Suit filed in case of "Girl dead, boy injured at Glacier National Park

[Wookie]

My gut tells me that she was pushed by the dive center to get the classes done and just couldn't handle it.

I don’t know many of us who weren’t in this position in the beginning. I had a 2 day turnover with the old instructor before taking over a resort dive operation in the Caribbean.

I knew we were supposed to use the PADI DSD cards when we certified students, but they were just too hard (expensive) to get in Saint Lucia, and there were 8 DSDs to teach every morning and afternoon. My first standards violation.

 

[cerich]

BTW, OW divers in my state--which is not Montana--do all their dives at "high altitude" because the entire state is what PADI would call "high altitude," and the most common spot for OW class dives is a 95 degree thermal crater located at about 5,700'. I don't recall that altitude conversions are even covered in OW class. They are covered in the Altitude Diving specialty. That specialty class is pretty simple, at least it was for me. We talked in the parking lot beforehand about a plastic conversion doohickey I was handed, and then did a couple of checkout dives next to the OW students that were in there.

I can't even express how much that disgusts me. Don't give a fig if standards allow or not, the point is that we as instructors should be teaching divers so they can plan and execute dives without us in conditions similar to those we trained them in.

That includes dive planning for altitude if we are teaching at altitude. Again, this is my view of a basic moral and ethical issue , not a meet standards thing.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

I don’t know many of us who weren’t in this position in the beginning. I had a 2 day turnover with the old instructor before taking over a resort dive operation in the Caribbean.

I knew we were supposed to use the PADI DSD cards when we certified students, but they were just too hard (expensive) to get in Saint Lucia, and there were 8 DSDs to teach every morning and afternoon. My first standards violation.

At least you weren't forced to leave them in the mouth of a cavern while you brought other participants down. And then took them all inside.

 

[formernuke]

How do we do a spinoff thread on this, preferably in the instructor section?

 

[tridacna]

How do we do a spinoff thread on this, preferably in the instructor section?

Create one in the instructor section. Explain what it is you’re trying to achieve in your post.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

How do we do a spinoff thread on this, preferably in the instructor section?

Definitely not the instructor section, as we should have transparency to the diving public.

 

[formernuke]

Definitely not the instructor section, as we should have transparency to the diving public.

Where would be a good place then without confusing new divers?

 

[Wookie]

Where would be a good place then without confusing new divers?

Advanced scuba discussions?

 

[boulderjohn]

PADI standards say that anything over 1000' is high altitude. Lake McDonald is over three times that in altitude.

But surely that would only apply if it were an altitude specialty? (I don’t know the answer, as I am not altitude nor drysuit certified, but while I have many drysuit dives, I feel that diving in fresh water is for rinsing gear or bathing.)

I think I read somewhere once that OW could be taught at altitude, but that doesn’t generate an altitude specialty card, so diving at altitude is just a side effect of Montana diving.

The two decent sites for diving to Colorado are at about 4,600 feet in New Mexico and at about 6,000 feet in Utah. I cannot even remotely estimate how many thousands and thousands and thousands of people have done their certification dives from all major agencies at those two sites without taking altitude into consideration.

Yes, PADI does say anything above 1,000 feet requires special considerations. What are those special considerations?

• You have to treat every 1,000 feet elevation gain as two pressure groups if you are using tables to compute your dives. Most people go to the site from nearly the same elevation, so there is little to no elevation gain. When we take students to New Mexico, there is actually an elevation loss. If the group in this case had driven as fast as a car could go from sea level to the dive site, they would have had enough of a surface interval during the trip to be starting from scratch. Starting from where they were to get to the dive site, there was no real elevation gain.
• If you are using tables, you have to plan your depths differently. If you are using computers that correct for altitude, as they were in this case, you don't have to do anything different.

I had an interesting conversation with an SSI instructor from Colorado Springs when I met him last year. He said they teach a lot of altitude classes, but they don't use the SSI material for the academic content of the class. They use the articles I wrote on altitude diving for the class instead. Here is one of them if you want to learn something about diving at altitude.

 

[tarponchik]

. Here is one of them if you want to learn something about diving at altitude.

From you paper, ". PADI teaches divers using their tables to treat every 1,000 feet of ascent as two pressure groups, so a diver leaving sea level and traveling to an altitude of 6,000 feet would be in the L pressure group already, so an appropriate surface interval is required."

This looks like a feature to be incorporated into dive computers, to make adjustments automatically. Or maybe some comps are already doing it?