave diver, continue to grow as divers by pushing our limits a little at a time. We have to do this, or we will be forever beginners. But we can't go too far, because diving beyond our limits can be fatal. So here is the question--how can we tell if we are safely pushing our limits and when we are exceeding them unsafely?

So, is that a rhetorical question that you're going to answer? I've often scratched my head and thought it was an interesting problem. Everyone chants the mantra "dive within your limits" among others. But that means it's not possible to improve. Of course, like other areas of life diving has a "what's taught and what's actually done aren't always the same thing"

 

[boulderjohn]

So, is that a rhetorical question that you're going to answer? I've often scratched my head and thought it was an interesting problem. Everyone chants the mantra "dive within your limits" among others. But that means it's not possible to improve. Of course, like other areas of life diving has a "what's taught and what's actually done aren't always the same thing"

You just summarized why I am struggling to write the article.

Maybe it needs to be a book.