Would you practice "cave diving" in a quarry?

No I haven't been drinking, but there are actually plans in the works to create an overhead environment a couple of hundred feet in length at Gilboa Quarry in Ohio http://www.divegilboa.com/

The plan is to sink numerous sections (many of which are already stack up on the banks of the quarry) of Box Culverts to create the tunnel/cave.

http://www.modcon.com/images/culvert.jpg

Mike the owner of Gilboa was explaining his basic plan around a campfire at the Great Lakes Wrecking Crew's bi-annual fall Meet-N-Greet at the quarry this past weekend. While Mike has made many upgrades over the years and the place is quite deep compared to most diveable quarries as over 125' deep is some spots, I for one don't know how this will all play out. With the throngs of open water students and newbie divers that invade the place on summer weekends, it will be difficult if not impossible to keep untrained divers out of the system. Even with plans to add rock structures and sand inside the culvert sections it seems a mighty large undertaking for a unknown return.

There was a discussion to do the same thing in Florida for training purposes, to reduce damage to the popular training caves. IIRC, the quarries were near Branford, FL.

Tracy and I practice cave diving skills on most of our open water dives, since we live 1500 miles from north Florida and only get to do about 40 real cave dives a year. But we don't need real overhead to practice skills. Running line in a river keeps us used to dealing with flow, and oozy mucky pond bottoms are great for tuning up the anti-silting techniques.

A couple hundred feet of concrete tunnel might make quarry diving more interesting, but it's not necessary for cave diving practice. And it sure ain't a cave.

Mike

Interesting thought. What if the intro cert was changed so divers would have the option to perform the first two dives in a manmade cave environment--manmade overhead, before completing the last two dives in a natural overhead environment?

Mike is actually quite the business man (everything is ala cart at Gilboa - you even pay per person for a camp site), he would love to corner the local market by being able support at least some elements of cave certification.

I suggested he contact one of the NACD directors to discuss the concept. The first issues that I see are that while a cave of sort could be created, the nature of the culverts would make for a very short cavern zone and a lost line drill would not be very challenging.

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Originally Posted by JahJahwarrior

Interesting thought. What if the intro cert was changed so divers would have the option to perform the first two dives in a manmade cave environment--manmade overhead, before completing the last two dives in a natural overhead environment?

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Originally Posted by kidsdream

...I suggested he contact one of the NACD directors to discuss the concept. ....

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Tell him to try Wes Skiles.

Ahhhh! That's explains it! We were at Gilboa doing an AOW class for a couple students this weekend. We were wondering what the concrete culverts were for and I kept meaning to ask Jody.........

Kind of like a wave pool for surfing, sounds like fun to dive, not as fun as a real cave but way better than OW, I suppose.

As for safety, I think it should be drilled in the head of divers who do not have the training to stay out of OH environments, but it would not be any more dangerous than all the cavern zones & wrecks being dived every day all over the world anyway.

Nothing wrong with practicing in such environments, but a cave card is a cave card. Add a little silt on the floor + walls + ceiling, a little overhead environment that's lower than you like, and a little pressure from not destroying something of perfection that Mother Nature created, and...

You can't do this stuff with virtual reality and you can't do it in a controlled environment. A cave is a cave is a cave. It's like being married - until you actually try it you can't imagine what it's like - and how hard it is - to actually do it.

I used to practice cave diving techniques and skills in 15-20' fresh water in Arizona lakes before I moved to North Florida. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't think training in a manmade environment is appropriate, though. They even tried it at Vortex and it didn't work. Plans are to remove the manmade caverns in Vortex.