I vote to keep Olsen closed.
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I vote to keep Olsen closed.
Quick!!! Someone e-mail a link to this thread to the State to show them that we have all reached a concensus that cave training sucks. Continued access will only lead to total destruction of the entire system. Want proof??? Just look at how many people agree that the first 1500' from the current entrances are completely trashed & thrashed.
I guess I'm the only one that finds this all beyond ridiculous?
I am all in favor of training, but some places are better suited to training than others. The first 600 feet of the Peanut Line and the first 600 feet of the Devil's System are ideally suited to training intro cave divers. The Catacombs, the Bone Room Tunnel, and the Cisteen tunnel are good for training apprentices. Telford was good for training apprentices, too. (I'd love to see a petition for the state to take over Telford. Telford is probably beyond the means of NSS.) I don't think Olsen Sink is an ideal place for intro training.
Catacombs can be an intro dive...
No...it can't. Not if your following training standards. Unless something has changed.Quote:
Originally Posted by rox@ucf11
If you never tie in your primary... your just taking the long way around to the gold line....Quote:
Originally Posted by mmcauliffe
lol, yea I guess you're right. I stand corrected.Quote:
Originally Posted by netmage
:) Yep I just run my primary through the eye and keep running it into the catacombs, I dont acctually even ever hit the goldline though I get real close to it.
funny...I other day Mike and I were reading and talking about this thread. We both came to the same question at the same time, "you mean it's closed?"Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Rotella
We did the Grand Reverse today (P1 to Orange Grove) and I noted what looked like cattle tracks all over the place about 600 ft on the P1 side of Challenge. The stroke who did that was (or should have been) full cave, but obviously had crappy skills. The tunnel in that area was at least 10' high so I am at a loss for how he or she managed to trash the cave floor. I also noted that nearly every area between Challenge and Orange Grove where there is a significant depth change has numerous hand, knee and fin marks where divers apparently fail to anticipate the need to add some buoyancy as they decend deeper. That's a friggin OW skill and people diving that section should already have that mastered.
Opening Olsen would just invite more of the cave to that kind of abuse by making it more accessible to even less well trained (as opposed to well skilled) divers.
To be honest though if you want to open something, opening Cisteen might make more sense. Cisteen is only a short walk from the current ramp at Orange Ggrove and an extension of the current walkway and a set of steps would be comparatively inexpensive. Plus you could utilize the existing Orange Grove parking. It would probably even take some pressure off the P1 parking on busy days.
From Cisteen, the crypt would be 500-600 ft and Olsen would be around 1000' with the Peanut restriction being many maybe 1100-1200 ft. So it would make some areas slightly more accessible without greatly increasing the risk to the section between the peanut restriction and Challenge Sink.
On the other hand, you'd have to remove a number of trees to open Cisteen up a bit and it would always be very prone to silt from a sloppy entry. And having another opening would subject more of the cave to more training and would in effect turn the Cisteen area into another training section that would quickly get beat to **** as the tunnels are silty and lower in profile than the Olsen line and demand a bit more skill to stay off the bottom. So if it were opened, training there should be strongly discouraged.